The False Dichotomy of More Gun Laws or More Gun Law Enforcement
All the necessary ingredients for a big change in policy around guns are on the table.
A long essay on a complicated subject—gun policy. The upshot is that gun policy does not need to be the third rail of politics. The problem of a chronic and outrageous level of gun violence is, in the politicians’ imagination, a subject so difficult and divisive it is simply unsolvable. But here’s the thing. 1. This problem is not going to get better without intervention and is getting worse—we have to stop admiring the carnage and start fixing the problem. 2. Public opinion on guns—just like public opinion on same-sex marriage and marijuana—has crystallized into a consensus for change. 3. The public’s reticence around new gun laws is built upon the mistaken belief that many common-sense laws are already on the books—so it is easy to put them on the books. In sum, American attitudes toward guns have changed in the last decade. And whenever public opinion shifts, America’s political leaders always lag American public opinion until they have to act. Now, they have to act.
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Philosophically, most Americans are consequentialists when it comes to gun policy. Or more specifically, they are utilitarian, which means they prefer public policies where the benefits of new rules exceed the costs. From this perspective, it is surpassingly easy to conclude that the benefits exceed the costs for many restrictions on gun ownership and use. And many restrictions pass this test even when the costs include the hard-to-value costs associated with limiting freedom.
This kind of calculus is very much in line with the conclusions of most law enforcement, who as a group, strongly support reasonable restrictions on access and use of firearms in the public sphere. If you study gun policy, that will come as no surprise. If it is new to you, here are statements from the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which supports a national firearms registry, the Police Executive Research Forum which supports limits on semi-automatic weapons, and the Major Cities Chiefs Association who calls for uniform background checks.
In my own cost-benefit analysis, I, along with most police officers, really do not want to encounter a firearm in my day-to-day routine. I prefer not to encounter any gun at all, but in particular, not to encounter really powerful guns or guns that shoot lots of bullets super quickly. And I, along with most police officers, strongly believe that easy access to semi-automatic weapons, whether a pistol or a long gun, is the fuel for criminal gun violence.
There’s nothing earth-shattering in any of that. An excellent summary of American public opinion from the always excellent Pew Research Center suggests those beliefs are closely aligned with most Americans.
And these attitudes are shared by most Americans. Overwhelmingly, rigorous, transparent, and objective scientific evidence also supports reasonable restrictions on firearms firepower and carrying and use outside the home. Things like background checks, limits on AR-15, and magazines with loads of bullets all easily pass a cost-benefit test.
So, what do we do? We should acknowledge first, that this problem of too many guns being used in you many violent crimes, mass murders, and suicides became much worse in 2020 with the largest year over year increase in homicide ever and the prospects for the next few years are grim. We should challenge the conventional wisdom that gun laws cannot be passed by simply acknowledging that American opinion on gun reform has shifted over the last decade. And that as a policy issue, guns are fundamentally no different from any other issue where a sustained change in public opinion has always led to real reforms. We should leverage—not be defeated by—the widespread beliefs that all sorts of gun laws are already on the books.
All the necessary ingredients for a big change in policy around guns are on the table.
More Guns Beget More Guns
But despite the growing consensus on the value of restricting gun ownership and use, here we are, in the middle of the largest expansion in gun ownership, ever. Or perhaps, ever—I have to say perhaps since we have vanishingly little data about guns in America, and among the things for which there are no official measures is how many Americans own a gun. Or how many people guns they own. Or how many of those guns work. Or how they are stored. Or how often folks carry them around. Or how often they take them out and wave them around or otherwise brandish them, presumably to intimidate others. Or why people own them.
The last question strikes me as critically important. The Pew survey suggests that self-defense is the primary reason. According to Pew, “[p]rotection tops the list of reasons why gun owners have a gun, according to the same survey. Two-thirds of gun owners (67%) say this is a major reason why they own a firearm.” But how is self-defense linked to the current surge in demand for guns?
