Monday, August 27, 2012

Guns and epistemology


2.bp.blogspot.com
by Greg Linster

I was on vacation with limited access to the Internet or television when the tragic Aurora shooting occurred. Hearing about the incident from afar didn’t dampen the shock in the slightest, especially since it was so close to my home in Denver. Since I was out of town, I missed much of the local conversation surrounding the shooting. However, when a tragic event like this occurs, it’s inevitable that the national conversation about guns and gun control will resurface. I was only in high school when the 1999 Columbine tragedy occurred (again, relatively close to my high school in Colorado Springs). It seems the gun debate just won’t go away.

Before I share my opinion on gun control, I feel compelled to air any potential biases that affect my beliefs. First off, I’m not particularly fond of guns (I don’t currently own one), but I’ve recently considered purchasing one for safety reasons. I must admit that I find guns intimidating and I don’t like the loud noise they make when fired (especially if I don’t have earplugs). Over the course of my life I have been to several shooting ranges and I have even been pheasant hunting too. However, shooting guns just for the fun of it doesn’t really have much appeal to me. There are countless other things I’d rather be doing with my free time.

I can’t remember exactly what prompted me to read it, but at one point during my freshmen year of college I read John Lott’s book More Guns, Less Crime. At the time, I found Lott’s overall argument very compelling, particularly his empirical work. Admittedly, I think I was, at least partly, also attracted to the contrarian conclusion he presented. More guns, less crime — it’s so counterintuitive and such a fun point to argue! To call my college ‘self’ sophomoric is perhaps an understatement.

Years later I learned that there are also academics who have pored over the same crime and gun data, but have come to the exact opposition conclusion. How can this be? Well, my initial thought is that at least one of our political parties (but perhaps both) doesn’t have an interest in the truth. Rather, they simply want to find evidence to confirm what they want to believe. In other words, they are guilty of committing confirmation bias, i.e., they have a conclusion in mind that they want to reach (e.g., guns cause less crime) and they look for data to confirm their belief and shun any evidence that goes against that belief. Given my predilection for liberty, I’m a fan of the second amendment, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I was naturally and initially drawn to Lott’s work and unfairly dismissive of the counter arguments and evidence. In other words, I was guilty of confirmation bias.

So, do gun control laws reduce crime? It appears to me that there are three possibilities: they produce the intended effect, they produce an unintended effect, or they don’t produce an effect at all. The trouble is that I don’t know what the right answer is and I don’t think anyone else does either. I’m willing to bet that the people who claim to scientifically know the answer to this question have an idealogical axe to grind. Have you ever met anyone who is a passionate gun owner yet finds the scientific evidence against guns compelling? I didn’t think so and the same thing can be said of anti-gun folks as well.

On the surface of it, the gun control question appears to be a scientific one. But before we waste all this time quibbling over the statistical techniques “the other side” is using, we probably first ought to ask ourselves an important epistemological question. Is it really possible to scientifically know if gun control laws (or the number of concealed weapon permits issued) reduce crime? I just happen to think the answer is ‘no.’ There are far too many complexities and variables to account for when doing econometric work on crime, guns, and gun control laws.

If I’m correct, then where does that leave us? Well, I think it leaves us with economic logic and if there’s one thing I’m pretty confident is true, it’s that incentives matter, even to criminals. When the cost (or potential cost) of committing a crime is high, we expect to see less crime. Regardless of what one thinks about the current federal and state marijuana laws, imagine what would happen if being caught in possession of marijuana came with a minimum of a twenty year prison sentence and was strictly enforced (meaning that a police officer could randomly come to your home at any time to check on you). Many of us would find this type of infringement on our personal liberty unpalatable (a cost), but if you think that the number of people that would possess marijuana would decrease significantly (a benefit?), then you understand how incentives work.

Another interesting thing to note about marijuana is that the fact that it’s illegal hasn’t made it any more difficult for people to obtain. Again, making something illegal doesn’t necessarily make it costly. I suspect that today’s American teenagers may actually have an easier time scoring illegal drugs, like marijuana, than they do alcohol which is legal for a certain demographic of the population. It’s also worth remembering that there is a black market for illegal things and laws don’t magically stop criminals from engaging in commercial activity on the black market. Also, lest we forget, guns don’t mysteriously kill people, people do. Accordingly, I find the argument some people make for banning all guns to be absurd, but I also find the argument for the unimpeded right to own whatever type of firearms one wants equally absurd. I don’t think that Americans have a right to own rocket launchers (I agree with Michael’s point in his recent post about finding middle ground.)

