Guns Don’t Kill People, People Don’t Kill People, Reptiles Kill People

One of the reasons that some of the videos of mass shooters is so cold and chilling is that we are no longer seeing human beings. We are essentially seeing reptiles in action. Unlike humans or even other mammals, reptiles do not feel emotion and much less, think. Instead they are figuratively and literally fixated on either fighting or fleeing.

When that occurs, our human thinking brain has been hijacked by our amygdala.

According to Wikipedia, “The amygdala is one of two almond-shaped groups of nuclei located deep and medially within the temporal lobes of the brain in complex vertebrates, including humans. Shown in research to perform a primary role in the processing of memory, decision-making, and emotional responses, the amygdalae are considered part of the limbic system.”

When the amygdala is triggered by stress and even more so, overwhelmed by distress, it can “hijack” our ability to think and consider options and instead push us into our more primitive and hard wired “fight or flight” reptilian brain.

Therefore, doesn’t it make sense that the shorter a person’s fuse, and the more perceived bullying, alienation, and humiliation they have endured, the more likely are they to have their amygdala hijack them into a fight rather than flight mode and exact retributive justice upon the world that they perceived has done them wrong.

Doesn’t it also make sense that the more unjust, wrongful, humiliating and punitive they believe the world has been to them, the more people they become “fixated” on killing to even the score with “eye for an eye” revenge?

And… doesn’t it finally make sense that the longer the fuse a person can have and the more time they can put between an injurious stimulus and retaliatory response, the greater the possibility of considering other options using their human prefrontal cortex instead of succumbing to an amygdala hijack?

What determines how long a person’s fuse will be when dealing with obstacles, setbacks, disappointments, failures and harshness from the world?

As with most such phenomena, contemporary psychological and psychiatric thinking is that there are usually biological, psychological and social factors that explain such reactivity.

Biology is about genetics and the fact that some families are just wired to be more reactive with a very low stress tolerance. And the research to either find psychopharmacologic treatment or perhaps do genetic re-engineering using the technology of companies like Crispr is well underway.

Social is about the influences from the environment such as abandonment, exclusion, bullying, alienation and humiliation. And again efforts — albeit less effective than everyone would desire — are being made to lessen bullying and the other social factors that lead to gun violence.

Psychological efforts to manage anger and teach better self-control are also underway, but as with the other approaches, they don’t appear to be keeping up with frequency of gun violence incidents.

Is it possible that something else is involved that we are missing?

Object constancy, a term attributed to Hungarian physician, Margaret Mahler, is something that develops — or doesn’t develop — in infancy where a child develops the ability to believe that an object — such as its parent — will come back after that parent has gone away. It’s the ability of a totally dependent, helpless, powerless and vulnerable infant to persevere and feel okay through the upset and the adversity of a parent being away.

More importantly, it is the forerunner to tolerating increasing stress without becoming distressed which a person cannot tolerate. The less the object constancy the less stress one can tolerate; the more object constancy, the more stress they can tolerate.

When people have little to no object constancy, they will later in life be unable to tolerate any stress and rather than falling back into the terror they might have felt as infants, they will instead fixate on something to deal with it.

If they have felt bullied, abused, alienated and humiliated they will fixate on retaliation. In essence, such individuals when put down and pushed away, will fixate on getting in and getting even.

If instead they have felt abandoned and ignored, they may fixate on making that pain go away through suicide.

Here is where our FOMO driven society is a major contributor to low object constancy.

Parents coming back to their infants after they have left does little good if that parent is impatient and unable/unwilling to empathically attune (emotionally connect) to their baby. If instead they grab, yell or shake their baby to stop crying, they are actually punishing that child for being helpless, powerless and vulnerable.

Such a helpless, powerless and vulnerable child, instead of feeling secure and developing object constancy will internalize that they are hated, disliked and a burden.

Contemporary technology, FOMO and Moore’s Law driven society is increasing the impatience and lack of empathic attunement in people. Empathic attunement is especially hard hit, because to exercise it requires completely letting go of what you need and want to entirely focus on what another person needs and wants and to lovingly — instead of impatiently — give it to them.

Most of us understand but rarely heed the advice to “stop and smell the roses,” and maybe that’s optional.

However, unless and until we stop and hear, listen and empathically attune to our infants and young children, we can only expect increased gun violence and other destructive behaviors from them when they become teens and young and older adults.