ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax
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The gun control supporters who are undeterred by a hypothetical increase in violent crime may believe that:
1. Reduced use of guns in suicide outweighs the change in crime.
2. Ditto for accidental shootings (especially children playing with guns).
3. The change will increase the safety of presently unarmed citizens (including children, those with poor vision, etc) at the expense of armed citizens, although net effect is a reduction in average safety. Armed citizens can no longer stop an attack by brandishing a weapon, but the unarmed face a world with fewer guns. Of course, if gun ownership (plausibly) has positive externalities in the form of general deterrence, this need not hold.
Reduced access to guns has not been shown to reduce suicide; people turn to other means. The only proven effect of the so-called Brady Bill is a shift from shooting to hanging among older suicides with no change in the total.
Accidental shootings (especially children playing with guns) are going down as gun ownership is going up. Education is the key factor. The NRA offers a program called "Eddie The Eagle" which if widely implemented would eliminate most of the trivial number of accidental shootings of children.
The presumption of increased overall safety is based on the fallacious notion that disarming the law-abiding would make potential attackers less dangerous.