There is a conundrum here that many studies have tried to sort out: why does gun ownership keep going up even as violent crime keeps going down? If self-defense is the motivation for buying a gun, why does gun ownership go up even when the need for a defensive weapon declines, by a lot?1
There are loads of explanations, from overwrought media coverage of street crime, to bigotry, to shrewd marketing by gun manufacturers. These are all contributors to our collective mendacity.
And it is all self-perpetuating. The reason why gun sales keep going up is that gun sales keep going up. If you are inclined to want a gun for self-defense, it seems reasonable to believe the person whom you imagine protecting yourself against also has a gun. And you don’t have to believe that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with the gun to be susceptible to this thinking—you just have to believe that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is ME with a gun.
So, the more guns that are out there, the more you need a gun for self-protection. Guns beget guns. I suppose for the narrowly business-minded, that makes for an excellent business model.
In the short term, more gun sales mean more gun sales.
Forget about Opening the Overton Window—Its Already Open
Policy types love to talk about the Overton Window, the mythical moment when the impossible becomes possible, where laws that have languished forever suddenly become viable. More specifically, the Overton Window is the idea that there is a narrow range of policies that the public is willing to consider at any given time.
There are two ways to get a policy that is outside the Window into that Window. One approach is to massage an idea until it becomes viable, which often means giving up the most important bits. The other approach is to wait until there is a kind of natural discontinuity in the policy narrative—where events conspire to throw open the Overton Window.
Sandy Hook Elementary, for most of us, was the defining moment in the gun policy debate. If there was an Overton Window around gun law reform, it was smashed by the horror of that morning. Here’s Barack Obama reading the names of the children killed at Sandy Hook:
But gun reform failed in 2013, exactly eight years ago this week, and since then no meaningful reforms have passed Congress. This is taken by many as evidence that gun reform is impossible, that it is the third rail of modern politics, that the task is Sisyphean. Regular readers of this newsletter will not be surprised that my position is that, like so much groupthink, conventional wisdom has it backward and vastly overstates the role our elected leaders play in shaping public opinion. Equally important, it vastly understates the role the public plays because it is often the public, not the ‘leadership’, that is the leading indicator.
More often than not, as Robert Pirsig notes, “[t]he truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.”
In this case, the truth is that the real Overton Window is simply about recognizing that a policy window is open, rather than finding a path to open it.
The reality of policy windows is that they tend either to open themselves or they stay closed. In the Rational Public, Benjamin Page and Robert Shapiro note that for perhaps two-thirds of domestic policy issues, American’s policy preferences are quite stable over time. For the remaining one-third, real shifts in public opinion are possible. Our purely partisan discourse of late has created unusual volatility in policy preferences, but the reality is that there are also big, long-term, secular shifts in American policy preferences.
For example, same-sex marriage languished for decades until President Barack Obama declared the anti-same-sex marriage DOMA Act to be unconstitutional. President Obama, in his own words, did not start out as a leader on this issue but had to “evolve” reflecting the broader shift in public opinion. You can see in these opinion data from Gallup that his evolution in 2011 lagged the public’s change in attitudes by about a decade.
Marijuana legalization is headed down the exact same path, and again, the change in public opinion is the leading indicator. And again, about a decade after supporters of marijuana legalization became the majority, the politicians are scrambling to change the law in response.
You can see where there is going. Here are the historical trends on changing gun laws.
What’s clear from these data is that Americans’ attitudes toward gun restrictions changed markedly after Sandy Hook. The popular narrative—that the only moment where gun laws could have changed was in the immediate aftermath of Sandy Hook—is wrong. Senator Chris Murphy noted this in 2019
“There was logic to the idea that if Sandy Hook didn’t create an epiphany in this country, what will?... But that’s not how politics works. There are almost no epiphany moments in American politics. You have to build your power, and we had none of it.”
It’s also not how the trajectory of public opinion works.
What’s clear from these data on these hot-button domestic policy issues is that it is the cumulative density of support that matters, a density measured as the partisan divide multiplied by time. As that density grows, political pressure mounts.
