Issue Analysis: Gun Control

Proposition: 

More restrictive gun control laws – such as bans on assault rifles, a gun registry system, a stricter gun licensing system, and restriction of the ability to carry guns in public – should be passed and enforced in the United States.

Predicted Effects:

1. Less deterrence of violent crimes: Whenever a criminal considers committing a violent crime, the potential defensive arsenal of the prospective victim is a consideration. Other things equal, the prospective mugger will be the most likely to mug an unarmed weak looking man, less likely to mug an unarmed strong looking man, and the least likely to mug a man who could well be carrying a gun and who might even know how to use it. This point is illustrated in the arena of international relations. Though it is impossible to know for sure, I think it is likely that if both sides did not possess nuclear weapons, there would have been a direct military confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union during the period of the Cold War. A likely reason why in reality it remained a ‘cold’ war (fought through arms races, proxy wars, and propaganda rather than through direct military engagements) is because both sides had access to nuclear weapons which, if ever put in desperate straits, they could have used. The destructive power of these weapons was so unimaginable that the very possibility of their use made both sides more wary of provoking the other too much through other violent actions. The same applies, to a lesser extent, to the relationship between armed citizens and potential criminals. Criminals know that, when targeting a citizenry known to be well-armed, there is a distinct possibility that the cost (the potential to be shot in self-defence) will be greater than the potential benefits of committing the crime (the loot or satisfaction from the crime). We would expect that, other things equal, and to a greater or lesser extent, this deterrence effect would result in less violent crimes being committed against a citizenry known to be well-armed with guns. Thus, by restricting their access to guns, this deterrence effect is consequently weakened and more violent crimes may be committed.

2. Potential for criminals to do less damage: The other side of the coin is that it is not just the law-abiding citizenry, but also the criminals, that without gun control have a greater likelihood of being well-armed themselves. Let us return once more to our international relations Cold War example. We have speculated that the existence of nuclear weapons served to deter some more serious ‘hot’ military conflicts that could have taken place between the US and the Soviet Union. At the same time though, if the US and the Soviet Union did, for some reason, engage in a ‘hot’, total war, the results, given the existence of nuclear weapons, would have been far more devastating than a conflict without those weapons. Moreover, there is the terrifying possibility of these weapons getting into the hands of people who, disregarding their lives for fanatical religious or political ideals or because of general mental insanity, would not be affected by the deterrence effect and could thus be willing to use these weapons to terrible effect if they got a hold on them. Returning to domestic gun crimes, this is precisely what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School, when a mentally unstable man, armed with an assault rifle, killed over 20 small children and then committed suicide. As a result, while we would expect there to be fewer violent crimes in general in a well-armed society due to the deterrence effect, when violent crimes do happen, it is likely that they will be more serious/deadly due to the greater availability of more destructive weaponry.

3. The substitution effect: We know from economic history that when consumers are prevented by law or by high prices from buying a certain good, they will often look for substitute goods that share some of the properties of the more desired good instead. One relevant example, in the field of narcotics, is the sniffing of glue, a substitute narcotic when other drugs with similar effects are unavailable for either legal or price reasons. This example is relevant to gun control because it would be quite impractical to ban glue, a very useful product for other purposes, just because people can get high by sniffing it. Similar considerations apply in the gun control debate. It is certainly possible for the government to greatly restrict the amount of guns among members of a society, although less so in rural areas due to the usefulness of hunting rifles and shotguns for other purposes. However, other equally destructive weapons can be created out of materials that it would be impractical to ban or restrict. The destructive Oklahoma City Bombings was done with an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) made out of fertilizer, nitro methane fuel, and commercial explosives, and similar devices made largely out of household materials were used to destructive effect by the IRA and the Taliban guerillas. We would expect that if guns were really tightly restricted, mass murderers would increasingly turn to such destructive substitutes and try to circumvent the restrictions in that manner.

4. Potential to increase the relative power of criminals who don’t mind circumventing the law: It is obvious that in order for gun control to have a chance of making criminals less dangerous, the restrictions must be tight enough to prevent criminals from circumventing the laws and getting guns illegally. Any established criminal usually cares less about, and is in a better position to circumvent, the laws of a political territory. If criminals were able to do so relatively easily with gun control laws, then we would expect an increasing power differential to be established between a less well-armed law-abiding citizenry and an almost equally well-armed criminal class. Returning once again to our Cold War example, it would be as if the United States unilaterally disarmed itself of its nuclear weapons, without having any guarantee that the Soviet Union would do the same. The result would probably be more belligerence and arrogance from the now militarily-superior Soviet Union, just as it would be for criminals who managed to circumvent strict gun control laws. Though for most such an eventuality would seem quite unlikely in Western Democracies, we must also consider the increasing power differential between the government and the less well-armed citizenry under gun control and the potential for abuse of that situation. This was the reason for the Second Amendment in the US constitution protecting the ‘right to bear arms’ of the citizenry. The American Revolution was an insurrection of a significant chunk of a well-armed American citizenry against a government, in this case the British Imperial Government, that they considered unjust and tyrannical and wanted nothing more to do with. In the 20^th century, there were numerous grisly instances of governments far more murderous and tyrannical than the British Imperial Government had been, inflicting death and destruction on a relatively unarmed population unable to resist, the Nazi regime and Communist regimes especially coming to mind. Empirically though, since World War II in all Western Democracies, even those whose citizenry were not particularly well-armed, there have been no instances of authoritarian reversions and murderous outrages by these governments. Thus, this particular point about the increasing power differential between government and a gun controlled citizenry should not be overemphasized given current conditions, but it should not be completely forgotten either. 

