Holding a Gun Makes You Think Others Are Too, New Research Shows
Wielding a gun increases a person's bias to see guns in the hands of others, new research from the University of Notre Dame shows.
Notre Dame Associate Professor of Psychology James Brockmole, who specializes in human cognition and how the visual world guides behavior, together with a colleague from Purdue University, conducted the study, which will appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.
In five experiments, subjects were shown multiple images of people on a computer screen and determined whether the person was holding a gun or a neutral object such as a soda can or cell phone. Subjects did this while holding either a toy gun or a neutral object such as a foam ball.
The researchers varied the situation in each experiment -- such as having the people in the images sometimes wear ski masks, changing the race of the person in the image or changing the reaction subjects were to have when they perceived the person in the image to hold a gun.
Regardless of the situation the observers found themselves in, the study showed that responding with a gun biased observers to report "gun present" more than did responding with a ball. Thus, by virtue of affording the subject the opportunity to use a gun, he or she was more likely to classify objects in a scene as a gun and, as a result, to engage in threat-induced behavior, such as raising a firearm to shoot.
"Beliefs, expectations and emotions can all influence an observer's ability to detect and to categorize objects as guns," Brockmole says. "Now we know that a person's ability to act in certain ways can bias their recognition of objects as well, and in dramatic ways. It seems that people have a hard time separating their thoughts about what they perceive and their thoughts about how they can or should act."
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120321152627.htm
And this makes the whole world look like wild, wild, west if you have a gun. If you are nervous and have not had training, you are probably even more likely to see things.
= new reply since forum marked as read
ANY kind of excuse...oh look that bag of skittles COULD BE A GUN! 
I wish there was some way to keep guns out of the hands of gunnuts. Wishful thinking.
.... if they had them not actually holding it in the hands -- the palms have a lot of sensory input to the brain -- but wearing one instead. The most salient advice given to people planning to carry is that drawing a weapon is making the decision to use it. I would be interested to see if not having it in your hands -- aka, not drawing or going for the draw -- made a difference.
Oh, wait, I just now RTFA'ed. 
"The researchers showed that the ability to act is a key factor in the effects by showing that simply letting observers see a nearby gun did not influence their behavior; holding and using the gun was important."
Interesting, looks like the standard advice to not go for a weapon until you're ready to use it has scientific validity.
How many of them are thinking (since they don't know the nature of the study) that there's a video game angle?
