The physical affordances of guns, not punitive threat, shape homicide patterns

Evidence

It is interesting that opponents of gun regulation also tend to be proponents of the death penalty. Guns are the method of choice for committing murders because they do so swiftly, distantly, and safely for assailants, as opposed to killing the victim manually. The influence of the National Rifle Association in a state correlates positively with murder rates (Dezhbakhsh, Rubin, & Shepherd, 2003). Correlation, of course, does not mean causation. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1958

Categorization

• XREF: The point that moral self-sanction depends on sensory immediacy of harm (distance/speed/safety dulling empathy) paralleling earlier discussion that guns distance killers from victims - a mechanism thread worth checking.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1958