Should Government Ban Guns?
Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2014 7:47 am
The following essay, 'Should Government Ban Guns?' is a rare article that tries to take a middle path between gun control and RKBA.
Should Governments Ban Guns?
An essay by rkj.
From time to time, a mass shooting makes the news, and before the victims are even buried, the political shouting begins. Almost immediately both sides stir up and exploit emotions of sadness, outrage, and fear to support their cause.
I’d wager you’d prefer to examine the issue more calmly. Lets set aside what the law or the Constitution says and focus on the essential question: how would we write the gun laws, if we could?
If you’ve read What Should Government Do? A Story, you know how I approach these questions. First, I ask whether the issue primarily impacts only you. If so, it’s a private matter and the government shouldn’t interfere. If not, it’s a public matter and the government should do what the people believe is right. I defended this approach in my book previously; now in this answer I’m going to apply it.
The first question is whether guns primarily impact only you. You probably think the answer is obvious, but it’s not. I can easily show you someone who finds the opposite view equally obvious. So what do we do?
It’ll be easier if we abstract a bit and try to figure out what makes a weapon public or private and then apply that to guns. A weapon is a tool that increases your ability to harm. In this way a gun is the same as a knife, a fighter jet, or a nuclear bomb. The difference is how they increase your ability to harm.
Imagine I have a weapon. Then draw a circle around me corresponding to the area where I can use it effectively. That’s the weapon’s ‘effective range’. (In reality, there isn’t a strict cutoff point, but the idea remains the same.)
If I’ve got a weapon, it impacts everyone in its effective range. For example, if my car has a roof-mounted machine gun, it impacts everyone in its effective range, either psychologically (“what if he opens fire?”) or probabilistically on the chance that I actually use it (perhaps to knock down the wall of a burning school and save the children).
What determines whether a weapon is a public or private matter, then, is (a) the size of its effective range, (b) how lethal it is within that range, and (c) the population density within that range. In most cases, a knife is clearly a private matter, while a fighter jet is clearly a public matter.
What about guns? They’re tricky because their effective range is far larger than a knife’s but far smaller than a fighter jet’s. I think the decisive factor is (c), the population density within that range. A gun in an empty field is a far different question than a gun on a crowded subway. I think the former is likely a private matter, while the latter is likely a public matter.
I don’t know at what point it crosses over from a public matter to a private matter. (I know that it matters tremendously where the gun is kept. The number of people impacted by a gun stored at a gun range, a gun stored on your property, and a gun carried with you could be vastly different.) People should debate this, but I doubt they can do so calmly, since it’s so deeply enmeshed with beliefs and emotions.
So, sometimes guns are a private matter and sometimes they’re a public matter, depending mostly on population density (with a large grey area). When they’re a private matter, the government shouldn’t regulate them. But how should we deal with guns when they’re a public matter?
In public matters, we can’t appeal to fixed principles; the government should do what the people believe is right. That could be a total gun ban, or that could be a total lack of regulation. The best way to improve how everyone makes that decision is to present the tradeoffs and the evidence. That’s what I’ll do next. I’ll give my own thoughts at the end, since you probably want to know how I weigh this.
I’ll start with the tradeoffs. I’ll list all the tradeoffs I see and then elaborate on each of them. The reasons ‘for guns’ I see are: self-defense, hunting, freedom and property rights, enjoyment and mastery from shooting, and enjoyment from ownership. The reasons ‘against guns’ I see are: harm from others, harm from accidents, harm from suicide, crimes using guns, and psychological worry stemming from those risks. Now I’ll elaborate on them:
Self-Defense. There are two types of self-defense: first, armed protection against the government (or foreign invasion) and, second, armed protection against other individuals. The first type is more rare and increasingly ineffective against modern militaries. However, modern warfare has also shown the power of a determined guerrilla force. An effective police force does not make the second type irrelevant either. Guns function primarily as a deterrent that make the target far less attractive, much like the quills of a porcupine. Guns are also an immediate defense, unlike a call to the police, where you remain defenseless until they arrive. Moreover, the police will likely be far too busy to protect you in more extreme cases of social unrest or severe natural disasters. Some see a right to self-defense as perhaps the most fundamental right that exists.
Hunting. There’s hunting for food and hunting for sport. For some people, this is tragic and vile, while others derive deep enjoyment or food from it (just like fishing).
Freedom and Property Rights. Restriction and regulation of guns is, by definition, a restriction of your freedom to own and use the property you want.
Enjoyment and Mastery from Shooting. For some people, going to the range and practicing shooting is just like practicing guitar. They derive deep satisfaction from the mastery of it. For others, it’s like driving a sports car- they love the feeling of power that comes with it.
