After a mass shooter killed 12 people last weekend, some gun rights activists lamented that the office complex where the shooting had happened didn’t permit guns. If only a good guy had been allowed to bring his gun to work, they reasoned, the shooter could have been stopped in his tracks.

Pro-gun pundits and politicians will usually repeat some version of the “good guy with a gun” trope in response to each mass shooting. So when comparative literature professor Susanna Lee pitched an article about the origins of this idea, I was immediately interested. In her research, Lee traces the origins of the archetype to the 1920s, when hard-boiled detective fiction first became popular. The protagonists of these stories were mostly tough-talking, straight-shooting private detectives. Readers couldn’t get enough.

But what started as entertainment has become ingrained in American culture. And maintaining this fantasy, Lee writes, “has become a deadly obsession.

Also today: why people put their DNA on the internet, why more prisoners are picking your fruit – and is it really possible to train your brain?

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A drawing of Philip Marlowe, an icon of hard-boiled detective fiction created by author Raymond Chandler. CHRISTO DRUMMKOPF/flickr

How the ‘good guy with a gun’ became a deadly American fantasy

Susanna Lee, Georgetown University

The archetype can be traced back to 1920s detective fiction, when gruff, gun-toting, cigarette-smoking mavericks became heroic figures.

Science + Technology

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    Walter Boot, Florida State University

    There are reasons to be skeptical, of both the quality of the evidence presented so far and the questionable assumptions that underlie claims of improved cognitive function after brain training.

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