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 Annual Meeting:
Keynote Address
The keynote speaker, Major John Drummond of the US Air Force, was
invited to address the Association by ANJRPC Corresponding Secretary
Judy Iorio. Major Drummond reported on his research at Princeton
University that shows firearm ownership does not mean a person is more
likely to endorse the use of force.
Major Drummond has served
as a Flight Commander, Officer-in-Charge of Mobility and Training,
Operations Officer, and Support Group Executive Officer. He holds a
Masters Degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Kansas State
University and is currently completing his doctoral studies at Princeton
University. His research includes retaliatory force, politically and
theologically motivated violence, and how people view the legitimacy of
political, judicial, and police institutions, especially in the context
of conflict. His remarks to the Association were as a citizen and did
not reflect any position of the US Air Force or the government.
Major Drummond’s research at Princeton includes studies of people’s
attitudes toward retaliatory force. In one study, that included both
firearms owners and non-owners, researchers gave participants scenarios
that involved “domains of defense”: protecting the physical self,
psychological self (honor), family members, home or property, valued
possessions, a secondary group member (a highly functioning mentally
handicapped person) or an abstract idea. In each case, study
participants read the story before any violence occurred, and were asked
to put themselves in the place of the person in the story. They were
asked to tell how threatened they felt, what level of retaliation they
thought would be justified and which level of retaliation they would
choose. Then the researchers switched back to the story and told how the
character responded. The participants were then asked to judge the
justifiability of the response and its understandability. They were
asked whether they thought it was legal, or if it was illegal what (if
any) punishment was appropriate.
The first finding of the research was that the participants endorsed
counterforce in ways that diverge wildly from the model penal code and
the federal sentencing guidelines. For example, in scenarios where
aggravated assault would be the charge, anywhere from 36.1% to 76.8% of
the participants said that there was no crime, or if there was a crime,
that there should be no punishment. If they did think punishment was
warranted, they recommended sentences that were from 0% to 1.5% of the
federal minimum sentencing guidelines. These results are consistent with
other research findings over the last seven years. There are many cases
of retaliation in our society where people think the retaliation is
justified, even if it does not match up with the law.
Firearms ownership did not make someone more likely to support
retaliation. Firearms owners differed from non-owners in that they
were more likely to endorse the use of force in the defense of home,
themselves and their valued possessions. However, they were less likely
to endorse the use of force for more trivial provocations. Non-firearms
owners were more likely to support the use of force for insults or
actions they did not like. Those situations where everyone felt most
threatened were the ones where firearms owners were more likely to
endorse the need for defensive force. Finally, firearms owners more
accurately identified the need for defensive force in response to actual
danger. (Some of the scenarios were taken from actual news reports where
someone was physically attacked.)
The findings from the Princeton study run counter to the image that is
too often portrayed in the media of firearms owners as being trigger
happy. Citing other research by John Lott (author of More Guns, Less
Crime), Major Drummond called for more diversity of research among
the scientific community. Back to Annual Meeting 2002.
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