Enjoyment from Ownership. Even if it sits locked in a case and never used, some people just love owning a gun, much like some people love polishing an antique car they never drive or owning a super car they’ll never race.
Harm. Guns are designed to harm, so guns create a risk of violence, either from others, by accident, or by your own hand (suicide). In addition, without training, a gun can be worse than useless- it can result in accidental harm to those closest to you: friends, family, and children. For some people, the list of victims of gun violence is a deep stain on the country. For them, no amount of abstract ‘property rights’ or enjoyment could offset the loss of even one life to guns.
Crimes Using Guns. Since guns are designed to do harm, people will use them to threaten others and commit crimes.
Psychological Worry. For some people, knowledge of the risks of guns creates worry about ‘what could happen’. People worry about shootings at their children’s school or at other crowded events. This worry can impact where people live and change property values. The Secret Service is paid to worry about shootings of politicians and other important figures.
If those are the tradeoffs, what is the evidence? To provide context, I’ll start with some basic facts about gun deaths from the CDC and Bureau of Justice Statistics. (This is a current snapshot of the US, a highly limited, but highly relevant sample.) There are about 30,000 gun deaths per year. That’s about 1% of all deaths and is roughly comparable to traffic accident deaths and about 25% fewer deaths than poisonings. Of those, about 60% are suicides (0.7% of all deaths), about 40% are homicides (0.5% of all deaths), and only about 2% are accidents (0.02% of all deaths). (Numbers are approximate, so it adds to 102%.) Handguns account for the vast majority of gun homicides; there are about as many homicides with all other guns as there are homicides with knives. In particular, mass shootings account for only 1% of gun deaths.
You should note that the majority of gun deaths come from suicide. The evidence is hazy but seems to show that more guns create more suicides. Without guns, many people find other ways to kill themselves, but the ease and effectiveness of guns seems to make ‘successful’ suicides more likely. Though, as I’ll note below, culture has a far greater impact on suicides and violence than guns do.
While it might seem logical that more guns cause more crime and death, the evidence for this is murky at best, and if anything seems to suggest the opposite. Highly detailed studies within the US, comparisons across countries, time, eras, cultures, and demographic groups pretty consistently turn up either no relationship or an inverse relationship between guns and death. Not all studies agree and almost all are highly contested, but this is the general thrust of the findings. Russia and places in Eastern Europe have low gun ownership and enormous homicide rates. The homicide rate in the Middle Ages (where there were few or no guns) was vastly higher than today. The lower the population density, the higher the gun ownership rate, and the lower the homicide rate. Indeed, the correlation between the gun ownership rate and the homicide rate among 168 countries shows a -22% (low, negative) relationship.
Instead, it seems that culture has a far larger influence on crime and violence than the availability of guns. In addition to all the examples above, Japan has very few guns, a vanishingly small homicide rate, but a huge suicide rate. Or you have Switzerland with many guns and a very small homicide rate. Some groups like ‘Cure Violence’ have had great success treating violent crime like an infectious social disease.
Finally, the evidence casts real skepticism that any sort of gun ban (at least in the US currently) would be effective. The vast majority of gun homicides are already committed with illegal guns, and handgun bans in Chicago and DC appear to have no discernable impact on handgun violence. It seems that gun bans mostly take guns from the people least likely to use them criminally.
Those are the tradeoffs, and that’s the evidence. How do I come out? As I mentioned above, I think population density is a key factor: the higher the population density, the higher the risk, so the harder it should be to get a gun. But, I think that the single most important factor is whether you are trustworthy with a gun. Like fire, a gun is just a tool; the user determines its use and its safety. Are you law abiding? Do you know how to safely handle a gun? If so, then I think the burden of proof rests on those who wish to deny you your property, your freedom, and your self-defense. And I don’t see any compelling evidence to support that.
Putting these together, the more trustworthy you are and the lower the population density is, the less gun control I believe there should be (and vice versa). Since I think that trustworthiness is the decisive factor, I believe that even in the most crowded cities where more gun control makes sense, you should be able to certify yourself as a person who is as trustworthy as a police officer and so be able to carry a gun. And if you’re untrustworthy, you should be denied guns, no matter where you are.
Of course, even the most trustworthy citizen could ‘snap’ (with or without a gun). But this isn’t a logical or evidence-based objection to my answer; it’s an emotional appeal that stirs fear through a vivid image. A trustworthy person with a gun can also protect you against someone who ‘snaps’. Every freedom creates risks; you’ve got to use reasoning and evidence to weigh the likely benefits against the likely costs. And I’ve argued that trustworthiness, followed by population density, is the best gauge of this.
