From an emotional standpoint, I am at as much of a loss as anyone else to say something new or insightful when word arrives of yet another tragic nightmare involving a gun. One literally does not have enough time to process the immense horror of Colorado Springs before the still greater horror of San Bernardino (or Killeen, or Newtown, or Blacksburg, or . . . ) demands our collective attention and grief. The particular facts of each event may change, but the emotions elicited fundamentally do not; each time we have almost healed, we are hurt again. One is reminded, grimly, of Sisyphus, or perhaps of the punishment of Prometheus.
But from a logical standpoint, the conversation about guns in this country is so heated that no moderate position feels tenable, so vicious that only the most self-righteous dare attempt to defend their beliefs, and so much more concerned with signaling than with solutions that nothing meaningful can ever be accomplished by it.
This, then, is an attempt to return to first principles and thereafter tackle the problem dispassionately. This approach may strike some as callous. It may well be (I invite my readers to recall the title of this blog). But a new lens is needed, and this is the best I can come up with. I have a bias, but herein I make as great an effort as I can to keep it in check. I hope my thinking is helpful. My approach begins with one question:
What is the optimal number of mass shootings?
The immediate and obvious answer is, of course, "zero." As is often the case in matters of public policy, the immediate and obvious answer is not just wrong, but impossible.
There is an error of argumentative logic known as the nirvana fallacy. As the great (Northwestern-educated!) economist Harold Demsetz succinctly described it in 1969, the nirvana fallacy occurs when one "presents the relevant choice as between an ideal norm and an existing 'imperfect' institutional arrangement. This nirvana approach differs considerably from a comparative institution approach in which the relevant choice is between alternative real institutional arrangements." In other words, it is fallacious either to insist that any proposed policy must achieve an unattainable "nirvana" outcome, or to discredit other policies because they fall short of that outcome.
As a first step in solving the problem of gun violence, we must recognize that eliminating all mass shootings is almost certainly an unattainable "nirvana" outcome. The United States is an extremely wealthy, extremely diverse nation with a population that now exceeds 320 million; with so many people, so much money, and so many ideologies swirling about, a great many wildly improbable things happen here every day. While changes in policy may reduce the probability of a mass shooting asymptotically toward zero, they cannot reduce it to zero. (To be maximally philosophical, I would say that nothing has probability zero.)
Make no mistake: I don't doubt that this or that or the other particular gun control measure would probably prevent at least some mass shootings, and homicides in general. My argument is not the same one gun rights advocates make when they claim that anyone who wants to harm someone else will find a way to do so, regardless of whether a gun is available--it is narrower than that. What I am saying is that at least one person who wants to harm someone else with a gun will find a way to obtain a gun. The law of large numbers essentially demands it.
So, if the optimal number of mass shootings is not zero, the next most obvious choice is "as few as possible." This answer has the advantage of being, by definition, possible. I also think it is a wrong answer, both morally and in the sense that almost anyone who believes it is at best naive and possibly dishonest.
The "as few as possible" mindset means that no policy is off the table. In particular, it not only allows but requires the confiscation of all guns, including those already legally obtained and kept by peaceful, law-abiding citizens (which describes the substantial majority of gun owners)--we know this because at least one mass shooting (Newtown, for example) was perpetrated by a person who obtained guns, by force or otherwise, from someone who legally, peacefully owned them. Gun rights zealots often like to throw around the pejorative "gun grabber" to describe any person who supports even the mildest of gun rights restrictions; most gun control advocates indignantly refuse this label, but they cannot do so in good conscience if they believe in "as few as possible." Every gun in the hands of a responsible person necessarily increases the probability that a gun will find its way into the hands of an irresponsible person.
This doesn't end with private citizens, either. A police officer is a potential mass shooter, or at least a potential source of weapons for a mass shooter, so "as few as possible" requires disarming the police. (Note that I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to this.) The same goes for the military, or at least for that part of the military stationed within the United States.
But we are not done. "As few as possible" requires a vast array of policies that have relatively little to do with guns, but have negative repercussions that (in my view, anyway) far outweigh their benefits or are otherwise incompatible with the values of a free and open society. We know that at least one mass shooter was drunk and high when he committed his crimes, so the reinstatement of alcohol prohibition and a tightening of the screws on marijuana prohibition are needed, because as few as possible. We know that at least one mass shooter used cover of darkness to his advantage so as to avoid capture and continue his spree, so mandatory curfews must be imposed by law, because as few as possible. Closed-circuit TV cameras in all public places would catch at least some people carrying weapons and increase the probability that they would be stopped before beginning a rampage, so we need those cameras, because as few as possible. Police could be given wide latitude to detain suspects indefinitely and compel them to produce government-issued identification, because as few as possible. Your Internet communications, your phone calls, your mail can be constantly monitored to see if you are considering committing a shooting, because as few as possible. At the most extreme end of the spectrum, the population could be compelled to wear electronic tagging devices to monitor its movements, because as few as possible.
A typical gun control advocate, mostly to his or her credit, would read the above paragraph and think "How preposterous! I'd never support those policies." That's a good thing, for any of those policies would do serious harm to the civic culture of any liberal democracy that attempted them. But the gun control advocate must then concede that his or her answer to the question "What is the optimal number of mass shootings?" is not "As few as possible;" he or she is willing to accept an increased probability of mass shootings in exchange for something else.
And that's important, because one of the most common criticisms hurled in the direction of those who would wish to own guns is that they supposedly believe that "the deaths of these people are less important than [their] right to own a gun." I don't doubt that some gun owners actually do believe that--but if you replace the phrase "own a gun" with "drink a beer" or "go out in public, day or night, without having my movements monitored by the state" or "be protected against unreasonable search and seizure," the same could be said of gun control advocates themselves.
And you know what? That's okay. The existence of a free society entails risk; it is indisputably true that the preservation of some liberties leads, directly or indirectly, to the loss of some number of theoretically salvageable lives. Sometimes, in the abstract, those liberties may strike us, emotionally, as not worth the toll of lives. (Think of the lives we could save if cars were banned. Think of how awful you would feel if someone accused you of believing that your right to own a car outweighed the lives of people killed by drunk or reckless drivers. Try to reconcile that with the fact that banning cars is still a dumb idea.) And yet those liberties are nonetheless indispensable.
My point in writing this is not that the right to own a gun is, in fact, more important than the lives of mass shooting victims; I honestly don't feel equipped with the ethical and intellectual faculties to answer that question. My point is that any two people who engage in a debate about guns, or indeed any other public policy topic, bring with them implicit value judgments about rights--about how many lives, X, civil liberty Y is worth--that can be framed as morally questionable. And those value judgments, of course, necessarily implicate other value judgments about how much good or value or worth civil liberty Y carries. The debate must not be about which rights are important and which are unimportant, but about which rights are more important and which are less important, and sorting that out requires some discomfiting exercises in the calculus of human misery. In the most gruesome way of thinking about these things, your freedoms--no matter which freedoms we mean or how much of them you have--are paid for with the blood of innocents; there is no escaping this conclusion.
If you are pro-gun control, your opponents do not believe that your life is worth nothing, and if you are pro-gun rights, your opponents do not believe that your civil liberties are worth nothing. You and your opponents simply differ on what the appropriate exchange rate between the two is.
But we are not done. "As few as possible" requires a vast array of policies that have relatively little to do with guns, but have negative repercussions that (in my view, anyway) far outweigh their benefits or are otherwise incompatible with the values of a free and open society. We know that at least one mass shooter was drunk and high when he committed his crimes, so the reinstatement of alcohol prohibition and a tightening of the screws on marijuana prohibition are needed, because as few as possible. We know that at least one mass shooter used cover of darkness to his advantage so as to avoid capture and continue his spree, so mandatory curfews must be imposed by law, because as few as possible. Closed-circuit TV cameras in all public places would catch at least some people carrying weapons and increase the probability that they would be stopped before beginning a rampage, so we need those cameras, because as few as possible. Police could be given wide latitude to detain suspects indefinitely and compel them to produce government-issued identification, because as few as possible. Your Internet communications, your phone calls, your mail can be constantly monitored to see if you are considering committing a shooting, because as few as possible. At the most extreme end of the spectrum, the population could be compelled to wear electronic tagging devices to monitor its movements, because as few as possible.
A typical gun control advocate, mostly to his or her credit, would read the above paragraph and think "How preposterous! I'd never support those policies." That's a good thing, for any of those policies would do serious harm to the civic culture of any liberal democracy that attempted them. But the gun control advocate must then concede that his or her answer to the question "What is the optimal number of mass shootings?" is not "As few as possible;" he or she is willing to accept an increased probability of mass shootings in exchange for something else.
And that's important, because one of the most common criticisms hurled in the direction of those who would wish to own guns is that they supposedly believe that "the deaths of these people are less important than [their] right to own a gun." I don't doubt that some gun owners actually do believe that--but if you replace the phrase "own a gun" with "drink a beer" or "go out in public, day or night, without having my movements monitored by the state" or "be protected against unreasonable search and seizure," the same could be said of gun control advocates themselves.
And you know what? That's okay. The existence of a free society entails risk; it is indisputably true that the preservation of some liberties leads, directly or indirectly, to the loss of some number of theoretically salvageable lives. Sometimes, in the abstract, those liberties may strike us, emotionally, as not worth the toll of lives. (Think of the lives we could save if cars were banned. Think of how awful you would feel if someone accused you of believing that your right to own a car outweighed the lives of people killed by drunk or reckless drivers. Try to reconcile that with the fact that banning cars is still a dumb idea.) And yet those liberties are nonetheless indispensable.
My point in writing this is not that the right to own a gun is, in fact, more important than the lives of mass shooting victims; I honestly don't feel equipped with the ethical and intellectual faculties to answer that question. My point is that any two people who engage in a debate about guns, or indeed any other public policy topic, bring with them implicit value judgments about rights--about how many lives, X, civil liberty Y is worth--that can be framed as morally questionable. And those value judgments, of course, necessarily implicate other value judgments about how much good or value or worth civil liberty Y carries. The debate must not be about which rights are important and which are unimportant, but about which rights are more important and which are less important, and sorting that out requires some discomfiting exercises in the calculus of human misery. In the most gruesome way of thinking about these things, your freedoms--no matter which freedoms we mean or how much of them you have--are paid for with the blood of innocents; there is no escaping this conclusion.
If you are pro-gun control, your opponents do not believe that your life is worth nothing, and if you are pro-gun rights, your opponents do not believe that your civil liberties are worth nothing. You and your opponents simply differ on what the appropriate exchange rate between the two is.
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