So one way to reduce crime, according to economic logic, is to make the cost of committing a crime high. There are multiple ways of doing this and they don’t necessarily involve creating or enforcing laws — incentives actually work in many ways. Consider the following thought experiment: imagine you are a burglar and have the choice of going to a house where you know the homeowner doesn’t own a gun or the choice of going to one in which you know the homeowner has a gun. Which one would you choose to burglarize? If the answer isn’t obvious please don’t consider a career in crime. But would this line of reasoning really work with the likes of the Aurora shooter? Yes, even the Aurora shooter, lunatic that he is, responds to incentives. If he knew that there was a high probability that a moviegoer in one particular theater was armed and willing to shoot him, I bet he would have reconsidered his decision. He was crazy and evil, but apparently he wasn’t suicidal.

A natural follow-up question is: Why can’t stricter laws alone deter crimes by increasing the costs of crime? The answer, I think, is that they can, if only we were able to enforce them properly. Life, however, is full of trade-offs. If the punishment for committing a burglary were more severe and if there were a police officer assigned to patrol each and every street in America, then I suspect we would rarely ever see burglaries. This, however, would be pretty costly for the government, which brings up another interesting economics-related lesson, i.e., there is a cost to enforcing laws too and we must decide which costs are worth incurring and which are not. This may sound strange, but from a societal and economic perspective, the optimal number of burglaries is probably not zero (I think shootings are different due to the value of human life, but I’m sure some economist, somewhere, has extended the argument here before).

Here’s what I know: if I had been unfortunate enough to be in the audience the night of the Aurora shooting, I would have desperately hoped that one of my fellow moviegoers had been armed. Similarly, had I been in the library at Columbine High School on the day of the shooting, I would have desperately hoped that the librarian was packing heat. The reason I’m generally not in favor of stricter gun control laws is a logical one, i.e., because I think criminals respond to incentives outside of the law.

It’s an indisputable fact that most legal gun owners never commit a crime with their weapon. Making guns outright illegal won’t necessarily stop the problem America is facing. Laws don’t stop evil people from doing evil things. The increasing mass violence in our culture is the symptom of a much larger problem, one which is simply outside the scope of this essay.  But please, let’s stop blaming it entirely on guns.

55 comments:

  1. Having read Michaels earlier Blog, the writer might have noticed my references there to the results of a ban & seizure of guns (with compensation - very costly) in Australia in the late 1990s. It is a comparable society, where a gun is only available for shooting club members, registered hunters and other prescribed individuals checked by the police. There is no difficulty in finding data to support the conclusion such laws are very effective at reducing extreme violence.

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    1. One of my main points was that there is no difficulty finding data to support almost any conclusion.

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    2. It necessary to logically assess them to choose between them. It's obvious that no position can be proven to the n'th degree, judgment is required, and mine lies with a comparable society and very effective results. QED

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  2. Who, exactly, "blam[es] it entirely on guns"? I see a lot of people who partially blame gun violence on the easy availability of guns in our society, but they also fault things like our mental health system, our culture, and the way in which we distribtue wealth and privilege. Are you sure that this isn't a straw man?

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    1. I never said that anyone blames it entirely on guns. Are you sure your comment isn't a staw man?

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    2. Straw wha?

      "But please, let’s stop blaming it entirely on guns."

      This strongly implies that 'we' are blaming it all on guns, as in you and I are.

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    3. You don't actually think I meant what I wrote do you ;)

      Jokes aside, that point doesn't matter -- remove the word "entirely" from the sentence and you'll see why. Some people want to change the gun laws because they blame guns for causing these problems -- it doesn't matter if they "entirely" blame them or not, they blame them to a high enough degree to want to make a change in the law. Therefore, my argument is not a straw man.

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    4. If you don't mean what you write it will save me time in the future by skipping anything you write because you don't mean it. As far as joking goes I'd say the preponderance of present evidence indicates that you and I do not share a sense of humor. As for the gun laws, the laws I'd like to see would be that you would need to pass an eye test and a live fire exercise to demonstrate competency with a firearm before owning one to minimize hitting bystanders in the inevitable firefights. After all they do make you go through a driving test in order to get a license to operate a car. Naturally all those fine well ordered militia gun owners would likely see that as an unacceptable infringement.