5. General Principle: A general principle that follows from strict gun control policies is the following: Citizens are not to be allowed the means to defend themselves from criminals because they may abuse these means and use them to become criminals themselves, thus protection from criminals must be the prerogative and monopoly of the government and the government alone.

6. Restricts a valued economic good: Guns are an economic good like any other that people obviously derive satisfaction/utility from, or else they would not spend money on them. This utility can be from the gun’s defensive uses or from other uses for guns. Whatever the academics argue or what the overall statistics are, it is likely that some individuals just feel safer, and thus more satisfied, if they know that they have a gun to defend themselves with in case of emergency. Furthermore, some use guns for recreational purposes, such as for hunting, target practice, or as collector’s items. And for some people living in rural areas, having a gun to hunt or to protect themselves from wild animals is eminently practical. Restricting gun ownership reduces the satisfaction of those who had demonstrated on the previously free-market in guns that they wanted to own a gun.

Empirical Questions:

1. What is the empirical link between gun control laws/number of guns in a society and the violent crime rate? 

2. What is the empirical link between gun control laws/number of guns in a society and the homicide rate? (most serious form of violent crime)

Before putting too much emphasis on these empirical questions, we should first note the difficulties involved in answering them. Firstly, so much will depend on the unique personalities, choices, and responses of the gun controlled citizens and the criminals in that society. As such, determining such empirical links with any degree of quantitative precision would be useful more for historical purposes than for current policy decisions. Secondly, even putting aside this first problem, it would be almost impossible to isolate gun control policy and gun ownership rates as isolated variables affecting rate of crime measures. This is because so many other variables would be affecting the same measures, and laboratory experiments to isolate variables are generally unavailable to the student of human societies. Finally, for this policy, as discussed in effect #4, the underground economy elements of the problem (whether criminals can circumvent the laws and get guns anyway) are very important, and finding a statistic to measure this aspect accurately could prove quite difficult.

Those qualifications having been made, there are some empirical measures that I have found that are worth mentioning. Besides the gun crime rate (which I find somewhat useless, it’s not all that surprising that there’s more gun crime in a country with more guns…), one statistic advocates of gun control like to point to is the US murder rate. According to the most recent UN statistics, it stands at 4.2 per 100 000 inhabitants. This compares unfavourably to countries with somewhat similar cultures and socio-economic conditions with stricter gun control laws and less gun ownership such as the United Kingdom at 1.2 per 100 000 and Canada at 1.6 per 100 000.

At the same time though, a 1998 study published by the US Justice Department indicated that the rate of robbery was 1.4 times higher in England and Wales than in the US, and the British burglary rate nearly double America’s. More recently, a 2007 study showed that Britain had a much higher violent crime rate than the US and Canada, although the study was not perfect due to different definitions of what exactly constitutes a violent crime in the different jurisdictions. If they can be trusted, these statistics seem to illustrate my theory that gun control would result in less deterrence and thus more crime, but also less serious/deadly crimes when they are committed.

Besides this suggestion of a vague and rough statistical trend though, the empirical data tends to be all over the place, showing that other factors such as personalities, cultures, socio-economic level, and urban/rural character play a more decisive role than levels of gun ownership and strictness of gun control laws. Well-armed Switzerland has a low murder rate of 0.7 to 100 000, while gun controlled Estonia has a relatively high rate of 5.2 to 100 000 and gun controlled Mexico, with many law-circumventing armed drug lords, has a very high rate of 22.7 to 100 000. FBI data from 2011 indicates that heavy gun ownership states and loose gun control states in the US such as Wyoming, Iowa, and especially Vermont, have murder rates and violent crime rates below the national average, while Tennessee and Louisiana with similar gun statuses have both rates above the national average. Illinois, and especially the District of Columbia, have strict gun control laws and low gun ownership, but have murder and violent crime rates above the national average. Probably relative socio-economic conditions and status on the urban/rural spectrum account for these results more so than the gun control laws and gun ownership rates.

 

My Valuational Cost/Benefit List for stricter gun control:

Costs: #1, #3, #4, #5, #6.

Benefits: #2.

Valuational Comments:

#1: More deterrence of violent crime, less violent crime. This benefits everyone, both the gun owners doing the deterring directly and even non-gun owning members of the same society because criminals don’t know exactly who will be carrying a gun and who not, and if they know more people are armed, they may even be deterred by this knowledge from attacking people who in reality are not armed themselves. Reducing this deterrent effect is a cost of the policy for me, as I do not desire to engage in violent crime nor do I want to be a victim of it.