Leveraging the Unknown Knowns
The modern-day philosopher Donald Rumsfield ruminated on ‘known knowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns’ and his thinking is now a staple of both classrooms and press conferences. According to Don:
There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know."
Don Rumsfeld is not a favorite philosopher of mine for many reasons. One is demonstrated here, where he notably (and predictably), only defines three of the four possible dyads of knownness. He leaves out the one where he might be mistaken. It is arguably the most important: ‘unknown knowns’ which are things we think we know that we are dead wrong about.
So, why in the wake of horrific tragedies in Charleston and Sandy Hook, did gun law change fail? In part, I think, because policymakers ignored a fundamental truth: most Americans think lots of ‘common-sense’ gun rules are already law. What they think they know, is actually wrong.
We can’t address gun violence, mass murder, and gun-related terrorism until we understand our current laws regarding gun ownership. A 2013 study by Joel Benenson and his colleagues at the Benenson Strategy Group surveyed a random sample of Americans asking which reasonable gun safety laws were already in place. Here are some examples of things Americans overwhelmingly believe by law make a person prohibited from buying a firearm:
Active membership in an organization devoted to jihad,
A record of transfers of money to a terrorist organization, and
Also, American believe that:
Authorities are routinely notified when someone buys large amounts of ammunition or buys a weapon with a high-capacity clip (say 30 or more rounds).
Ammunition purchases on the internet are closely regulated.
People who become ineligible (join a terror group, convicted of felony domestic abuse, etc.) are routinely disarmed.
Only here’s the thing. None of these laws currently exist. For instance, in 2015, 244 people on the FBI terrorist watch list went through a background check when they attempted to buy a new gun. 223 of those purchases were allowed to proceed.
Now the key idea here isn’t whether banning terrorists from purchasing a weapon is a good idea or not or whether restrictions on gun ownership would reduce mass murders (I argue in this companion piece on Huffington Post that such restrictions would likely have prevented some, but certainly not all, of the recent mass crimes).
The key idea here is that Americans do not understand current law. This belief, that current law is not being enforced and thus there is no point in expanding gun safety laws, limits our ability to proactively change, to enact new laws that reflect our new reality. If people believe laws are preventing bad guys from getting guns, and they believe law enforcement is ineffective at enforcing those laws then the idea of new gun laws is pointless.
The Policy Agenda
So, the three points here are:
1. People buy guns because other people have guns, and in periods like the pandemic, that creates something of a self-perpetuating cycle leaving more guns in the hands of citizens than before.
2. There probably is no Overton Window, where events collide to create the perfect set of facts for gun reform. There is, however, a cumulative density of support that matters.
3. People believe all kinds of gun laws are already on the books that aren’t.
In my estimation, that makes the path relatively straightforward. Gun sales have spiraled up, creating a new equilibrium of gun ownership that may be at a higher level, which likely leaks a higher number of guns into the criminal market, which may help to perpetuate and sustain new, higher levels of gun violence. That in and of itself does not create an Overton Window, because there is no Overton Window and guns and will not be. But the fact of rising gun violence alone should be sufficient to act. The fact that people misunderstand what gun laws are already on the books is not a problem, it’s the mechanism for more reasonable law.
The daily horror of gun carnage is not inevitable. It only requires walking together through a door that is already open.
Musical Interlude
“One day, I will rise up and learn to fly, over my worries, over my troubles.” C’mon Congress, sing along, you know the words…
Quote of the week
“Leadership really loves earmarks. That’s the fish that herds the cats.” -- Politico
Perhaps a better question might be, how much larger would the crime decline between 1990 and 2019 have been if gun ownership had stayed at 1990s levels?
The False Dichotomy of More Gun Laws or More Gun Law Enforcement
Hi, just found your blog and thought this was an interesting post!
