JONAH GOLDBERG on that dumb handgun / testosterone study:

But all of this misses the point. A more insidious danger than guns is the rush to medicalize behavior. Let’s stipulate that handling a gun causes testosterone levels to rise. Let’s also concede that elevated testosterone levels are associated with aggression. So what? Does this tell us anything important or new? Science is learning how to measure all sorts of really interesting things, from the effects of porn on the male brain to the effects of porn on the male brain. Whoops. I guess that answers what those effects are. . . .

The important question is, “So what?” Prohibitionists were correct that alcohol affects the brain a heck of a lot more than handling a gun does. Do we need a new study to tell us that? And when it does, should we bring back Prohibition? So testosterone might jump when men tinker with guns. That no more means responsible men, including cops, can’t handle the rush than it means irresponsible men have an excuse when they kill people. The testosterone made me do it! The “NRA argument,” as Sullivan puts it, is unchanged.

Long before science conclusively “proves” that human beings are sinful and prone to temptation, we already know exactly that. Identifying the hormones and genes that make this so should not change our views. Science may study humans as mere biological organisms. But civilization and our constitutional order demand that we look at people as something more: as citizens responsible for their own actions first, and as testosterone machines a distant second.

One argument against porn, in fact, is that it stimulates aggression and hormones. Nonetheless, we protect it as speech. So guns are like porn, perhaps offering yet another reason why the ACLU should revisit its position on the Second Amendment.

Meanwhile, Dr. Wes Fisher thinks the study is sexist. It’s certainly true that suggestions that social policy should be driven by the way hormones affect women’s behavior are beyond the pale of acceptable discourse.