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HOW TO THINK ABOUT THE GUN CONTROL DEBATE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2019

Timothy Hsiao
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Abstract

Many on both sides of the gun control debate are under the impression that the best way to settle it is by weighing outcomes in the context of a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis. This article suggests that this way of thinking about the gun control debate is fundamentally mistaken. What matters is not the risk (or lack thereof) that guns pose to society, but simply whether guns are a reasonable means of self-defence when used to resist crimes. What this means is that even if we were to grant the claim that gun ownership decreases average safety, it wouldn't follow that restrictive gun control measures would be justified.

Type
Research Article
Information
Think , Volume 18 , Issue 52 , Summer 2019 , pp. 21 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2019 

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References

Notes

1 A review of the literature analysed 90 findings across 41 different studies and found that all of the methodologically strongest studies do not support the thesis that gun ownership causes more crime. See Kleck, Gary, ‘The Impact of Gun Ownership Rates on Crime Rates: A Methodological Review of the Evidence’, Journal of Criminal Justice 43(1) (2015): 40–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 This point is also made in Baker, Deane-Peter, Citizen Killings: Liberalism, State Policy, and Moral Risk (New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2016)Google Scholar.

3 Kleck, Gary and Delone, Miriam, ‘Victim Resistance and Offender Weapon Effects in Robbery’, Journal of Quantitative Criminology 9(1) (1993): 55–81Google Scholar.

4 Kleck, Gary and Kates, Don B., Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2001), 288–93Google Scholar.

5 Southwick, Lawrence Jr., ‘Self-Defense with Guns: The Consequences’, Journal of Criminal Justice 28 (2000): 351–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Tark, Jongyeon and Kleck, Gary, ‘Resisting Crime: The Effect of Victim Action on the Outcomes of Crimes’, Criminology 42(4) (2004): 861–909CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Hart, Timothy and Miethe, Terance, ‘Self-Defensive Gun Use by Crime Victims: A Conjunctive Analysis of its Situational Contexts’, Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 25(1) (2009): 6–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Guerette, Rob and Santana, Shannon, ‘Explaining Victim Self-Protective Behavior Effects on Crime Incident Outcomes: A Test of Opportunity Theory’, Crime and Delinquency 56 (2010): 198–226CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Leshner, Alan I., Altevogt, Bruce M., Lee, Arlene F., McCoy, Margaret A., and Kelley, Patrick W. (eds) Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence (National Academies Press, 2013), 15–16Google Scholar.

10 See the discussion in Kleck and Kates, Armed. Also see Kleck, Gary, Targeting Guns: Firearms and their Control (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1997), 147–59Google Scholar.

11 Leshner et al., Priorities for Research, 15.

12 Kleck, Gary and Gertz, Marc, ‘Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun’, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 86(1) (1995): 150–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig, ‘Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms’, National Institute of Justice Research Brief (May 1997). Also see Cook, and Ludwig, , ‘Defensive Gun Uses: New Evidence from a National Survey’, Journal of Quantitative Criminology 14(2) (1998): 111–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Kleck and Kates, Armed, 213–83, for a discussion of their results.

14 Kleck and Kates, Armed, 229–35. There are at least two other problems with the NCVS that would lead to undercounting of defensive gun uses. First, research has found that the NCVS underestimates crime frequency, which means that it would also underestimate defensive gun uses in response to crime. Second, respondents to the NCVS often fail to give positive answers to cases in which a crime happened but where no harm was dealt. Since most defensive gun uses result in neither property loss nor injury, the crimes for which they are a response are often never reported as crimes to begin with.

15 For reasons explained earlier, this number is very probably a gross underestimation, but I am granting it for the sake of argument.