....So, what do you gentlemen/women think? Do you agree with the author's conclusions? Or ...
Should Governments Ban Guns?
An essay by rkj.
From time to time, a mass shooting makes the news, and before the victims are even buried, the political shouting begins. Almost immediately both sides stir up and exploit emotions of sadness, outrage, and fear to support their cause.
I’d wager you’d prefer to examine the issue more calmly. Lets set aside what the law or the Constitution says and focus on the essential question: how would we write the gun laws, if we could?
If you’ve read What Should Government Do? A Story, you know how I approach these questions. First, I ask whether the issue primarily impacts only you. If so, it’s a private matter and the government shouldn’t interfere. If not, it’s a public matter and the government should do what the people believe is right. I defended this approach in my book previously; now in this answer I’m going to apply it.
The first question is whether guns primarily impact only you. You probably think the answer is obvious, but it’s not. I can easily show you someone who finds the opposite view equally obvious. So what do we do?
It’ll be easier if we abstract a bit and try to figure out what makes a weapon public or private and then apply that to guns. A weapon is a tool that increases your ability to harm. In this way a gun is the same as a knife, a fighter jet, or a nuclear bomb. The difference is how they increase your ability to harm.
Imagine I have a weapon. Then draw a circle around me corresponding to the area where I can use it effectively. That’s the weapon’s ‘effective range’. (In reality, there isn’t a strict cutoff point, but the idea remains the same.)
If I’ve got a weapon, it impacts everyone in its effective range. For example, if my car has a roof-mounted machine gun, it impacts everyone in its effective range, either psychologically (“what if he opens fire?”) or probabilistically on the chance that I actually use it (perhaps to knock down the wall of a burning school and save the children).
What determines whether a weapon is a public or private matter, then, is (a) the size of its effective range, (b) how lethal it is within that range, and (c) the population density within that range. In most cases, a knife is clearly a private matter, while a fighter jet is clearly a public matter.
What about guns? They’re tricky because their effective range is far larger than a knife’s but far smaller than a fighter jet’s. I think the decisive factor is (c), the population density within that range. A gun in an empty field is a far different question than a gun on a crowded subway. I think the former is likely a private matter, while the latter is likely a public matter.
I don’t know at what point it crosses over from a public matter to a private matter. (I know that it matters tremendously where the gun is kept. The number of people impacted by a gun stored at a gun range, a gun stored on your property, and a gun carried with you could be vastly different.) People should debate this, but I doubt they can do so calmly, since it’s so deeply enmeshed with beliefs and emotions.
So, sometimes guns are a private matter and sometimes they’re a public matter, depending mostly on population density (with a large grey area). When they’re a private matter, the government shouldn’t regulate them. But how should we deal with guns when they’re a public matter?
In public matters, we can’t appeal to fixed principles; the government should do what the people believe is right. That could be a total gun ban, or that could be a total lack of regulation. The best way to improve how everyone makes that decision is to present the tradeoffs and the evidence. That’s what I’ll do next. I’ll give my own thoughts at the end, since you probably want to know how I weigh this.
I’ll start with the tradeoffs. I’ll list all the tradeoffs I see and then elaborate on each of them. The reasons ‘for guns’ I see are: self-defense, hunting, freedom and property rights, enjoyment and mastery from shooting, and enjoyment from ownership. The reasons ‘against guns’ I see are: harm from others, harm from accidents, harm from suicide, crimes using guns, and psychological worry stemming from those risks. Now I’ll elaborate on them:
Self-Defense. There are two types of self-defense: first, armed protection against the government (or foreign invasion) and, second, armed protection against other individuals. The first type is more rare and increasingly ineffective against modern militaries. However, modern warfare has also shown the power of a determined guerrilla force. An effective police force does not make the second type irrelevant either. Guns function primarily as a deterrent that make the target far less attractive, much like the quills of a porcupine. Guns are also an immediate defense, unlike a call to the police, where you remain defenseless until they arrive. Moreover, the police will likely be far too busy to protect you in more extreme cases of social unrest or severe natural disasters. Some see a right to self-defense as perhaps the most fundamental right that exists.
Hunting. There’s hunting for food and hunting for sport. For some people, this is tragic and vile, while others derive deep enjoyment or food from it (just like fishing).
Freedom and Property Rights. Restriction and regulation of guns is, by definition, a restriction of your freedom to own and use the property you want.
Enjoyment and Mastery from Shooting. For some people, going to the range and practicing shooting is just like practicing guitar. They derive deep satisfaction from the mastery of it. For others, it’s like driving a sports car- they love the feeling of power that comes with it.
