"It is as though there were two filters that we have to go through to kill.
The first filter is your forebrain.
A hundred things can convince your forebrain to put a gun into your hand and go to a certain point: poverty, drugs, gangs, leaders, politics, and the social learning of violence in the media—which is magnified when you are from a broken home and are searching for a role model.
But traditionally these have slammed into the resistance that a frightened, angry human being confronts in the midbrain.
And except with sociopaths (who, by definition, do not have this resistance), the vast, vast majority of circumstances are not sufficient to overcome this midbrain safety net.
But if you are conditioned to overcome these midbrain inhibitions, then you are a walking time bomb, a pseudosociopath, just waiting for the random factors of social interaction and to forebrain rationalization to put you at the wrong place at the wrong time."