#2: Mitigating the damage that could potentially be caused by murderous criminals is the main attraction of gun control policies and I consider it a benefit.

#3: If the substitution effect is prevalent enough, gun control laws could increase power differentials between law-abiding citizens and murderous criminals. Home-made bombs or booby traps are the most likely substitute for guns that murderous criminals would use, and these things are not at all good for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves with. The result is less deterrence of crime while retaining similar deadliness, definitely a cost of the policy if this eventuality occurred.

#4: If criminals circumventing the law and getting guns anyway is prevalent enough, gun control laws could increase power differentials between law-abiding citizens and violent criminals. Law-abiding citizens are less well-armed while law-circumventing criminals retain almost the same level of weaponry. The result is again, less deterrence of crime while retaining similar deadliness and increasing the audaciousness of criminals, definitely a cost of the policy if this eventuality occurred.

#5: For an individualist like myself, this principle is negative. If I should find myself living in a dangerous area, I would want to be allowed to have the means of defending myself, not just hoping that the police are quick enough to help me. Others would probably feel the same way. This consideration should not be dismissed lightly, especially not by people who could not imagine wanting to own a gun just because they live in safe areas. In addition, as a libertarian, a principle of full dependence on government for anything, and the suppression of self-reliance, is something that I do not see as conducive to a free and prosperous society.

#6: Gun control would result in direct utility losses to those that had wanted to own guns previously. It may be argued that with guns more strictly controlled, less people would want to own a gun themselves, but even assuming this to be the case, not every owner of a gun would fall into this category and hence this utility effect must be considered a cost of the policy in my book, as I think that consumer satisfaction is a very important societal good to be pursued.

Overall: The costs of stricter gun control laws are very real, but so too is the benefit and it is a fairly large benefit at that. Due to effects #3 and #4, I don’t think that incredibly strict gun control would be effective enough in promoting beneficial effect #2 and would actually result in higher costs. I think reducing deterrence levels too low is dangerous and I dislike the general principle, effect #5. In addition, very strict gun control would also make more difficult a lot more utility-enhancing non-defensive uses of guns than a more moderate gun control policy. For these reasons, I think that gun control with the intent of substantially disarming the civilian populace is not wise. That being said, tailored, moderate controls designed to bring out the most of beneficial effect #2 in exchange for the least of the other, costly effects, could be warranted. Prohibiting civilians from owning, outside of a range, certain particularly destructive guns such as assault rifles with large magazines would be a possibility and perhaps better background checks for criminal records and mental illnesses before the purchasing of guns. Other measures such as registries, licensing, and carry permits strike me as ineffective or overly restrictive, based on my evaluation of the effects described above. 

 

Invalid Arguments

1. ‘The less guns in a society, the less people need to own guns, and thus the safer everyone becomes. The more guns in a society, the more people need to own guns, and thus everyone becomes less safe. Gun control establishes a virtuous circle of peace, gun proliferation a vicious circle of violence and paranoia.’

The problem with this argument is that it ignores the possibility of criminals substituting different weapons or of circumventing the law and getting guns anyway, as well as ignoring the value of deterrence. There will always be actual and potential violent criminals; the question is how to deal with them. A society with armed criminals (who get their guns illegally) and a gun controlled, relatively disarmed citizenry, is not the path to less crime and more peace, as the example of Mexico could be seen to illustrate. Furthermore, even if guns could really be totally outlawed among criminals and citizenry alike, this still would not eliminate violent crime. It would simply give a relatively greater combative advantage to those with strength, numbers, and hand-to-hand combat skills, something which gangs of criminals probably possess more of than law-abiding civilians. Historically, until about the 18^th century, because subsequent advances in weapons technology had not yet been made, hordes of tough nomads typically had a relative combative advantage over rich, established civilizations, as the vast Germanic, Arab, Turkish, and Mongol conquests can attest to, among others. The destructive power of weapons does not determine whether people will seek to be violent or not besides through the deterrent effect and the greater destructiveness effect that we discussed above.

2. ‘Massacres such as the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School are simply too horrific. Any measure, whatever the cost, must be undertaken to reduce the likelihood of such an event ever happening again, and this means strict gun control laws immediately’

The best time to talk about gun control in a rational and considered manner is probably not after such an emotionally-charged incident like a school massacre. Unfortunately, due to the nature of politics, this is precisely when gun control is talked about the most, with knee-jerk political reactions taking centre stage. One should definitely consider such massacres as they demonstrate the importance of beneficial effect #2. Restricting the access of psychotic murderers to destructive weaponry is certainly a good to be pursued, but definitely not at all costs. Though such a tragedy may prompt people to value beneficial effect #2 more highly, it does not make the effects that I deem as costs of pursuing gun control policies disappear. Also, besides banning all civilian firearms completely, it is not so easy to be sure that any gun control policies pursued will actually restrict the access to guns for such people, as discussed above. Though it can be hard in the face of such emotional events, one must always keep the big picture in mind and not overlook any aspect of the problem, even in the face of such events.