This may seem like a stretch but here goes……..I was watching Morning Joe earlier and they were discussing the new proposed law on the age of being able to purchase a gun. It was brought up how the typical profile of a violent mass shooter is a young man between 17 - 23 or so and they discussed how a young man’s brain doesn’t fully develop until age 25. Joe then spoke about how when he covered the commemoration of Normandy several years ago, upon talking to the surviving soldiers in their seventies and eighties, he asked how they were able to go into combat knowing their chances of being killed were so high. And many told him that they didn’t think about it and that in retrospect, they couldn’t have done it when they were older. And as we all know soldiers are often int heir teens and early twenties.
I found this online about the development of the young male brain:
“The development and maturation of the prefrontal cortex occurs primarily during adolescence and is fully accomplished at the age of 25 years. The development of the prefrontal cortex is very important for complex behavioral performance, as this region of the brain helps accomplish executive brain functions”.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3621648/
And so this is how my mind works. First I thought about young athletes and how in both high school and college a coach can get them to figuratively “run through a brick wall” and how hard they will hit one another in contact sports. And next I thought about the age of the typical gay or gay for pay porn performer. I do see a correlation. I am not comparing mass killers to soldiers, athletes or porn actors, but they are all of similar age, before the brain has reached it’s full maturity. I wonder how many of the primarily heterosexual models who worked for
Broke Straight Boys over the years think back on what they did at age 18 and wonder, “What the fuck did I do?”. Just sharing a thought that went through my mind this morning.