arms industry – Page 3 – Engaging Peace

Shooting down morality: a picnic for the gun industry. Part 1.

Posted on February 12, 2016March 11, 2021 by kathiemm

In his new book, Moral Disengagement: How people do harm and live with themselves, psychologist Albert Bandura does a masterful job of showing how, for example, the National Rifle Association (NRA) promotes moral disengagement to promote arms sales at all costs.

For example, leaders of the NRA have offered moral justifications (or at least pseudo-moral justifications) for unlimited arms sales, asserting, for example, that if the German people had been armed during the Holocaust, “we wouldn’t have had the tragedy we had there.”

NRA spokespeople also make generous use of euphemistic labeling to sanitize the activities of the gun industry—essentially equating guns with free speech, and portraying gun laws as a form of governmental gag order.

The NRA leadership also make ample use of the moral disengagement process of advantageous comparison, suggesting that if it was not immoral for people at Honeywell to make nuclear weapons components, then there certainly can’t be anything wrong with making and selling guns. Charlton Heston, former president of the NRA, invoked the Nazi persecution of Jews as a rationale for buying arms.

Another moral disengagement mechanism that Bandura identifies in the NRA arsenal is diffusion and displacement of responsibility. How could it be the fault of the gun industry, NRA proponents ask, if guns fall into the wrong hands and good people don’t have the guns they need to protect themselves from the bad guys?

In our next post, we will consider additional mechanisms of moral disengagement used by the arms industry to get people to arm to kill, and ways to combat their tactics.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

When will They Ever Learn?

Posted on July 24, 2015 by kathiemm

“American Square” by Soymonk¹.
Image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.**

The latest rampage, as of this writing (I expect there will have been more by the time this is posted), was the work of a semi-automatic pistol in the hands of a “drifter” who should not have had a gun. This latest by-product of a money-and-unbridled-liberty-at-all-costs club took the lives of two people and injured 8 more in a Louisiana movie theater Thursday night. You can be sure that the corporate media are in a frenzy, looking for some “terrorism” connection. If they can’t find that revered link, I imagine they will settle for cloaking the accused, 59-year-old John Russell Houser from Phenix, Ala, in the label “mental illness.”

I think the time has come to bestow the term “psychologically deranged,” along with “morally corrupt” on the arms industry and particularly its vicious handmaiden, the NRA. How many times do we have to hear about the murdering of innocent adults and children in their schools, their local theaters, their homes, before enough ordinary people commit themselves to doing something about it, nonviolently.

In sports, setting and breaking records may be great, but do we want to maintain records like the following:

The U.S. firearm homicide rate is 20 times higher than the combined rates of 22 countries that are our peers in wealth and population.

American children are sixteen times more likely to be killed in unintentional shootings than their peers in other high-income countries.

Already, in 2015, at least 146 children have been shot.

There are some very fine organizations working to reduce and/or end this insanity.

Learn more about and from them, including information on the ways you can be involved:

Americans for Responsible Solutions

The Brady Campaign

Moms Demand Action

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

^**The artist was motivated to paint “American Square” when he learned that sales of guns, particularly of semi-automatic rifles, have sky-rocketed and saw the maniacal manner of NRA’s president suggesting having a gunman posted in every school in the country. The incident struck the artist as a phenomenon totally opposite to what he anticipated after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on Dec. 14, 2012. America seems to face not only a racial division, but also a ‘pro-gun vs. anti-gun’ division, just as deep an issue. Needless to say, the artist stands clearly as an anti-gun proponent. Why? The artist spent many years and raised his family in Morton Grove, IL, north suburb of Chicago, which became the first city in the U.S. to legally prohibit possessing handguns. Owing the unprecedented outcome to a resolved resident of the town, the ordinance was put in effect in 1981. For the artist, the enforcement of the ordinance was a natural cause by the residents who only wish for the safety of their families in their daily lives. Now as a resident of Manhattan, NY, he has succumbed to the fact that the idea of handgun control is facing headwinds everyday and everywhere. In movies and dramas, guns play major roles and are too often used as the final solution. The viewers are desensitized to the actual impact these weapons could have. The real danger, that the artist feels, however, is that the fear of guns drives people to purchase guns. The more they purchase, the more they need.
Where does it all end or will it ever?

The federal budget: Invasions, yes! Peace, no!

Posted on February 24, 2011July 6, 2011 by kathiemm

At least that’s what the politicos are telling us.

By now, everyone must have heard something about the debates about the new U.S. budget. You may know that to address the deficits that have accrued since former President Bill Clinton created a budget surplus, powerful forces in Congress seek, among other things, to

Gut the Environmental Protection Agency
Block spending for health care
Cut food and other assistance programs for children, the elderly, and the disabled

U.S. Institute of Peace building — U.S. Institute of Peace, Washington, D.C.

But did you know that while declaring funding for the Pentagon off-limits for budget considerations, a majority in the House of Representatives also voted to eliminate funding for the United States Institute of Peace (USIP)?

The USIP, established by Congress in 1984, conducts research and training designed to prevent and end wars and to promote international peace, stability, and development. In recent years it has engaged in mediation and conflict resolution activities in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Colombia, Iraq, Kashmir, Liberia, the Korean Peninsula, Nepal, Pakistan, the Palestinian Territories, Nigeria, Sudan, and Uganda.

Despite the fact that the U.S. spends as much on what is euphemistically called “defense” as the rest of the world combined, Congress wants to end this independent nonpartisan organization with a budget that is only one tenth of one percent of the State Department budget.

The previous budget for USIP was minuscule compared to the spending in Iraq and Afghanistan (approximately $42.7 million every 142 minutes according to Congressman Dennis Kucinich).

What message is Congress sending to the American public? To the rest of the world? Why is there so much more commitment to the arms industry than to peace?

Please send us your answers—and consider becoming an activist on behalf of peace and justice.

For inspiration, check out this BBC video and consider how we are all one people and if we want to survive in all our commonalities and all our uniqueness, we need to support efforts for peace.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology