Psychological vs. Physiological
- Thread starter Bartholomew Roberts
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Bartholomew Roberts
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I wouldn’t rely on psychological factors; but there are psychological aspects of firearms that don’t compromise their utility. Say the gaping maw of a 12ga, or the giant thunderclap and fireball from a short-barrelled rifle.
I’ve talked with some guys who have the opinion that suppressors are actually a negative in some situations because they minimize the “shock and awe” factor.
I’ve talked with some guys who have the opinion that suppressors are actually a negative in some situations because they minimize the “shock and awe” factor.
Aguila Blanca
Staff
I disagree. Any time a robber shows the victim a knife or a gun, it is done for the psychological effect and says nothing about whether or not the wielder knows how to use the weapon. The intent of showing it as a threat is to compel surrender. If the only test of whether or not the wielder knows how to use it is to use it, by that logic robbers should never show a knife or a gun, they should just proceed directly to shooting or stabbing the victim and forget showing the weapon.davidsog said:
You can disagree all you want.
The awareness your attacker has a knife greatly increases the chances the defender will defeat any knife attack if the defender is trained.
In fact, a knife can be a huge detriment to an attacker because it becomes his sole focus.
A well trained knife attack is lethal and delivered before the defender even knows the knife is present.
The knife you do not know about is lethal. The knife you know about is not much more than a nuisance, sure you will get cut but it will heal.
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Most people using a weapon to rob someone aren't interested in perpetrating a lethal attack although they may be willing to do so if necessary. Their primary goal is to use the weapon to intimidate.
That doesn't meant they don't know how to use the knife as a weapon or that they are unwilling to use it, if they feel it is necessary, it just means that their primary motivation is to compel cooperation, not to perpetrate an unexpected, rapid, lethal attack. That said, it is likely true that most people using a knife as a weapon in an armed robbery aren't schooled in its use--because that's true of most people.
While we can learn important lessons from combat experience and training, it's important to understand that there can be significant differences between combat and civilian encounters.
When I put the sights of my glock on a guy's heart he laughed at it. His partner moved away and was no longer part of the attack. subject number one may have pressed his attack if I had an lcp, he may have turned and run if I had an AR. I doubt that anything would have made him leave, he thought I was bluffing. With the smaller weapon or even only a club or knife he would have attacked.
Second subject may have wet himself, and he left when the gun came out. Two examples of the psychological aspect of brandishing a gun on two bad guys. Two very different results. If subject one had been shot, he would have been surprised and shocked but I don't think that he would have had a meltdown. He probably would have fought. subject two would have probably gone down screaming for his mommy.
I used to think that bowhunting was very different and extremely hard on a deer. Too much risk of losing a deer, not enough extra damage to the critter. Then I realized that a rifle such as a .243 will mushroom to what, a half inch? it will strike at almost 3,000 FPS.
Now a broadhed may be almost 1.5" with three or four blades. Holy cow, that's gonna leave a mark! Will that arrow blow through the deer, leaving all of the internals bleeding? Dunno.
One of the deer my father shot hopped away about two yards, stopped, and looked around. Dad ticked his arrow as he prepared for the second shot and when the deer heard it he bolted. about 100 feet.
I personally believe that many, if not most of the people who are shot react more strongly to the pain and surprise than their bodies actually do. If I shot a man in the chest, it's not going to move him or knock him down. It may not even physically damage him enough to stun him or put him into shock. If the guy sees the gun, hears the shot, feels that thing tear into his stomach, understands it all and is maybe even afraid of dying, I am almost certain that this will put him down more certainly and quickly than the actual hit (assuming that it was just an ordinary run of the mill shot.)
I personally believe that for most people, being shot will disable far more consistently based on the fear and shock of being hit than it will by physical injury.
I am comfortable with saying that holding a big and scary gun is a whole lot more intimidating than an lcp. Unloading a fire belching round from a .357 magnum is going to shock and damage a person's resolve far more than a .9mm. It doesn't matter that some .9mm rounds are more lethal and can cause greater injury than a lightly loaded magnum. presentation of a meal will make you hungry. Seeing a fireball the size of a volkswagen and hearing an explosion as loud as a quarry's blasting will triple, quadruple, maybe even more the amount of fear and trauma that the target is feeling.
When I shoot a heavy weapon, the recoil itself isn't what bothers me. I'm not fond of having some behemoth slap my face with a concussion wave that makes my hands tingle for hours.
Second subject may have wet himself, and he left when the gun came out. Two examples of the psychological aspect of brandishing a gun on two bad guys. Two very different results. If subject one had been shot, he would have been surprised and shocked but I don't think that he would have had a meltdown. He probably would have fought. subject two would have probably gone down screaming for his mommy.
I used to think that bowhunting was very different and extremely hard on a deer. Too much risk of losing a deer, not enough extra damage to the critter. Then I realized that a rifle such as a .243 will mushroom to what, a half inch? it will strike at almost 3,000 FPS.
Now a broadhed may be almost 1.5" with three or four blades. Holy cow, that's gonna leave a mark! Will that arrow blow through the deer, leaving all of the internals bleeding? Dunno.
One of the deer my father shot hopped away about two yards, stopped, and looked around. Dad ticked his arrow as he prepared for the second shot and when the deer heard it he bolted. about 100 feet.
I personally believe that many, if not most of the people who are shot react more strongly to the pain and surprise than their bodies actually do. If I shot a man in the chest, it's not going to move him or knock him down. It may not even physically damage him enough to stun him or put him into shock. If the guy sees the gun, hears the shot, feels that thing tear into his stomach, understands it all and is maybe even afraid of dying, I am almost certain that this will put him down more certainly and quickly than the actual hit (assuming that it was just an ordinary run of the mill shot.)
I personally believe that for most people, being shot will disable far more consistently based on the fear and shock of being hit than it will by physical injury.
I am comfortable with saying that holding a big and scary gun is a whole lot more intimidating than an lcp. Unloading a fire belching round from a .357 magnum is going to shock and damage a person's resolve far more than a .9mm. It doesn't matter that some .9mm rounds are more lethal and can cause greater injury than a lightly loaded magnum. presentation of a meal will make you hungry. Seeing a fireball the size of a volkswagen and hearing an explosion as loud as a quarry's blasting will triple, quadruple, maybe even more the amount of fear and trauma that the target is feeling.
When I shoot a heavy weapon, the recoil itself isn't what bothers me. I'm not fond of having some behemoth slap my face with a concussion wave that makes my hands tingle for hours.
Certainly........and a knife is a poor choice for intimidation the reasons stated.
If you examine weapon use in crime statistics you will see that knives being used to commit robberies has gone from near par with firearms in the 1970's to half that of firearms by the 1990's.
file:///C:/Users/Owner/Documents/PTR%2091/uwcc.pdf
file:///C:/Users/Owner/Documents/PTR%2091/wuvc01.pdf
So, while your presumption would be correct with a less violence innoculated society of the 1970's, it does not hold water in today's society were the exposure to violence is much more prevalent.
Simply put, just like a soldier, people recognize that a knife in plain view has lost much of it lethality and is much harder for the wielder to use in terms of both psychologically and physiologically.
Aguila Blanca
Staff
I still have to disagree. The majority of people are not people who have any training in or familiarity with weapons. Suzie Soccermom is still going to be scared out of her mind if she is accosted by a thug with a switchblade, and she probably won't know or care that statistics said the attack she is encountering was less likely this year than five years ago.davidsog said:
This started off with the concept that most use of weapons by robbers is initially intended to frighten the victim into surrender. Whether or not the robber is an expert in the use of the weapon doesn't enter into the discussion. If the intention of the robber is to encourage the victim to give up his/her watch/wallet/purse/cell phone rather than to just shoot or stab the victim -- then, by definition, the weapon is used for psychological rather than physiological purposes.
Poor choice or not, the fact remains that people do use it for intimidation, and do so fairly frequently--more than one in ten armed robberies involve knives as the weapon of choice.
And I'm not so sure they are a poor choice in terms of the raw intimidation potential. People understand knives at a visceral, practical level, while the understanding of guns happens at a more abstract level. Everyone has been cut and when they see a blade being waved around, they know just how it's going to feel as it sinks deeply into their flesh. People understand that at the gut level.
But almost no one has been shot. Guns are more like magic. Press this little doohickey right here, there's a flash and bang, and way over there, something happens. Magic. At some level, people definitely get what's going on, but unless they've been shot, it's not the same kind of gut reaction that people have to knives.
You remain exclusively focused on lethality, however, clearly, in most cases, when a knife is used in an armed robbery, the goal is not lethality. It is intimidation--psychological. Because the goal is not an unexpected lethal attack, but rather intimidation, showing the knife for psychological effect is an absolute necessity and must be done if the intended effect is to be achieved. That is true whether the attacker knows how to use it or not.
So it's not possible to state categorically that a person who displays a knife is untrained and doesn't know how to use it. If the goal is to intimidate, it MUST be displayed.
If, on the other hand, the goal is lethality, then displaying it is a bad idea. But of course that's a different goal and is achieved differently.
Imagine I accidentally drive off the road into a lake and am trapped in my car. There's a wrench in the center console and I use it to break out my window to escape. A mechanic reads the story and says: "Anyone who knows how to use a wrench would know that it's not used to break out windows." Which is a true statement. However, I DO, in fact, know how to use a wrench and what it is for. I used it to break out the window NOT because I'm clueless about wrenches but because I needed to break a window and what I had on hand was a wrench.
Along the same lines, a person who knows how to use a knife may still use it as a psychological/intimidation weapon because that's what the current need is and that's the weapon available. And, in spite of the fact that it might not be the right tool for the job, it can do the trick quite nicely--just like the wrench.
Sounds like a preconceived outcome.
