There are two obvious effects (guns are more deadly than other weapons, but guns are also a deterrent) and it is not clear which is stronger. It’s one of those issues where natural experiments or instrumental variables are our best bet for gaining knowledge, and of course anyone with a stat background will know the troubles with those techniques.
That said, there are studies using those techniques and they are better than a cursory glance at gun laws and homicide rates by country (or by state). And, to my understanding, the results of those studies are resoundly mixed. Some of these are quite controversial, but we’re talking about tricky statistical techniques surrounding an emotional political issue, so controversy will abound even if the results are sound.
My takeaway is that this is not an issue worth getting very passionate about one way or the other. Your knowledge should drive your emotions, and if you don’t know what effect is strongest, then you should save your emotional energy for more clear-cut or important causes.
If anyone knows of any very elegant studies, please correct me. Obviously I haven’t read the whole literature.
Oh, I like this. I like this a lot. The underlying attitude, I mean. I’m going see if I can’t extrapolate a general policy from this, actually. Something like:
“In a world where there still exist children that live (or, more likely, die) on garbage heaps, the fact that we’re still arguing about [whatever issue] implies to me that it’s not a low hanging fruit, and we should just go work on those instead.”
There are two obvious effects (guns are more deadly than other weapons, but guns are also a deterrent) and it is not clear which is stronger. It’s one of those issues where natural experiments or instrumental variables are our best bet for gaining knowledge, and of course anyone with a stat background will know the troubles with those techniques.
That said, there are studies using those techniques and they are better than a cursory glance at gun laws and homicide rates by country (or by state). And, to my understanding, the results of those studies are resoundly mixed. Some of these are quite controversial, but we’re talking about tricky statistical techniques surrounding an emotional political issue, so controversy will abound even if the results are sound.
My takeaway is that this is not an issue worth getting very passionate about one way or the other. Your knowledge should drive your emotions, and if you don’t know what effect is strongest, then you should save your emotional energy for more clear-cut or important causes.
If anyone knows of any very elegant studies, please correct me. Obviously I haven’t read the whole literature.
Oh, I like this. I like this a lot. The underlying attitude, I mean. I’m going see if I can’t extrapolate a general policy from this, actually. Something like:
“In a world where there still exist children that live (or, more likely, die) on garbage heaps, the fact that we’re still arguing about [whatever issue] implies to me that it’s not a low hanging fruit, and we should just go work on those instead.”