The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of guns on people's aggressive attitudes and behaviors. We used 46 students from a small liberal arts college in Durango, Colorado. They were broken into a control and an experimental group. The experimental group was shown a video of how to safely shoot a gun and the control group was shown a video of how to make strawberry shortcake. The dependent variable was their aggressive attitudes and behaviors resulting from the video they were shown. We found that the control group said they would act more aggressively, but showed less aggressive behavior because they gave strangers less vile hot sauce to drink in a follow-up measure. These findings did not support our hypothesis that the participants showed the gun video would have more aggressive attitudes and behaviors. This research illustrates the importance of further research on this subject; many people assume that guns inspire violence, but this assumption cannot be made without further evidence.
