Fear of their world view crumbling

[marylandblue]

All of these conspiracy theories are ways of shoring a world view that the person holds too dearly to let go. In the case of school shootings, they can't accept that a kid with an AR-15 can shoot up a school. That would mean that guns do in fact kill, not just people, but innocent children and they'd have to rethink their position on gun control. They come up with these stories to maintain the fiction that guns don't need to be regulated.