Balance of Power

    Glass shook his head in dismissal. "Have you ever heard of operant conditioning?"

    For Sarah, it had become easy to imagine Glass taking over a courtroom. "You're the expert," she answered in an even tone. "Why don't you explain it."

    "All right. In the army, we teach new soldiers to fire repetitively at man-shaped silhouettes which pop up again, over and over. Video games which simulate murder have much the same effect. If anything, the AMA has concluded, video games are worse than movies. Which," Glass added with obvious relish, "brings me to John Bowden.

    "I've interviewed his parents. As a child, Bowden had unfettered access to television; as a teenager, he repetitively played video games, often well past midnight, which required him to kill his video opponents.

    "His parents thought the only harm was to his grades. In my opinion, the ultimate harm was to the six people he murdered."

    This opinion, and the implacable certainty with which Dr. Glass delivered it, convinced Sarah of how dangerous he was and, in her mind, how completely irresponsible. "In your opinion, Dr. Glass, were Bowden's repetitious beatings of Joan Bowden also attributable to video games?"

    "Violence of any kind is a learned response. It's time for our society to control the purveyance of violent imagery to children, just as we control access to guns, pornography, tobacco, sex, and cars. A failure amplified, in Bowden's case, by society's decision not to jail him even though he was a clear and present danger to his wife. With this litany of failures, why in the world are you sitting here trying to blame a law-abiding manufacturer who didn't even know him?"

    With this, Sarah resolved to abandon any pretense of politeness. "Then let's turn to your academic career, and, specifically, to your connection with the subject of guns. How many universities have employed you as a professor?"

    As though prepared for this line of inquiry, Glass answered equably, "Five."

    "And how many offered you tenure?"

    "None. But I was only eligible for tenure at the University of Connecticut."

    "Because the others let you go too quickly?"

    The witness's smile resembled a grimace. "I'd classify the decision as mutual—their lack of real academic freedom, and my resistance to the prevailing liberal ideology."

    Whatever, Sarah thought. Crisply, she asked, "For what reason did Connecticut deny you tenure?"

    Glass steepled his fingers. "Their stated reason was that my academic research was 'insufficiently rigorous.' The actual reason was that I voiced forbidden thoughts."

    "Such as your suggestion that women's suffrage has led to an increase in crime?"

    The witness shrugged. "It's easy, Ms. Dash, to mock a statement isolated from the research which supports it. But it's a demonstrable fact that, since 1920, women's more permissive attitudes toward crime—as reflected in their voting patterns—has relegated crime prevention to a low priority compared to what I call 'the nurturing issues,' matters like education and health care. This has led to greater laxity among our elected officials and, as more women have ascended the bench, our judiciary."

    "Then you'll be relieved to know, Dr. Glass, that I'm unlikely to become a judge. But I'm haunted by the concern that Mary Costello's family might have lived if only I'd refrained from voting."

    "Don't worry," Glass responded airily. "Under your theory of shared responsibility, there's lots of blame to go around. Including an academic world which refuses to think forbidden thoughts."

    "I gather that the Sons of the Second Amendment is more hospitable to forbidden thoughts. Since leaving the University of Connecticut, hasn't the principal financing for your research come from the SSA?"

    "Yes. They believe, as I do, that financing is indispensable to competing in the marketplace of ideas. So they've placed me on retainer."

    "For how much?"

    "Five hundred thousand a year, for the next five years."

    "That kind of money," Sarah remarked amiably, "will finance a lot of forbidden thoughts. Let's turn to one of them—your thesis that the more guns Americans own, the less crime we'll have.

    "In More Guns, Less Death, you claim that concealed carry laws cause a drop in rape and murder, diverting criminals into property crimes like burglary. Has it ever occurred to you, Doctor, that a serial rapist won't consider stealing a transistor radio to be a fair exchange?"

    Glass briskly put down the pencil, a first show of impatience. "What's your point?"

    "That the pathology of a rapist is distinct from that of a burglar. Or did your courses in criminology skip that part?"

    Glass mustered a renewed aura of dignified scholarship. "All of my education and experience suggests that criminals, by definition, are criminals—people unable to live within the laws. Depending on circumstance and motive, the particular crime may vary."