Let’s see. It is Sunday, December 24th, another Christmas Eve. What is there to write about today? In a disturbing trend that appears to be repeating itself all too often, a federal judge in Massachusetts has blocked an attempt by the National Association of Gun Rights to get an injunction against the state’s “assault weapon” ban. The judge argued that the ban does not go against SCOTUS’ infamous Bruen decision, which was supposed to destroy all gun control by the way, because we are dealing with “dangerous and unusual weapons” that go beyond the scope of those needed for self-defense. For reference, it has been determined in previous cases that weapons deemed dangerous and unusual could be banned. The problem is that the AR-15, otherwise known as the Armalite rifle model 15, was first sold to civilians in the 1950s. It was developed for civilian use and later adopted by the military. At the time, the military used the much more powerful and effective 7.62 x 51, or .308 cartridge. The 5.56 that has been hyped up beyond proportion does not pack nearly the same punch, and in all honesty, with the development of new rifle technology, it could be considered obsolete. If SCOTUS intends to, in any way shape, or form, stick to its rulings and standards set forth by not just Bruen, but Heller as well, it will have to address the very reason the Second Amendment exists in the first place. If they are truly going to go by text, history, and tradition, then they will have to acknowledge the very reason the country even exists is that the colonists told the British to pound sand when they attempted to confiscate the gunpowder, but I digress.
The Second Amendment isn’t really what I want to talk about, but the situation we currently find ourselves in is a perfect segue into a deeper topic. That is the issue of propaganda and its relationship to the behavioral sciences. I would imagine at this point, this is what would be expected of me. The term “assault weapon” is perhaps the most propagandized term ever used against the American public. Most people know absolutely nothing about guns. They couldn’t tell you the difference between a semi-automatic and a fully automatic firearm. They simply associate the word automatic with a machine gun. This would be known as associationism. When I was a student in the social work program I have discussed so often, I had a classmate who supported gun control and was constantly accentuating the term, “semi-automatic,” when discussing the issue. I always wondered if he had any clue, and if he knew the semi-automatic function was just the norm in most firearms in common use today. He doesn’t, and like most anti-gun people, he has been programmed to respond in a certain way to particular catchphrases and popular slogans. Truthfully, most of the American public has been programmed this way, they just don’t know it.
When writing, I find myself referencing the same source material, and saying the same things over and over again. Someone could say “If you read one of Risselada’s articles, you have read them all,” and not be far from the truth. There is a reason for that. Embedded between the lines is the truth of other people’s influence on what we are dealing with. The truth of science’s influence on the manipulation of behavior. The government is operating on the premise that we are easily influenced by propaganda while lying to us about everything. The now infamous line by Goebbels, “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes truth,” is based on known traits of human behavior that psychologists refer to as The Illusion of Truth Effect. Here is something for you to consider. The government knows that the illusion of truth effect carries a “lot of weight, and influences all types of people even when they are warned against it.” They know, without a doubt, that repeated information will be taken as truth simply because people are repeatedly exposed to it. How does the government know this? Because we are nothing but guinea pigs. Joost Meerloo wrote in his book, Rape of the Mind, one I reference often, “that at this very moment, in our country, an elaborate research project into motivation is going on, whose object is to find out why and what the buyer likes to buy. What makes him tick? The aim is to bypass the resistance barriers to the buying public.” The more they know about our behavior, our responses, our beliefs, and our attitudes, the better they can manipulate and guide our behavior in a way useful to them. As the book Media, Propaganda, and Persuasion so eloquently states, “To make the unruly public more productive and orderly, publicists first need to discover what the public thinks and feels.”
Wow, now we are getting somewhere. There is a reason I put the word publicists in italics. B.F. Skinner, in his book Science and Human Behavior, states on page 22 that “A degree of effective control not so easily identified rests in the hands of entertainers, writers, advertisers, and propagandists.” He goes on to say that these controls are effective enough to assume that the laboratory results of their experimentation can be extended to these methods without worry of too much variation. What is it that he is saying? Essentially, they believe people are mindless in their behavior, and most of us are easily influenced by media messages and television programming. To reference Meerloo again, he states researchers have discovered that propaganda can affect the perceptions of all people.
What does Skinner mean by “effective control not so easily identified?” I discussed this in my article, The Use of Entertainment and the Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion in Education. The leftwing narrative is embedded in many of the programs being shown on TV and in the movies we watch. This is something we all know is happening, especially on Netflix, but it goes much deeper and is based on behavioral science. In other words, there is a reason behavioral scientists believe this is effective. In my article, I cited Entertainment—Education and Elaboration Likelihood: Understanding the Processing of Narrative Persuasion. Again, the authors reference the importance of understanding the beliefs and attitudes of the audience for propaganda, or a persuasive message, (which are both the same thing) to be effective. The belief is that through entertainment, our opinions, and attitudes can be nudged in desirable directions if the message can be delivered in a way that aligns with the existing beliefs of the targeted audience. Messages meant to induce sympathy for characters or narratives on popular television shows are believed to at least temporarily, change the opinions of most viewers. This is because it is the morals of the audience that is targeted more than anything else.
The push for gun control is being studied under the context of something called Moral Foundations Theory. This is a way of framing narratives so they align with the moral worldview of the intended audience. It is based on the five foundations of moral psychology used by those in political science – care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity. The idea is to frame the issue in a way that aligns with the individual liberty mindset while also tapping into the fact that all people care about others being harmed. No one wants to see people as victims, after all. This strategy is being employed in articles like I am an AR-15 owner and I have had enough, by Daniel Hayes. He portrays himself as a patriotic American who is reasonable enough to see that AR-15 ownership is problematic because of, wait for it now, magazine capacity. After every paragraph where he details undeniable facts about gun crime, like most gun crimes being committed with handguns and not rifles, for example, he reminds us of the mass shootings that took place with an AR-15 and a thirty-round magazine. The article is carefully written in an attempt to get AR-15 owners to reflect on whether they need to own one. I would have to argue these articles do not have the intended effect as gun sales tend to go up every time there is a mass shooting portrayed in the media. Interestingly, and I have said this before, studies show that people on the right are easier to nudge to the left than the other way around. I would suggest that is because people on the right have morals, and don’t operate on an ends justify the means mentality.
As mentioned earlier, the term assault weapon is probably the most propagandized term in America today. It elicits some strong emotional reactions from people who can’t even stop and realize that the word assault is a verb, meaning anything that can be used to assault someone is potentially an assault weapon. The constant bombardment of images and stories showing these rifles used in deadly mass shootings, along with anti-gun narratives in popular TV shows are being used in an attempt to change the minds of an American public that largely rejects the message of gun control. It is all based on the concepts of behavioral science which tends to believe that human beings are mindless in their actions and can be induced to behave desirably through simple manipulation of the environment. That is the basis of B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning, and the main point in his book Science and Human Behavior. The position he takes is that the study of behavior should be conducted from the view that man has no will of his own and the only way an effective study of behavior could be developed is if it becomes standardized along these lines. To view man as independent and in control of his actions makes a science of human order impossible because his ability to choose creates too many variables that can not be controlled. This is the driving belief behind all propaganda. It is also the reason it fails. We are not mindless beings who simply respond to our environment. We can be reduced to that point, and surely, there are those among us who fall into this category. This doesn’t change the fact that we have free will and the ability to think. We just need to use it.
If you enjoyed this content please consider subscribing to my website and checking out my most recent books.
A Critical Look at CRT in Education, Research and Social Policy, now available in paperback.
And Without a Shot Indeed: Inducing Compliance to Tyranny Through Conditioning and Persuasion.