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  3. QUOTE: "If he [the Aurora shooter] knew that there was a high probability that a moviegoer in one particular theater was armed and willing to shoot him, I bet he would have reconsidered his decision. He was crazy and evil, but apparently he wasn’t suicidal...Here’s what I know: if I had been unfortunate enough to be in the audience the night of the Aurora shooting, I would have desperately hoped that one of my fellow moviegoers had been armed. Similarly, had I been in the library at Columbine High School on the day of the shooting, I would have desperately hoped that the librarian was packing heat."

    The recent experience in the shadow of the Empire State Building indicates otherwise. The Empire State shooting was a one-on-one revenge shooting, but several people ended up getting wounded. They were shot (accidentally) by police. Now police are trained in the use of firearms and have some experience with emergency situations. Still, it is estimated that police hit their intended targets about 30% of the time.

    So now you want some librarian to whip out a gun and start blazing away when the librarian is untrained and may not even know exactly what is going on? Sounds like an old "All in the Family" episode when Archie Bunker announces that he has the solution to airline hijacking: "Arm all the passengers. Pass out guns at the beginning of the flight and collect them at the end". Using the Archie Bunker plan, more deaths would result from "friendly fire" than from the original shooter.

    Also, some people ARE suicidal and would not be deterred by people in the theater being armed. In Merry Old England, pickpockets used to work the crowds that came to see another pickpocket being hanged. Also, if theaters with armed patrons became the new baseline norm, psychos would adjust to it. They would either ignore it as an unalterable fact of life (ala the English pickpocket), switch their targets to some place where firearms were still NOT allowed (a church?, a bar?), or switch their tactics (i.e. wear a bullet proof vest, attack by using a remote controlled bomb, shoot from behind a barrier then run away, etc.)

    Also, there would be inevitable deaths involved by that many people carrying guns: accidental discharges, pulling a gun over an argument about someone making noise in the theater, even suicides by people watching a sad movie scene or being stood up by a date and having a gun handy.

    There are so many things wrong with this line of thinking that I can hardly list them all. This is really one of the most poorly thought out posts I've seen here. On par with Archie Bunker thinking.

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    1. Tom,

      I agree that Greg's arguments suffer from a number of holes, and one of these days I'll write a post myself about this topic.

      That said, I make a point to publish a variety of opinions on this blog, and Greg's post is a good complement to Michael's recent one on the same topic.

      Moreover, you shouldn't assume that everything that is posted here reflects my own opinions. I mean, I even published an essay in defense of parapsychology...

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    2. Tom: It's really difficult to have a civil discussion when you write things like the following: "There are so many things wrong with this line of thinking that I can hardly list them all." I'm guessing you have an ideological axe to grind and your comment smacks of an intellectual cop out. Please, list all the reasons -- how else will I ever learn?

      More children drown in bathtubs every year than die in accidental gun fire. More people die in car accidents than from accidental gun fire. Out of curiosity, are you in favor of banning bathtubs and cars too? If you're truly worried about limiting accidental deaths, there are far bigger fish to fry.

      It's a fact that some people are killed by accidental gun fire. However, you seem to be neglecting another important fact, i.e., an individual needn't necessarily fire a weapon in order for it to create a deterrent effect. How do you account for the lives that were saved in these situations where no fire was exchanged? There are many documented cases showing that the mere brandishing of a firearm prevented a would-be criminal from committing a crime, yet these instances are rarely, if ever, mentioned in the news. Very few of these cases ever get formally documented either (this is one of the reasons I think the empirical work on guns is so tricky).

      Also, you wrote: ".... there would be inevitable deaths involved by that many people carrying guns: accidental discharges, pulling a gun over an argument about someone making noise in the theater, even suicides by people watching a sad movie scene or being stood up by a date and having a gun handy." Really? Are you sure about that? There are millions of responsible and law abiding gun owners in America and the probability of accidentally getting shot is incredibly small so I'm not sure on what grounds you are making this claim. You are focusing on a handful of very rare, yet sensationalistic events all the while ignoring the logic of deterrence.

      I'm sorry, but your sensationalism makes for a very poor argument.

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    3. Greg,

      First, let me apologize for being a bit harsh with you (in my previous post), but I do disagree with your viewpoint.

      Aside from Massimo's point about the utility of a bathtub versus the utility of a Saturday Night Special, we are speaking here about useful methods of dealing with gun violence, not about reducing deaths in general. Bringing up bathtub injuries is really a non-sequitur in this context. Would you defend a person selling heroin to schoolchildren on the basis that more people die from cigarettes than from heroin?

