Pistol Packin' Mama (and Daddy, too)

Wearing a firearm is an universally understood observable cue and something we all can do to reduce criminal activity.

People ask me what we can do to stop the crazy.

Here’s a simple thought that everyone can do.

One simple step is, anywhere and anytime possible, start wearing your sidearm.

Get comfortable with it as normal as picking up your car keys in the morning. If your state is open carry or you have a concealed carry permit, do it. Let people see that you are armed and if it upsets them, good enough, because they need upsetting.

And you don’t have to walk around bristling with the firepower of a WWII battleship, I have a little S&W M&P Shield Plus in 9mm that I wear almost every day. If I’m feeling extra manly, I wear a drop holster and select my Beretta PX4 Storm or my 92FS.

Working for a firearms manufacturer has its perks - employees are encouraged to carry at work.

But why would being seen with a carry weapon in public matter? What difference would it make?

There is a scientific answer to those questions.

It matters because of a behavioral principle called “observable cues”.

When a person faces a new or different situation, they seek to define it so that they can understand it. In many cases we can search for and find enough information for our brains to process it and place it in context for us to manage or understand. In the cases where there is simply not enough information, we look for these “observable cues” to help us define and understand.

A common example used as a teaching tool in business schools is the McDonald’s restaurant parking lot case.

McDonald’s managers are trained as a matter of process to keep the restaurant parking lots and store fronts clean, litter free and neat. Why would anyone care what the parking lots look like? Well, while the consumer can’t see into the restaurant as they drive by, they can see the parking lot. A clean parking lot becomes a proxy for the inside of the restaurant – a clean kitchen, clean restrooms, and a clean eating area. The observable cue of a clean parking lot registers in the mind of the hungry driver that this is likely to be a clean place with safe food. The same goes for the opposite. If the outside is dirty, trash filled and unkempt, we extrapolate that the inside is likely to be the same.

These are generalizations to be sure – but that doesn’t make them wrong.

The same observable cues are applicable to humans.

The point being that if you dress like an ex-con or drug dealer (sagging pants and a hoodie pulled over your face), affect the walk, the talk, the attitude and personality of that class (aggressive and adoptive of the “street code”) and are present in a situation and environment (say a dimly lit street or a back alley in the inner city) that yields no other opportunity for informational search or context and no other definition, the observable cues will lead the observer to conclude that the individual is exactly what their outward appearance demonstrates them to be. That is to say that the context assigned will be the context observed.

Observable cues in ambiguous situations can also be very wrong. The most often quoted examples are how men are prone to misreading cues in situations of sexual attraction. Quoted from an abstract of a research report by Carin Perilloux, Judith A. Easton, and David M. Buss of the University of Texas at Austin is this:

“Sexual interest must be inferred from observable cues, but the cues people use to estimate sexual interest may be ambiguous.

There are several reasons for such ambiguity: Direct signaling risks damage to the signaler’s mate value if he or she is rejected (Symons, 2005); explicit sexual signaling can hinder the signaler’s future mating success by fostering a reputation for sexual promiscuity; ambiguous signals can evoke additional courtship behavior and thereby lead to more accurate assessments of the target’s sexual interest; and evaluating the escalation or de-escalation of sexual signals allows people to recalibrate their own demonstrations of sexual interest.

Compared with women, men are more likely to overperceive sexual interest (e.g., Abbey, 1982; Farris, Treat, Viken, & McFall, 2008; Henningsen, Henningsen, & Valde, 2006; Maner et al., 2005).”

So just like thinking that because a hot girl (or guy) looked at you at a party for a half a second longer than you expected means that she wants you or everybody wearing Mossy Oak camouflage shirts at the Super Wal-Mart in New Albany, Mississippi at noon on an November Saturday has been in a deer stand that morning, observational cues can be misleading – but they also can be correct – maybe she (he?) did want to have sex with you and it is a sure bet that at least some of those folks at the Super Wal-Mart were hunting that very morning. In truth, we all use observational cues – they are important because they are used to make decisions every day.

Being observed wearing a gun does not mean you are looking for a shootout at the O.K. Corral, but it does send a message that you are serous about protecting yourself. It will make people around you think about the repercussions if they intend to harm you or break the law. The ones who don’t feel reluctant are taking the risk that you won’t shoot - but that is on them, not you.

One way or the other, the numbskulls are going to have to sort out how committed to action they really are.

I think we would find that better than 80% of the people with nastiness on their mind would think twice if most people in the store or on the street were packing.

It’s something we can do without firing a shot.