Richard Epstein on gun control

Richard Epstein of the Hoover Institute has a thoughtful essay on gun control.

Excerpt:

Today, upwards of 200 million firearms of all descriptions are available for general use in the United States. Amnesty programs have made only a tiny dent in that number. The imposition of a tough registration program will lead to a substantial reduction in the number of guns in circulation. But even tough gun laws may have had little impact on people like James Holmes. Holmes showed no danger signs, except perhaps that he was a bit of a loner, not an uncommon trait. He had cleared all background checks when he purchased his weapon. If Colorado banned guns, would he have acquired the same weapons out of state or in the illegal market? No one knows.

The situation is even more complex when the focus shifts to the impact of gun laws more generally. Here, the key insight is that reducing the total number of guns is not the only likely effect of the law. The prohibitions in question will also shift the ratio of guns held in lawful and unlawful hands to favor the latter. To take the extreme case, suppose that a gun control law can eliminate 99.9 percent of the guns now in circulation and that all of the remaining 200,000 guns are in the hands of hardened criminals. We can confidently predict that crime will go up unless and until there is a vast expansion of the public police force.

Less dramatic shifts in that critical ratio should produce less dramatic results, but ones that cut in the same direction. Potential criminals, knowing that they are less likely to meet armed resistance will, on average, be more likely to commit various kinds offenses. The empirical data suggests that this grim logic might even apply to mass killers intent on suicide, who do not like the prospect of being gunned down by strangers before they can kill their desired targets.

Indeed, at least one serious academic paper by the economists John Lott and William Landes finds a positive connection between tough gun laws and an increase in mass killings. That data could easily be disputed. But what cannot be denied is the intelligible economic theory that undergirds its conclusions. The basic point here is that in any gun-free environment (such as that of Virginia Tech), the assailant knows that he will not meet with any immediate armed resistance, and this puts innocent people at risk.

So what then to do? It may well be that the best strategy is a combination of both carrots and sticks. A ban on the sale and possession of assault weapons makes sense on the ground if it is true that there are few lawful uses of guns and many dangerous ones. One does not have to lurch to Mayor Bloomberg’s intemperate Wild-West scenario to think that it may well be wise to increase the use of concealed firearms by off-duty police officers, military people, and private security guards who normally carry these weapons as part of their jobs. The task of preventing violence requires a difficult balancing act that is inconsistent with both a fierce defense and a fierce denunciation of all gun control measures.

I agree with Epstein that it is not at all clear that stricter gun control would reduce massacres and gun crime in general,  and in fact it might make things worse. Strict control would primarily have the effect of disarming the citizenry, leaving criminals with more gun-free zones in which to use their illegally-obtained guns with impunity.

Crime control is always a balance. We can reduce crime via totalitarian measures, of course, but then the criminals are the government, and crime is not really reduced at all. Freedom always means the freedom to do evil, and there may not be anything decisive we can do about it.

That said, I do believe that the violence in our media is bad. It is wrong to blame the producers of the Batman movie for the massacre, but it is not entirely a surprise that one deranged man might act out violently in response to a wildly popular and seductively violent film. The only way I see to help reduce the likelihood of such real violence is to bring more civility and simple decency to our public square. Why not make more movies that portray a humane way of life?

Not likely to happen anytime soon. We are addicted to vicarious violence, and we may just have to accept that once in a while some madman will make real the violent fantasies we crave and pay so much to enjoy.