A Detour into Gun Law, pt. 2

My previous post on this topic discussed some of the incentives contributing to America's gridlock on gun control law and the way we react to tragic events like those in Connecticut. My conclusion is similar to that of Gregory Gibson, a longtime gun control advocate who became involved in the issue about the murder of his son. As he writes in The New York Times,

In the wake of Galen’s murder, I wrote a book about the shooting. In it I suggested that we view gun crime as a public health issue, much the same as smoking or pesticides. I spent a number of years attending rallies, signing petitions, writing letters and making speeches, but eventually I gave up. Gun control, such a live issue in the “early” days of school shootings, inexplicably became a third-rail issue for politicians.

I came to realize that, in essence, this is the way we in America want things to be. We want our freedom, and we want our firearms, and if we have to endure the occasional school shooting, so be it. A terrible shame, but hey — didn’t some guy in China just do the same thing with a knife?

While the incentives are obviously powerful, another key issue is how we as a public frame this debate. Needless to say, since it is such an emotional issue, there is a lot of fallacy, bluff and bullshit. It is much better to look at this issue through the framework of public cost and benefit.

Switzerland gets pointed out as some example where high gun ownership can exist with low crime rates. But this is a statistical error* Crime in Switzerland is already incredibly low, since it is not a social basket case like the US. But the presence of so many guns there makes the rate of fatal violent crimes higher than it would be otherwise. Research from criminologists at the university of Zurich confirms this.

To understand the effect of guns, you need to control for all other variables. Most people aren't willing to do that.

Statements about "gun laws not working" also often try to date the enactment of certain gun control laws and then assess levels of violence after. There are plenty of examples of this on other websites. This is also a mistake, because they do not take the effort of comparing how the gun laws actually affect ownership. Plenty of gun rights activists are correct to say that some gun laws haven't done anything to reduce gun ownership; this is an especially challenging issue when you only change the laws in a single jurisdiction. In broader studies, we have seen, over and over, that more gun ownership is correlated with higher rates of violence. So gun laws that do reduce ownership do work.

So, to understand the effect of gun control, look at how they influence ownership (the ultimate causal factor), not the actual timing.

Thee principals are a start of a process to trying to remove the emotional and ideological content of the debate. What's more, they really just confirms common sense. Guns are dangerous, and we should expect that the effects of the "evils of the world" would be magnified in their presence. In other words, we pay a "gun violence premium" above the already anticipated rates. This is obvious, and it's not worth trying to debate the issue on these grounds.

Via Ezra Klein's Wonk Blog.

That's not to say that the people owning guns might not benefit in other ways, but gun violence is the price we pay as a society for higher gun ownership rates; in a similar vein, motor vehicle accidents are part of the price we pay for everyone owning cars. If we think that the current levels of declining gun violence in the US are acceptable, based on improvements of some social factors (like access to abortion), then we should just learn to live with it. Otherwise, the answer is reducing the freedom of gun owners and engaging in gun buyback/ seizure programs.

If the political sacrifice is acceptable, implementing the actual program is pretty easy. Australia shows how. As the Nieman Center at Harvard explains, "In the 18 years prior to the Port Arthur massacre, Australia experienced 14 mass shootings; in the subsequent 16 years, there have been none." If you want it, there's a solution.

* It also ignores that fact that gun ownership rates have been plummeting there once they matched gun control laws to the Shengen system. For example lots of people have guns, but it's damn near impossible to get access to any ammo.