      The point about the deterrent effect of brandishing a weapon also fails. You must ask yourself, "what happens when deterrence fails?" As I have written previously, there are some who will not be deterred -- ask anyone who has been to a policeman's funeral. Also, there is the issue that people will adjust to the new baseline and alter their tactics to minimize the deterrent effect (shooting by surprise/stealth, then running versus standing in front of a group of people openly).

      As counterweight to the dubious effect of deterrence is the unintended consequences of friendly fire. Counting the probabilities here ("the probability of accidentally getting shot is incredibly small") is a bit disingenuous, as the probability of being in an Aurora-type situation is extremely low in the first place -- again, you are ignoring context. What we want is CONDITIONAL probability: given the fact that a tense situation is taking place, is it better to have more or fewer guns on hand? In this context, the 30% rate of hitting the intended target and the number of accidental gun deaths becomes more relevant than over-all statistics dealing with day to day ownership that does not involve an emergency situation. Also, in non-emergency situations, if the number of gun carrying individual increases to the point that you suggest (high probability of someone in a theater having a gun) then the frequency of accidental gun deaths and deliberate murders or suicides will, of course, rise.

      One alternative vision to a world in which recalcitrant library patrons are executed in a blaze of gunfire by glock-wielding librarians would be to deal with root causes. Give greater emphasis to identifying mental illness and providing mental health care. Deal with problems of poverty and inequality that cause disaffection and alienation. Change the "capitalisme sauvage" notion of winner-takes-all and losers-can-go-hang-themselves into a more humane system whereby anyone who is sincerely interested in making a contribution to society can find a position of dignity and respect that could never grow out of the barrel of a gun.

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  4. "Here's what I know: if I had been unfortunate enough to be in the audience the night of the Aurora shooting, I would have desperately hoped that one of my fellow moviegoers had been armed."

    This is a line of reasoning one often sees in the context of tragedies like this, but I think the logic is sort of flawed. It is flawed because it (arguably) solves the Aurora case, while ignoring the entailed consequences elsewhere in society. To see the point, consider that if you were in the audience, you would also have every right to hope that a fellow moviegoer was packing a rocket launcher, yet this does not mean carry permits for rocket launchers are a good idea.

    The general epistemic idea is to avoid emotive prescriptions from a single point of view in policy debates, instead thinking about the overall effect on society. By analogy, if I had an extremely rare disease whose treatment cost $10m, I might want my hospital's ethics board to approve it, but the ethics board has a duty to consider not just my case, but also what else they could be doing with $10m.

    So getting back to Aurora, it may have been prevented by somebody in the audience carrying. But I suspect that the consequence of large numbers of people carrying firearms is a lot more Aurora-like incidents (ceteris paribus).

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    1. Ian: In your analogy, we can make a rational decision because we have the costs clearly laid out before us. If only it were that easy with guns.

      You may be right in the case of guns, but one of my main points is that we don't have the tools to scientifically address this question properly. For example, as I mentioned in my reply to Tom (above), many of the instances in which guns prevent crimes go undocumented.

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    2. "A University of Chicago Study revealed that in 1993 approximately 700,000 police killed 330 innocent individuals, while approximately 250,000,000 private citizens only killed 30 innocent people." I don't think you can reach the conclusion that we would be worse off with private citizens shooting back rather than the police.

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    3. "A University of Chicago Study revealed that in 1993 approximately 700,000 police killed 330 innocent individuals, while approximately 250,000,000 private citizens only killed 30 innocent people." I don't think you can reach the conclusion we would be worse off with private citizens shooting back rather than the police.

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    4. Todd, obviously that is a function of the job police do, which comes with high moral risks.

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    5. Regarding Police v. Private Citizens,
      I think the frequency of a person being faced with a particular situation is relevant here: i.e., the accident per incident rate, not the over-all number of accidents (neglecting frequency of incident).

      More mountain climbers than dog-groomers are killed by avalanches -- does that prove that dog-groomers know more about dealing with avalanches than mountain climbers? Or does it prove that Private Citizens know more about handling firearms?

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    6. @Greg: "You may be right in the case of guns, but one of my main points is that we don't have the tools to scientifically address this question properly. For example, as I mentioned in my reply to Tom (above), many of the instances in which guns prevent crimes go undocumented."