Enjoyment from Ownership. Even if it sits locked in a case and never used, some people just love owning a gun, much like some people love polishing an antique car they never drive or owning a super car they’ll never race.
Harm. Guns are designed to harm, so guns create a risk of violence, either from others, by accident, or by your own hand (suicide). In addition, without training, a gun can be worse than useless- it can result in accidental harm to those closest to you: friends, family, and children. For some people, the list of victims of gun violence is a deep stain on the country. For them, no amount of abstract ‘property rights’ or enjoyment could offset the loss of even one life to guns.
Crimes Using Guns. Since guns are designed to do harm, people will use them to threaten others and commit crimes.
Psychological Worry. For some people, knowledge of the risks of guns creates worry about ‘what could happen’. People worry about shootings at their children’s school or at other crowded events. This worry can impact where people live and change property values. The Secret Service is paid to worry about shootings of politicians and other important figures.
If those are the tradeoffs, what is the evidence? To provide context, I’ll start with some basic facts about gun deaths from the CDC and Bureau of Justice Statistics. (This is a current snapshot of the US, a highly limited, but highly relevant sample.) There are about 30,000 gun deaths per year. That’s about 1% of all deaths and is roughly comparable to traffic accident deaths and about 25% fewer deaths than poisonings. Of those, about 60% are suicides (0.7% of all deaths), about 40% are homicides (0.5% of all deaths), and only about 2% are accidents (0.02% of all deaths). (Numbers are approximate, so it adds to 102%.) Handguns account for the vast majority of gun homicides; there are about as many homicides with all other guns as there are homicides with knives. In particular, mass shootings account for only 1% of gun deaths.
You should note that the majority of gun deaths come from suicide. The evidence is hazy but seems to show that more guns create more suicides. Without guns, many people find other ways to kill themselves, but the ease and effectiveness of guns seems to make ‘successful’ suicides more likely. Though, as I’ll note below, culture has a far greater impact on suicides and violence than guns do.
While it might seem logical that more guns cause more crime and death, the evidence for this is murky at best, and if anything seems to suggest the opposite. Highly detailed studies within the US, comparisons across countries, time, eras, cultures, and demographic groups pretty consistently turn up either no relationship or an inverse relationship between guns and death. Not all studies agree and almost all are highly contested, but this is the general thrust of the findings. Russia and places in Eastern Europe have low gun ownership and enormous homicide rates. The homicide rate in the Middle Ages (where there were few or no guns) was vastly higher than today. The lower the population density, the higher the gun ownership rate, and the lower the homicide rate. Indeed, the correlation between the gun ownership rate and the homicide rate among 168 countries shows a -22% (low, negative) relationship.
Instead, it seems that culture has a far larger influence on crime and violence than the availability of guns. In addition to all the examples above, Japan has very few guns, a vanishingly small homicide rate, but a huge suicide rate. Or you have Switzerland with many guns and a very small homicide rate. Some groups like ‘Cure Violence’ have had great success treating violent crime like an infectious social disease.
Finally, the evidence casts real skepticism that any sort of gun ban (at least in the US currently) would be effective. The vast majority of gun homicides are already committed with illegal guns, and handgun bans in Chicago and DC appear to have no discernable impact on handgun violence. It seems that gun bans mostly take guns from the people least likely to use them criminally.
Those are the tradeoffs, and that’s the evidence. How do I come out? As I mentioned above, I think population density is a key factor: the higher the population density, the higher the risk, so the harder it should be to get a gun. But, I think that the single most important factor is whether you are trustworthy with a gun. Like fire, a gun is just a tool; the user determines its use and its safety. Are you law abiding? Do you know how to safely handle a gun? If so, then I think the burden of proof rests on those who wish to deny you your property, your freedom, and your self-defense. And I don’t see any compelling evidence to support that.
Putting these together, the more trustworthy you are and the lower the population density is, the less gun control I believe there should be (and vice versa). Since I think that trustworthiness is the decisive factor, I believe that even in the most crowded cities where more gun control makes sense, you should be able to certify yourself as a person who is as trustworthy as a police officer and so be able to carry a gun. And if you’re untrustworthy, you should be denied guns, no matter where you are.
Of course, even the most trustworthy citizen could ‘snap’ (with or without a gun). But this isn’t a logical or evidence-based objection to my answer; it’s an emotional appeal that stirs fear through a vivid image. A trustworthy person with a gun can also protect you against someone who ‘snaps’. Every freedom creates risks; you’ve got to use reasoning and evidence to weigh the likely benefits against the likely costs. And I’ve argued that trustworthiness, followed by population density, is the best gauge of this.
....So, what do you gentlemen/women think? Do you agree with the author's conclusions? Or ...
