On Killing

Dave Grossman wrote On Killing in 1995, drawing on military training research and combat veteran interviews. His central claim was that most humans have a strong instinctive resistance to killing other humans, and that historically this resistance has caused soldiers to fire over their enemies’ heads or fail to fire at all.

Grossman traces what he sees as the deliberate breaking down of that resistance through twentieth century military training, and then extends the argument to violent media and video games as a kind of unintentional civilian conditioning.

The book has been cited widely. It has also been challenged on specific points, particularly the original S.L.A. Marshall research about World War Two firing rates that Grossman builds on.

For readers in military, law enforcement, or any field that touches the psychology of violence, the book is still required reading. The arguments around media effects have aged less well, but the central thesis still drives debate.