      Your argument seems to be that the effectiveness of gun laws is underdetermined by the current statistical data. Granting you that, don't you think there's a place for commonsense models of human interactions as well as statistical data (acknowledging the flaws in blindly trusting commonsense)?

      My commonsense tells me that introducing many deadly weapons into the population at large is likely to escalate situations that would otherwise resolve themselves without mortal violence. This leads to an increase in mortal violence.

      Like I said, I am not extremely confident in this model but I would bet a decent sum on it at 2:1 odds. Just like I would bet that systematically giving people very small amounts of cyanide will reduce their lifespans, *even if* the statistical effect on lifespan is small enough to be drowned out by noise in the data.

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  5. Concerning the thought experiment about burglars, if I were a burglar I would chose to burglarize the house that is empty, independently of the owner having guns or not. As you put it, guns do not kill people, people do. So if an house is full of guns but there is nobody there to shoot them, it can be safely burglarized.

    When it come to home safety, having a dog that barks is way more effective in preventing burglaries than having a gun.

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  6. Your argument seems to rest on your claim that would-be criminals will respond to the "incentive" of avoiding the heat of the law abiding citizen who might be legally carrying a firearm. The largest hole in your argument is that you don't even attempt to argue that this "incentive" is strong enough to deter the would-be-shooter or justify a minimally regulated gun market over against a more heavily regulated one. In addition, you claim that the answer to the question of whether or not to increase gun regulation is largely out of the realm of our epistemic powers. However, you don't support this claim well either. "Just happen[ing] to think that the answer is no" isn't good enough. The supporting reason you give for this claim is that "There are far too many complexities and variables to account for when doing econometric work on crime, guns, and gun control laws." But why should we accept this claim? The fact that there is a large number of variables and complexities in solving an empirical question doesn't immediately lead us to believe the question is unknowable. If it were so, we would have given up on the scientific project a long time ago. The number of variables and complexities that need to be accounted for in order for physicists to be confident of the existence of the Higs Boson particle is undoubtedly a very high number, yet this doesn't mean we pack up our bags and give up on the project.

    This sort of argumentation seems to serve the function of allowing the allowing the author to sidestep bringing in any empirical claims into his argument.

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  7. In the upper Midwest of this Great Republic, there is a chain of stores which sell many things, including guns, called "Fleet Farm." I was in one the other day, and marveled at the wide variety of guns available for purchase, including assault rifles and hand guns. We love our guns, here. But the poster named Tom appropriately noted that the claim that citizens carrying guns will decrease death and injury by guns is rendered laughable given the injuries to those bystanders in NYC inflicted by trained professionals trying to shoot someone else. I fear the belief we should carry guns to protect ourselves is a kind of fantasy derived from television and movies; we all want to be cowboys or hero cops. Those with guns will find a way to use them (why else have them?) and more will suffer.

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    1. I doubt they had assault rifles. I'm sure they were just rifles. Only the military has assault rifles. Yes I'm sure they looked scary, they were black. But I assure you they were just those misunderstood black rifles that the misinformed falsely call the political term "assault weapons"

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    2. And "why else have them" really? How about target shooting? Hunting? Self defense? How about if you don't like guns...don't buy one.

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    3. Perhaps you're right. Though I don't share your opinion that black is necessarily scary, I don't have the loving fondness for guns which may be required to correctly identify them in their infinite variety. The ones you'll see on Fleet Farm's website are variants of the Huldra Mark IV (there's one 5.59x45 X-Pre 1 rifle)and are described as "tactical."

      As for target shooting, hunting, self-defense, I think all of these would mandate using guns, though not necessarily on people, but it may well be that there are gun owners who merely fondle them or pose with them in front of mirrors or for photographs. Fantasies differ. But those who, for example, carry concealed firearms, or even brandish them, probably are more inclined to use them when fearful than those who don't, and I don't think we can rely on them to use them more competently than members of the NYPD.

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    4. >but it may well be that there are gun owners who merely fondle them<

      "...This is my rifle, this is my gun..."? :-)

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    5. True, but which is for fighting and which is for fun in their case?

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  8. Greg,

    > One of my main points was that there is no difficulty finding data to support almost any conclusion <

    Yes, but that sounds like something a climate denier would say. In the thread following Michael's post I linked to several studies showing empirical evidence favoring the idea that people with guns kill people much more effectively than people without guns. They were promptly ignored by "the other side." Said side then posted a link to a widely circulated paper arguing the opposite point. Except that when I bothered to look at the paper I found out that it was not peer reviewed, published in an undergraduate journals, and with statistical holes so obvious that even I could pick them out after a cursory browsing. The point is, not all empirical "evidence" is created equal...

