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John Lott shows why liberals are simple-minded on gun control. August 11, 2003 Conservatives, a new study says, are
simple-minded, to which I say that's partly true; some of us sometimes
are, but I would argue that the characterization applies to some liberal
dispositions, such as the one on gun control.
It's not that there are no brainy liberals, but if you keep a close
eye on this tribe, you can't ignore its constantly surfacing,
unsophisticated supposition that good governmental intentions
necessarily translate into good social results.
The gun-control issue is revealing in this respect. We're always been
told that one more well-meaning law on top of the thousands in existence
will somehow be the one that does the trick. The logic seems to be that
the proposed law, whatever it is, will in fact shrink the number of guns
that find their way into suicidal, irresponsible or criminal hands, and
that the number of gun deaths will be reduced as well.
The truth, as John Lott has shown, is more nearly the opposite.
Spread the guns around. Therein lies death reduction.
Lott, a tall, thin, intense-seeming man I visited with the other day,
is an economist who has taught at prestige universities such as Yale and
is now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. To an
extent few can have matched, he has amassed and analyzed data about gun
use, and he has provided empirical evidence that the liberal formula is
hokum.
His books - "More Guns, Less Crime" and "The Bias
Against Guns" - use statistics to make the case that gun-control
laws are ineffectual and worse. They do not reduce crime or killings.
They have the opposite effect. After tough new gun laws were enacted in
England, violent crime took off as if headed for the moon. According to
Lott, a better way to address crime is through laws making it legal and
easy for average citizens to carry weapons.
Counterintuitive? It may seem that way, Lott tells us in the book on
gun bias, because media so seldom report on the endless incidents in
which citizens avert crime by brandishing a gun and scaring off the bad
guy. He makes the obvious point that those who obey gun-control laws are
not criminals but people who abide by the law. Disarm the populace, and
the armed criminals have fewer disincentives to do their damage. Make it
easier for citizens to have guns, and the would-be robber or mugger has
something to worry about. The upshot: Laws allowing concealed-weapons
reduce crime.
Some liberals don't like it when you pop their balloons, and the
attack on Lott has been as relentless as it has been mean-spirited. It
has been implied that he used fake data for one assertion, when in truth
he made it immediately clear to colleagues that some data had been lost
after a computer crash, spelled out how it could be replicated and has
since replicated it himself.
There also has been a responsible response to him and other social
scientists whose research supports his, namely research arriving at a
different conclusion about the consequences of concealed-weapons laws.
But this conclusion, which Lott says is based on a flawed reading of the
data, is not quite so different as Lott's opponents might hope. Even
these researchers agree you cannot deduce from the data that the
concealed-weapons laws lead to significant increases in crime.
Based on the evidence, the liberals are mistaken in their gun-control
enthusiasms, and the same is the case with any number of their ideas
about pressing governmental buttons here and getting desired outcomes
over there.
Something else that appears simple-minded is the study that portrayed
conservatives as simple-minded. It also called conservatives rigid,
intolerant of just about everything but inequality, fear-ridden, angry,
pessimistic and, well, you might not want your daughter marrying one of
them.
I haven't laid my hands on the report yet, but I know from articles
on it that the authors define conservatism in such a way as to allow
them to lump President Ronald Reagan with Adolf Hitler, and that while
the authors must see themselves as capable of rational observation, they
think those with different outlooks are captives of non-rational
psychological forces. Sounds ad hominem to me. Sounds simplistic.
I wonder how these guys stand on gun control.
Jay Ambrose is director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard
Newspapers. He may be reached at ambrosej@shns.com. Copyright 2003, Caller.com. All Rights Reserved. |