However, I'm not sure how to fit this with the partisan divide and the political realities of Congress, as well as the Supreme Court. More specifically- I think that we're seeing the exact phenomenon you talk about, but only for Democrats. In a Gallup post where they post that chart, it shows that Republicans are overwhelmingly satisfied with gun laws: 69% said they were Very/Somewhat satisfied, compared with a paltry 22% of Democrats (https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/dm1e_luomewwookywbu5ow.png). Republican legislators are then incredibly resistant to gun control, and there aren't 10 of them willing to compromise to overcome the filibuster for much of any bill. I mean, look at how much trouble Chris Murphy is having getting enough votes for any gun control measure!
Even then, according to the same Gallup statistic, of the 56% that are dissatisfied, apparently 8% want them to be even looser, and 7% are dissatisfied but want them to remain the same (which doesn't make much sense to me, but let's just go with the numbers), which really means that only 41% of the country wants stricter gun laws (https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/_dk1id2wpuyiw8nqqa5jig.png). And there's just no way to build a stable electoral majority around that, even if we got Senators who were willing to abolish the filibuster and enact gun control.
Finally, while I know this was just talking about the chances of gun control 'passing', I have a hard time imagining it standing up to the Supreme Court right now and becoming an enduring law. The Court has so far been surprisingly hesitant to speak on gun laws since Heller, but it seems to me that any proposal strong enough to actually materially affect gun crime rates would be enough to convince 5 of them to react.
Obviously, different proposals have different levels of support and could have much better chances of passing (background checks consistently poll well, I think, even if I've seen questions over whether they're actually all that effective). I'm just speaking in similarly general terms in this response as in the post. But, if anything, the escalating gun violence rates seem likely to play into the exact cycle you described, where more people are convinced that the only response to rising violence is to be 'the good guy with the gun' (for instance, this NYT article that talks about how even liberals are buying more guns https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/us/guns-2020-election.html). So the odds that a new consensus for gun control suddenly springs up seem pretty low, to me.
I guess I think (hope?) that someday there'll be a sustainable majority in favor of a wide variety of stricter gun control regulations that can really combat gun crime, but it just doesn't seem to me like that day is soon at all.
If you see this, I'm wondering how you think about this?
John, Nice article but clearly very one sided in favor of making all guns illegal. You miss some very obvious issues on gun control, that is, there are lots and lots of laws on the books regarding gun control in every State in our country but yet they don't do anything about gun violence. What makes you think passing some kind of legislation will do anything to alleviate criminals having guns to harm people? Gun violence is committed by violent people. They commit crime regardless of what the law says. What is the percentage of murders committed in this country by people that legally own and carry firearms? I'm positive the number is in the very low single digits. As far as limiting the number of rounds held in a pistol or rifle magazine, ludicrous on its face. Anyone with little training can swap out a magazine in two or three seconds at most. Does anyone with rational thinking believe that small amount of time is going to make a difference if an active shooter is chasing you through a building? Laws stating if you are on some kind of watch you can't own a firearm are just as ridiculous. Who is the person that puts you on the list? A nameless faceless bureaucrat with the ability to restrict you second amendment right? What other amendments does this person have the ability to curtail because they can? The most glaring issue you don't address why Congress does not address gun legislation is there is a Constitutional right to bear arms. Don't fall for the shallow " a well regulated militia" argument pushed by the left. Our founding fathers were very clear on the population having the ability to be armed in order to overthrow a tyrannical government. Keep in mind militias are formed by people from the local population who bring their own weapons. The writers of the Constitution knew and accepted this. The founding fathers did believe in some form of gun control in that they specifically and intentionally said people can "bear" arms which means to carry. This clearly does not permit people to own a canon or heavy machine gun which requires something more than an individual to move from place to place. Gun control is a very slippery slope. I fear anyone that claims you can change our Constitution by passing a couple of laws without the entire country voting on it. If you can change one of our "rights" this way you can change all the others as well in the exact same way.
FYI. I'm not a gun nut that believes some crazed lunatic can own a gun like the Sandy Hook psycho but taking someone's rights away from them must be done in a very careful and deliberate manner.