    > I never said that anyone blames it entirely on guns. <

    Actually, you did, right at the end of your post: "But please, let’s stop blaming it entirely on guns."

    As for Tom's comments, he may have been a bit harsh at the end, but several of his points are well taken. The problem with your analogy between bathtubs or cars and guns is that the first two are everyday objects of convenience that are not designed to kill, the latter are. That makes a difference when we prioritize what to allow and what not. By the same token, there are very few terrorist attacks, but our society thinks that those that do take place are, shall we say, problematic.

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    1. Massimo,

      Regarding the gun control efficacy issue, the National Academy of Sciences performed a critical review in 2004 wherein they concluded that the best available evidence does not indicate a correlation between gun laws and incidences of gun-related crime. In brief, they called for more & better research to be done. You can review the work here: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10881&page=R1

      Now if you are aware of more recent reviews of research on this matter which has tipped the balance one way or another, I would very much like it if you could direct me to it.

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    2. Massimo:

      So you seem to believe that this is a question that we can scientifically answer? If so, have you reviewed John Lott's work (http://www.johnlott.org/)? He's a prominent figure on the pro-gun side. Many expert econometricians and Nobel Prize winning economists support his conclusions (personally, I don't think that means much, but then again I'm skeptical of the claim that science can help us answer this question). When you write your post about guns, I would be curious to hear about why you disagree with his empirical work.

      As I mentioned above, you don't think I actually meant what I wrote do you ;) I made a mistake, take out the "entirely", but the essence of my argument doesn't change.

      Finally, why does it matter what something is designed to do?

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    3. See http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/faculty/Hemenway/book.html
      for a discussion of Lott's statistics.

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  9. "On the surface of it, the gun control question appears to be a scientific one."

    The gun control question as you phrased it ("do gun control laws reduce crime?") is, without qualification, a scientific question.

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  10. Great read Greg. You are spot on. Nice to read something written on this subject not based on emotions. Anyone involved in a situation with a gunman would either want to be armed or hope someone in the room is armed. This is common sense and any of the people commenting saying anything different are lying.

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    1. I might agree on wishing that I had a gun, but the recent situation with the police in New York and the bystanders would not make me wish that anyone else in the area was armed.

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  11. Todd,

    > Study revealed that in 1993 approximately 700,000 police killed 330 innocent individuals, while approximately 250,000,000 private citizens only killed 30 innocent people." <

    You seriously don't see the obvious problem there? The police is in the business of using firearms daily, civilians are not. Indeed, most of the latter probably rarely use guns in situations relevant to this discussion. The question is what happens when they do.

    Eamon,

    I am disappointed by your insistence on that study. First, the study validates what I was talking about: that violence, injuries and death are positively correlated with gun ownership. Here is a pertinent quote:

    "Research has found, for example, that higher rates of household firearms ownership are associated with higher rates of gun suicide, that illegal diversions from legitimate commerce are important sources of crime guns and guns used in suicide, that firearms are used defensively many times per day, and that some types of targeted police interventions may effectively lower gun crime and violence."

    Yes, they did not find evidence of an effect of gun laws, but that's hardly surprising, considering that they looked only at the United States, where such laws are either full of loopholes or hardly enforced, or both. If you expand the view to an international picture the case against guns and in favor of serious legislation is overwhelming.

    mjtav01,

    > if you don't like guns...don't buy one <

    That's not the point. I don't like *you* or anyone else to have a gun. You see the issue, right?

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    1. Massimo:

      I think your remark to mjtav01 prompts an interesting point. There are some people who don't want you or anyone else to have access to a host of other things that you may like (e.g., alcohol) either. Does it really matter what they want? The Second Amendment protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms and many people deeply cherish this right (I can't blame them).

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    2. >There are some people who don't want you or anyone else to have access to a host of other things that you may like (e.g., alcohol) either. Does it really matter what they want?<

      Yes, it does matter. If the people are in the majority and what they want is in the interests of their own safety they DO have the right to tell you what to do (if you wish to be part of their society).

      Indeed, you ARE prohibited from drinking alcohol while driving, and drinking alcohol in public places is prohibited (in many cases).

      The applicability of the Second Amendment to gun ownership is questionable as it references "well regulated militias".

