I'd say 93% are lying.

lol I immediately thought of this:

I would not actually shoot anyone but I have certinaly thought about it. Maybe more murder in general. Its called getting very mad at people doing very bad things. I think 93% are either lying or their imaginations are more hands on or maybe less.

As a Canadian, I have never thought about shooting anyone, but I have thought about people being shot by someone else who is in no way affiliated with me! Lol

If America didn't have such a fetish for guns it would be %7 of people thought about stabbing someone or something

Absolutely, there’s a huge difference between thinking about doing something and then letting the thought go compared to doing anything on the path to actually doing it.

I often used to have intrusive violent or sexual thoughts about strangers I'd see out in the world. They were unwanted and I found them horrifying, and of course would never do anything like that to anyone. Medication eventually helped.

Call of the void

The other 93% have shot someone.

That's how many are willing to admit it to a pollster, which is a subset of who thought about it. We don't know how big the larger set is.

The text of the question seems to be "I have thought about shooting another person or multiple people" and 7% responded "Strongly agree/agree/somewhat agree." Looking at the 160 page pdf questionnaire, I'm guessing most respondents deduced the correct answer and didn't want to cast aspersions on any of their other habits.

Based on how the question is phrased, it can be very open to interpretation.

I've thought all kinds of sick thoughts along the lines of "I could push this person in front of the arriving metro", or "I'm holding a kitchen knife, if I were to stab the other person in the kitchen there's nothing they could do about it". When I was in the army, and we were at the shooting range, I could get thoughts about how easy it would be to shoot a whole load of people. Of course, I never consider doing those things. I'm talking about people I would lay down my life to protect, and I still get these thoughts.

I was very relieved when I read somewhere that this is fairly normal, and some researchers ascribed it to a protection mechanism: Their theory (which they provided some evidence for), was that be evoking these thoughts, your brain makes you more aware of acute potential dangers, so that you can act more carefully to avoid them. Basically, by becoming conscious that you could push/stab/shoot someone, you handle your movement/knife/firearm more carefully to avoid doing so by accident.

So: Have I thought about shooting someone? Plenty of times. Have I considered shooting someone? Never.

That is an interesting thought exercise, I've gone through a few different firearm trainings through the years and never gone through that exercise.

But to speak to the original topic.... Yeah I've definitely had that thought. Never seriously, but ya know, intrusive thoughts and all that.

Only 7% makes me think people are interpreting the question as "would you admit on the phone to seriously considering shooting another person".

I suspect that few people have actually gone through that.

Depends on whether or not they consider themselves people

I was in this statistic and I didn't like it. 😥

Why wouldn't it?