> Yet the army doesn't refuse to recruit 20-year-olds because they'll inevitably be paralyzed with terror when the guns start firing. Indeed, 20-year-old men ar

> Yet the army doesn't refuse to recruit 20-year-olds because they'll inevitably be paralyzed with terror when the guns start firing. Indeed, 20-year-old men are the first people that every army wants to recruit, in all cultures and all time periods. That's what basic training is for. That, and developing unit cohesion. Everyone gets paralyzed by terror when the guns start firing. You work through that with desensitization. Part of the training is being shot at by blanks. Young people are recruited because of the items Swizec listed, not because of some magic brain wiring they have at that age. If you don't work through it, you get dead. Which is roughly how firefights between untrained gang members shape up. They freeze up and get shot. Bystanders freeze up and take a stray bullet. As simple as that. That's the fundamental difference between a trained and untrained gunman.