Sure. However the facts point a marked decrease in the use of knives in armed robbery. In other words.....
People recognize that a knife in plain view has lost much of it lethality and is much harder for the wielder to use in terms of both psychologically and physiologically.
1. The word "most" reflects probability. As mentioned earlier in the thread, understanding the probabilities doesn't mean you can plan on that outcome, it's just an observation about likelihood.
2. A knife that is used for intimidation must be used as a threat to the intended victim. There's really no way to argue against that statement. If the knife isn't used as a threat, it isn't doing any intimidation because the person who is to be intimidated can't be intimidated by something they don't know about. While you may be perfectly correct in claiming that when lethality is the goal, displaying the knife is counterproductive, it's simply nonsensical to argue that when intimidation is the goal, displaying the knife makes achieving the goal harder.
Which has no bearing at all on the fact that in armed robberies, the most common use of a knife (when it is used) is intimidation.
If they had been used only 4 times this year, and 3 of those were for the purposes of intimidation/coercion, then the most common use would still be intimidation/coercion. The fact that the use of knives in armed robberies has declined does not change how they are most often used anymore than it would if their use had increased or remained the same.
1. If the purpose is (as it is in most cases) intimidation, then it is meaningless to say that displaying it makes it harder to use "psychologically". In fact, the only way a knife can be used "psychologically" on an armed robbery victim is by displaying it, or, at the very least, informing the victim of its presence.
2. I don't think most people recognize that at all. Perhaps people trained in defense against edged weapons, or trained in the use of edged weapons might recognize that, but I think we can all agree that such persons are, by far, the minority.
Aguila Blanca
Staff
The outcome of any robbery attempt is hardly preconceived, because anything can happen. What we are discussing is the motive of a robber in deploying a knife as a weapon. You continue to maintain (as I read your statements) that robbers using knives are not using the knives foir psychological purposes. If that were true, no victim of a knife wielding robber would escape without at least one wound, because if the robber's intent isn't psychological (intimidation), then a physiological intent would necessarily result in every victim being cut or stabbed. Period.davidsog said:
And that just isn't what happens on the mean streets.
Double Naught Spy
New member
Right, of course knife wielding robbers are using knives for their psychological purposes, just like they do with guns or any other weapons. With knives, it is 'give me your money or I stab you.' With a gun, it is 'give me your money or I will shoot you.' That is 100% psychological. It is a threat, meant to influence the behavior of the victim to comply with demands.
YOUR notion is preconceived...not the robbery, LOL.
Way too simplistic and not what I said at all. It is what you wanted to hear.
Do you guys have any facts to discuss? So far the Facts show that the knife use in robberies has diminished greatly over time. It is use has been halved in a single decade. I found that fact to be very interesting. It is contrary to the psychological distance theory set up in Killology. Basically the premise that knives are more psychologically intimidating means they should be more useful for gaining compliance from a robbery victim. Facts show they are not.
We do know that knives are much harder to use and overcome our natural human instinct not to kill than other weapons with more psychological distance.
Please post something besides appeal to emotion to back up your contention that criminals find knives to be so much more useful for their psychological impact. We also know there are some simple and very effective countermeasures to stop a knife wielding attacker.
The facts do not support the theory that knives are more useful in gaining victim compliance. So please deal with them in the discussion and stop attacking the messenger.
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It may not be relevant to the argument, but the one time that I was threatened with a knife, the man himself who was holding the knife was not in my perception any more threatening than a stuffed bobcat. I was going to go after him and feed the knife to him. I had a lot of problems with anger back then, and I seriously banged a few people around. I would have hurt him badly. A couple of friends convinced me to not do it. If this same weenie had been holding a gun, I would have hesitated, been a bit more unsure about whether I should beat him down and take his gun and his tongue for trophies.
In this situation with another person who presented as inscrutable, or even an obvious danger this thought would take enormous confidence to take the chance and I would almost certainly comply if I believed that losing my wallet would be the end of it. There's no cash in it and I can stop the cards.
At my age and physical condition, with the insane level of violence in our world today, There's probably not even a small percent of people who I wouldn't consider a potentially dangerous threat. Being armed with a gun only complicates things, I'm not sure that I can use a gun to prevent a potentially dangerous threat unless I am 99% certain that the threat is real. The risks of both action and inaction are pretty serious either way.
It's not the weapon that's going to kill you. It's that monster that's holding it.
In this situation with another person who presented as inscrutable, or even an obvious danger this thought would take enormous confidence to take the chance and I would almost certainly comply if I believed that losing my wallet would be the end of it. There's no cash in it and I can stop the cards.
At my age and physical condition, with the insane level of violence in our world today, There's probably not even a small percent of people who I wouldn't consider a potentially dangerous threat. Being armed with a gun only complicates things, I'm not sure that I can use a gun to prevent a potentially dangerous threat unless I am 99% certain that the threat is real. The risks of both action and inaction are pretty serious either way.
It's not the weapon that's going to kill you. It's that monster that's holding it.
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