      In any case, the Constitution can be amended, so gun ownership is not an absolute if the majority wishes to change it. Of course, many laws already exist regarding automatic weapons, large clips, etc.

      In short, it DOES matter what people want regarding the behavior of others.


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    3. Tom:

      You're partially right here -- it does matter, well, sort of. There is a caveat to your claim, which you pointed out, i.e., one's opinion must also be shared with the majority.

      The fact that other people may not like something an individual does is not a sufficient reason for that individual to change their behavior. Currently, it's legal to own a gun and it doesn't matter what a small minority of people with no influence on the political process think about it unless -- here's the caveat -- they can get the law changed through the political process. However, they don't seem to be able to do this because most people seem to think that the Second Amendment is an important right that shouldn't be taken away.

      In short, it DOESN'T matter what people think about other's behavior if they are in the minority, it only matters what they think if they can also influence the political process.

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    4. My reaction to your reply: http://images.wikia.com/glee/images/9/93/Seriously.gif

      You know, It’s not like alcohol is designed to injure/kill people…

      Based on your post and analogies so far, I seriously wonder how you got the privilege to write on this blog.
      I’m not trying to be rude or anything, I’m just speaking my mind out. If I offended you, I’m sorry. But that is the kind of thought that the people who have read your post are having. I think it’s important for you to know.

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  12. "I think it leaves us with economic logic and if there’s one thing I’m pretty confident is true, it’s that incentives matter, even to criminals."

    I assume you mean that the negative incentive of possibly getting shot will matter more to the criminal than whatever positive incentive he or she has for committing the violent crime. I wonder where you got this conclusion from. I thought that research in behavioral economics has shown us that we know very little of how humans perceive incentive across various situations.

    I read this is the main point of your article. But you don't defend you assertion at all. You just say "incentives matter" but don't go to analyze any of the incentives other than the possibility shot. And you don't show any research that says that possibility of death it a greater incentive than the various other incentives that criminals have for committing crime.

    I find it very possible that criminals mostly think only about the incentives they stand to gain from the crime and not what they stand to loose. If this is true then you would be wrong. But, the only way to find out is to do more psychological experimentation.


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  13. I'm curious why a "thinker, writer and amateur photographer" would consider buying a gun for safety reasons. What in your environment is so dangerous you would need a gun to protect yourself from it?

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  14. Greg,

    > you don't think I actually meant what I wrote do you ;) I made a mistake, take out the "entirely", but the essence of my argument doesn't change. <

    Well, one can only take one author at his own words...

    > have you reviewed John Lott's work (http://www.johnlott.org/)? He's a prominent figure on the pro-gun side. <

    You are kidding, right? His book is publicized by the Enterprise Institute, and is not peer reviewed. I don't see a reason to invest the time in reading 300 pages of it.

    > why does it matter what something is designed to do? <

    Because there is a fundamental ethical difference between a tool that is meant to do something constructive and accidentally injures people vs a tool one of the main purposes of which is to injure or kill.

    > There are some people who don't want you or anyone else to have access to a host of other things that you may like (e.g., alcohol) either. Does it really matter what they want? <

    A specious response, Greg. There are people who would love to have atomic bombs in their garages, but society doesn't let them. This is a discussion about what we, as a society, should or should not allow. I vote for no guns (except for personal defense, strictly regulated, sports and hunting).

    > The Second Amendment protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms and many people deeply cherish this right <

    No, it doesn't. To anybody who can actually read English (which apparently doesn't include several members of the ideologically polarized Supreme Court) that protection is specific to the case of militias.

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    1. Quite so Massimo. I have discovered that when most people refer to 'The Second Amendment' what they really mean is the second half of the second amendment. It rarely gets quoted in its entirety because if you read the whole thing it pretty much means you get a gun if you are a member of the army, police, national guard or some other 'well organized militia'.

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    2. "I vote for no guns"

      Gee, does "personal defense" include the right of the 90% to defend themselves against capitalist exploitation?

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  15. Greg,

    A bit off-topic here, but just out of curiosity, regarding the recent billboard showing men holding rifles next to the text:

    "The SEALS Removed One Threat to America, Remove the Other in November"

    What is your reaction to the billboard?

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  16. Tom:

    I think it's ridiculous political sensationalism -- don't you? Anyway, I'm not sure I understand how that is relevant at all to this discussion though, unless you are simply trying to get a gauge of where I stand politically (if so, why didn't you just ask? ;) ). If that is the case, my political views are difficult to capture in one word, but I suppose it would be fair to say that my views could classified as a strand of libertarianism.

