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I once debated a pro-gun friend about the benefits of better gun control. I did my homework. I found empirical evidence suggesting violence may be triggered by other acts of violence, but guns make the violence worse. I found Leonard Berkowitz and Anthony LePage’s studies conducted over 50 years ago, which showed that the presence of a gun sitting on a table, relative to an object not associated with violence (like a badminton racquet), elicits stronger aggressive responses from participants. I found that more than 32,000 people die and over 67,000 people are injured by firearms each year in the United States. I found that firearm injuries result in over $48 billion in medical and work-loss costs annually. I believe attitudes about firearms should be scientifically driven and evidence-based, but none of these facts mattered to my pro-gun friend! Low-need-for-evidence individuals may portray themselves as concerned with or conveying evidence, but evidence is not actually important to them. Only high-need-for-evidence individuals care about evidence.
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John V. Petrocelli (The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit)