There is little economics per se in mass shootings. However, some ideas from social sciences generally can foster insights on which policy responses are realistic or not. The same ideas apply to other current issues like health insurance and illegal immigration.
Start with “path dependence,” an insight popularized in economics by Douglass North, a 1993 Nobel laureate. It argues that while there may be many ways to solve some challenge, once you choose one alternative, you constrain future choices.
In economic history — North’s field — this often involved technology.
There is no particular reason to set railroad tracks 56.5 inches apart, rather than 60 or 50 or any other measurement. But once track was laid at this gauge, building new lines at the same standard was best. Those of a certain age may remember that Sony’s Beta video tape recording system was technologically better than VHS format in many ways, but once VHS pulled ahead in popularity, it was destined to dominate — and become the standard for a generation.
What applies to technology can also apply to institutions or policies. Let private businesses build telegraph lines and that policy will persist, as in the United States. Have government do it, perhaps for military reasons, as in much of Europe, then that will continue. Set up a mandatory health financing system that covers all workers so that they will not be drawn to Marxism, as German Chancellor Bismarck did, and a government role in health provision will be the norm, as in Europe. Have large private companies offer free health coverage as a way to evade a wartime wage freeze, as in the United States, and you will end up with our system.
When it comes to gun policy, this is the path we in the U.S. have chosen: We allow or even encourage the sale of a wide range of firearms without recording who buys which rifles and shotguns until there is nearly one gun per inhabitant; we let tens of millions of them be only slightly less capable versions of military weapons; and we award elected office to those who use political demagoguery such as “they are going to take your guys away.” Further add a Supreme Court change in Second Amendment interpretation from what had been accepted doctrine for a least a century, and we will find it impossible to meaningfully reduce the number of guns held by the public.
I’m a long-time shooter. I also am appalled by the insane culture that we have developed around firearms. But when I hear anti-gun advocates argue that “we are finally going to get gun control” and assume it will make much difference, I shake my head.
First of all, guns are a “consumer durable.” They don’t really wear out. You can require tire pressure sensors or rear-facing TV cameras on all new cars and after a decade or so, most vehicles in use will have these features — because old cars wear out. Ban the manufacture and sale of gun magazines holding more than 10 rounds or of any firearm using them or with provisions for a bayonet, folding stock or semiautomatic fire, and decades later there still will be tens of millions of such arms, all fully functional, held by the public.
Yes, you could emulate Australia and pass a law prohibiting ownership of such devices. But after decades of increasingly extreme rhetoric about U.S. government agents coming to take your guns, voluntary compliance would be very poor. Do you then start going door to door in Alabama or Idaho or even Pipestone County, Minn., searching the premises for taboo items? There are constitutional questions with that. And guns and ammunition are easy things to hide.
Radical right warnings that civil war would break out if there was any nation-wide attempt to confiscate certain firearms are overblown. However, the chances that there would be armed resistance and attempts at insurrection are very realistic.
Yes, ban the sale of ammunition or its components and eventually there will be nothing to fire from the banned guns. But the ban would have to apply to virtually all cartridges, because it is possible to salvage powder, primers and bullets from popular hunting calibers and reload the military wannabe ones. Moreover, the most rabid owners already have stocks of thousands of rounds. And 100-year-old cartridges generally fire just fine.
I understand the frustrations of many citizens — pro-gun rights and anti-gun alike — appalled by these shootings. But they need to understand that the measures they advocate will make only minor differences in the availability of guns until decades have passed. We have hewn ourselves a path with policies followed over the last half century and by cultural changes, often ones fostered by political cynicism. There is no simple way to deviate from this path. Progressives need to understand this.
A very analogous policy situation exists with illegal immigrants, and conservatives need to understand that. In Biblical and legal senses, we have “suffered” millions of people to come here from other countries over years and even decades. They have gotten jobs, rented or bought houses, had children and purchased consumer goods. We have never punished in any significant way those who employ such illegal immigrants.
Moreover, there is no simple way to identify those with illegal status. Some have physiognomy and speech characteristics that suggest they might be. But there are tens of millions of other people, citizens born here or legally naturalized who look the same and may talk similarly. We are a nation of laws and have a Constitution that requires probable cause for detention. Even ignoring the Posse Commitatus Act that limits the use of military forces domestically, we are not going to call out the National Guard and order the rounding up everyone who looks or sounds like they might be an illegal immigrant.
Moreover, we have in place laws and we have signed treaties providing that illegal immigrants detained have at least minimal rights to a hearing or other status review before we expel them. That system is already overwhelmed. There is little voter support for appropriating vastly more money to fund its expansion. A recent federal immigration raid picking up 500 people made headlines. We would need 20,000 such raids to catch 10 million people, the number often cited for people here illegally.
Returning to guns, one also should pay attention to the work of Israeli-American psychologist Daniel Kahneman, the 2002 economics Nobelist, on how humans assess risks in their decision making. We tend to overestimate unfamiliar risks and underestimate familiar ones. We focus on quasi-assault rifles that, overall, cause few deaths, and ignore garden variety pistols and revolvers used in most murders. We are shocked by mass shootings, but ignore the 15,000 or so gun suicides each year. And anti-gun activists who do focus on such gun suicides often ignore the fact that overall U.S. suicide rates are not markedly different from rates in European countries that have far more drastic controls on gun ownership. News of terrorists plowing down a few pedestrians with cars motivates some parents to keep their kids home from semesters in Europe, when actual data would show that they would be as safe in London or Paris as in Minneapolis or Northfield.
The intent of all of this is not an argument that we should throw up our hands and do nothing. It is that we should be more realistic about the choices we face. Both gun violence and illegal immigration have taken on enormous symbolism involving great emotional weight for both ends of the political spectrum. This is a detriment to good decision-making.