Finally got around to Section 1 of Grossman's book.

Grossman completes the first section as follows:

There can be no doubt that this resistance to killing one’s fellow man is there and that it exists as a result of a powerful combination of instinctive, rational, environmental, hereditary, cultural, and social factors.
Well yes, but does this resistance actually translate into refusing to kill under any circumstances?

There is surely a scale into which all people fall in this regard?

Say from a '10' where he will actively seek out opportunities to kill (the psychopath) to the '0' who will rather die himself than kill a human.

Its (IMHO) a bit like sex where the first attempt is hesitant/tentative/uncertain but it gets easier with experience.

So the statement in Grossman's book is meaningless other than to record that there will be a small percentage of soldiers who resist killing to the extent that they place their own life and those of their comrades at risk. I suggest that the majority of these will find a way to get themselves out of a combat role and thus avoid such a scenario developing.

There are of course a number of "inputs" which help to reduce this resistance to kill. For example the demonisation of the enemy through race/tribal/religious based propaganda and/or through the actions of the enemy (typically atrocities) to the extent where soldiers begin to believe that to kill them would be doing a service to humanity.

I will skip the non-firer aspect as this has been tainted by the SLA Marshall controversy.