People are asking why the shooter in Virginia Beach used a gun to settle his workplace score. The answer is probably pretty simple.

When a man has a gun, he literally holds the power of life and death in his hand. That kind of power is extraordinarily seductive.

With a gun in his hand, a man can look around a room, a building, or a public area and specifically identify who will instantaneously die and whom he will allow to live. It’s a power that traditionally has only been held by doctors, priests, police and soldiers.

The power over life and death is greater and more intoxicating than any other power; it’s one of the reasons why some men are specifically drawn to these professions and historically have tried to regulate them to be male-only.

If you are not male and have never carried a gun in public, it’s only an imaginary experiment, but science shows that simply handling a gun alters men’s levels of testosterone and measurably increases their aggressive behavior.

This is largely a male problem because men commit 85.3 percent of all homicides and