Gun Control—Posner’s Comment

There are two important lessons that can be drawn from Becker’s discussion of gun control. The first is that a problem that is not dealt with in its early stages may become insoluble. It is not only the sheer infeasibility of removing 200 million guns from the American population, but also the emergence of a gun culture, that has ended hopes of disarming the population. The more people who own guns, the more other people will want to own them as well for self-defense; and the further ownership spreads, the more normal it seems. The ownership of guns has always been common in rural areas (the lower population density of the United States compared to Western Europe is an important reason why private ownership of guns is so much greater here), where there are hunting opportunities and police are spread thin. But now it is common in the rough areas of cities as well. Drug dealers cannot rely on police to enforce their deals and therefore have to arm themselves, and their law-abiding neighbors decide they had better be armed as well. (The news media create an exaggerated fear of violent crime, and this also contributes to the demand for guns by law-abiding people.) If population density continues to grow and the drug trade were legalized, gun ownership might begin to fall. 

Gun purchases soared in the economic crisis from which we are now (it seems) recovering. Partly this may have been due to increased cash hoarding (the sale of safes also soared) and to an increase in property crimes, but it may have been due mainly to a generalized fear that increased the demand for symbols of security. 

The second lesson is the unwisdom of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions that have created—on the basis of a tendentious interpretation of the drafting history of the Second Amendment and an intellectually untenable (as it seems to me) belief in “originalist” interpretations of the Constitution—a constitutional right to possess guns for personal self-defense. The result is to impose a significant degree of nationwide uniformity on a problem that is not uniform throughout the nation. The case for private gun ownership is much stronger in largely rural states, such as Arizona—states in which there is a deeply entrenched and historically understandable gun culture and a rationally greater lawful demand for private gun ownership than in the suburban areas of the densely populated midwestern, northeastern, and mid-Atlantic states—than it is in big cities with high crime rates—cities that have long had very strict gun laws many of which may now be ruled unconstitutional. 

Though gun ownership cannot be forbidden any longer, it can (even under the new constitutional regime) be regulated, as Becker emphasizes. Gun-registration laws aimed at denying gun ownership to lunatics and persons with a history of criminal activity, coupled with heavy punishment of dealers or customers who violate or evade the laws, should survive constitutional challenge. Federal “felon in possession” laws already provide for heavy punishment of persons forbidden to own a gun because they have been convicted of a felony, if they are caught with a gun in their possession. Loopholes in gun-registration laws, such as permitting the sale of guns at gun shows without requiring the screening of purchasers, can be closed. And punishment can be enhanced, even more than at present, for persons who use a gun in committing a crime. A reduction in the criminal use of guns would in turn reduce the demand by law-abiding persons, and as that demand fell so might the demand of guns by criminals, given stiff punishment costs. A virtuous cycle might be initiated that would lead eventually to a significant overall decline in gun ownership.

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