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  17. Greg,

    Well, I AM trying to gauge your political stand, and I acknowledge that it is off topic.

    I don't ask you to describe your entire political philosophy in one word -- you are free to use more than one word and confine your political philosophy to your reaction to this one event.

    Your view is STILL not clear to me. Do you say that the billboard was ridiculous political sensationalism, or the REACTION TO the billboard (or my question about it) was ridiculous political sensationalism?

    In short, do you think putting up the billboard a proper thing to do?

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    1. Tom:

      I meant the billboard itself was an example of ridiculous political sensationalism. I find it to be in poor taste myself, but I don't know that it's inherently improper to post such a thing.

      What are your thoughts on that last point?

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    2. Greg,

      I thought the billboard was appalling. It equates the "problem" of Obama's continued Presidency with the problem of Osama bin Laden and covertly implies the same solution: application of gunfire.

      Forgive for prying into your personal beliefs, but I just wanted to reassure myself that you are not part of that crowd.

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  18. To be really uber-contrarian about this, there is one other possibility that the pro-gun/anti-gun people are overlooking in this debate: that there might actually be a "Laffer curve" of gun ownership, such that it is optimal for N% of people to own guns - no more or less.

    I doubt this is true but I am surprised that it didn't even occur to me as a possibility before.

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  19. There is still relevancy to this discussion; I hope the passing of a few days does not qualify this as "necroposting".

    Quote: "Here’s what I know: if I had been unfortunate enough to be in the audience the night of the Aurora shooting, I would have desperately hoped that one of my fellow moviegoers had been armed."

    As would I. As would most people. There is a hopelessness in that situation: a person has entered whose sole intent is to kill me and my companions. But these situations are rare. If I am in a convenience store, and a man pulls a gun at the cashier, I very much hope that neither the cashier nor any customer pulls a gun as this would serve to decrease stability and increase the risk of injury or death. His motive is much less likely to be to kill.

    It seems imprudent to base our gun laws on the rare event of this particular kind of gun-related crime, whether for or against restrictions.

    QUOTE: "Yes, even the Aurora shooter, lunatic that he is, responds to incentives. If he knew that there was a high probability that a moviegoer in one particular theater was armed and willing to shoot him, I bet he would have reconsidered his decision."

    Yes, obviously. But guns are legal. Concealed weapons are legal. The Aurora shooter knew this when he entered the theatre. He already accepted the risk. Short of requiring all citizens to be armed, under what conditions would this shooter have been disincentivized through risk of harm?

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  20. > Study revealed that in 1993 approximately 700,000 police killed 330 innocent individuals, while approximately 250,000,000 private citizens only killed 30 innocent people." <


    The even more obvious flaw is that most gun owners, while they exist, most do not carry firearms around town, and only use them in limited situations, ie: hunting, shooting range. You'd need to compare the number of gun owners, who carried a gun into a hostile situation and the rate of injury based on the number of possible injuries with the police numbers to get somewhat accurate results.

    I don't agree with the authors conclusions, but it sounds like this statistic is not very useful.

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  21. As a person who lives in Suburban Denver and who could have friends in the theater, I am confused by the statement about wishing that there was a person who would have had a gun in the movie theater. I am confused because the Denver area has very liberal concealed permit carry laws. Given that Colorado has issued 139,560 concealed permits and the majority of the people live in the Denver metro area what are the odds at least on person had a gun on them in the theater. Perhaps the real question is how do you react when a dark theater filled with smoke with an audience in chaos? This is much different from a standing a shooting range with a still target. Many of our best trained military men have faced similar situation of chaos and smoke and shoot the wrong person in Iraq. I would just say I am happy that if there was a person carrying a gun in thee theater they choose not to use it.

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  22. The issues of gun control are always argued about whether or not gun control is effective in reducing crime.

    How about the fact that the main issue is that the government will still have guns, and human nature will corrupt a government that has guns when it's citizens do not. Our government already goes to war overseas with other countries without it's citizens wanting it to happen - there is little or nothing to stop them here.

    Everyone here arguing for gun control says people with guns are more likely to commit violent acts - should the people that are more likely to commit violent acts be the government that ignores the will of it's people?

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    1. Very well said Steve, According to me, Guns control is much more important than Gun owners right.

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