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Few public-policy debates are so badly understood -- so dominated by claptrap, half-truths and false expectations -- as the national controversy over guns. Guns are dangerous, guns are bad: get rid of guns and we will all be safe and happy. That's an old and familiar point of view, and one that is still shared by many Americans. On the other side stand 80 million U.S. gun owners who insist on their right to buy and keep firearms for sport and self-protection. They say, rightly, that the overwhelming majority of gun owners are law-abiding, responsible citizens who pose no risk to society. And when asked about the soaring murder rate in the inner city -- the fact that the number of young black men who die by gunfire each year has more than doubled -- gun owners tend to respond with some variant of the old cliche: it is criminals, not guns, who do the killing.
It would be comforting to suggest that the remedy for gun crime and gun violence lies somewhere between these polar extremes -- that there is some simple, low-cost solution that will satisfy both sides and save thousands of lives in the bargain. But there is no such solution, and there is no real hope that anyone -- politician, policy wonk or concerned citizen -- will come up with a miracle cure for the gun pathology that ails us. There is a gun of some type in one out of every two U.S. households. Americans own 65 million to 70 million pistols, 125 million to 130 million rifles and shotguns, and a million or more "assault weapons." Since guns are extremely durable, this vast private arsenal isn't going to disappear any time soon: we're stuck with it.
So what, if anything, should we do about guns? How should we attempt to reduce the role that firearms play in violent crime and homicide in particular? After years of dithering (and some "reforms" that actually undermined gun control), Congress is now taking modest steps to limit the spread of guns. One is the Brady Law of 1993, which imposed a five-day waiting period and mandatory background check on all persons who seek to buy a handgun. The other is the crime bill of 1994, now awaiting final approval by the House and Senate. The crime bill has run into last-ditch opposition from pro-gun forces in the House. But if it survives intact, the bill will outlaw the sale and possession of 19 specific assault weapons. Both Brady and the assault-weapons ban have generated huge amounts of favorable publicity. They look like setbacks for the National Rifle Association, and many Americans no doubt believe something is finally being done to reduce gun violence. Not true. Though there are good arguments for background checks, few experts on crime and guns think either measure will actually save lives.
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Real gun control, assuming it is possible at all, is probably years away. Those who support further restrictions on gun ownership, like Rep. Charles Schumer of New York, predict that Congress will finally pass new regulations on handgun ownership by the end of 1996. Schumer's bill, cosponsored by Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, would create a federal licensing system for all pistol owners, establish new procedures to register the private sale or transfer of handguns and limit enthusiasts to buying one handgun per month.
The Schumer-Bradley bill says nothing about rifles or shotguns and does not try to outlaw pistol ownership: given the huge number of guns already out there, that is a practical and political impossibility. The bill is really an attempt to clean up the wide-open U.S. gun market -- to establish better accountability for handguns and regulate the anarchic federal system for licensed gun dealers. Its primary goal is to reduce the illicit gun peddling that is flooding even tightly regulated U.S. cities, like New York and Washington, with unregistered handguns. "The reason that gun violence has gone up is just how available guns are," Schumer says. He thinks his approach would take three or four years to dry up the black market. Then, he says, we should see a "dramatic" drop in the homicide rate -- perhaps 30 percent or more.
Given the fact that more than 12,000 Americans are murdered with handguns every year, that would be progress indeed. But many experts, like law profes-sor Franklin Zimring of the University of Califor-nia, Berkeley, doubt that regulatory schemes like Schumer's will reduce homicides by more than a few hundred deaths annually. Zimring supports handgun licensing -- but he thinks "25-cent countermeasures" won't solve a "million-dollar problem." And others, like criminologist Gary Kleck of Florida State University, say that virtually any attempt to expand existing gun-control laws could make crime worse.
Kleck is the Darth Vader of the U.S. gun-control debate -- a reputable researcher whose work gives great cheer to the NRA and large discomfort to gun-control supporters. Almost alone among academics, he argues that gun ownership by private citizens plays a crucial role in preventing crime: according to Kleck, Americans use their guns to ward off criminal predators about 700,000 times a year. This finding is hotly disputed by other experts, but Kleck goes further yet. He says any law that restricts gun ownership by law-abiding citizens can only help criminals -- who, being criminals, will not obey the law. He also predicts that any attempt to restrict access to handguns will lead to more fatalities, not less. That is because criminals would be likely to switch to rifles and shotguns, which are generally more lethal than pistols.
This is known as the substitution effect -- and if it is real, the whole idea of regulating handguns more stringently than other weapons is not only wrong but dangerous. Philip Cook, a professor of public policy at Duke, thinks substitution is "something we should be concerned about" as an unintended consequence of regulation. But, Cook says, there is little or no evidence that criminals switch to long guns when handgun sales are restricted. Franklin Zimring is more critical. He says there is "overwhelming" proof that handguns "are a special problem in American urban violence. They are nine times more likely to be involved in homicides as long guns and more than 90 times more likely to be involved in robberies." Kleck, he says, "is a bright fellow" who "lives on another planet." "We know there is going to be some substitution," Zimring says. "But the question is, how much? When there is very little data . . . the theory seems silly."
Kleck and other contrarians are chipping away at the intellectual respectability of an old and pious belief -- that in the United States, the widespread availability of firearms causes violent crime and homicide. (No one can dispute that the presence of guns in the home leads to many accidental deaths.) Kleck says we've got the causal theory backward: gun ownership is a rational response to the threat of crime and, to some extent, an antidote. That is what the NRA has been saying for years. In this view, gun control has costs and benefits like any other social policy -- and if the benefits are essentially marginal, why upset the status quo? "Total poppycock," says Charles Schumer, who is still supported by many experts on gun control.
But there is no question the intellectual tide is turning -- and if you find the new contrarianism about guns disturbing, consider an even more unsettling idea. That is the proposal, by Washington lawyer Jeffrey R. Snyder, that Americans should not only defend their homes with firearms but carry them as well. Snyder, who wrote a piece called "A Nation of Cowards" in a recent issue of The Public Interest magazine, is serious: he believes street criminals would be deterred from preying on law-abiding citizens if more gun owners actually packed their guns. This notion is more than hypothetical. The NRA is campaigning to relax state and local laws against carrying concealed weapons, and it has already won some battles -- in Florida, for example.
Both sides now expect a congressional showdown over the future of gun control. Should we regulate guns more closely? Which guns, and how? At what point should the gun-owning minority cede some of its rights to a majority that, if the polls are right, is increasingly concerned by gun violence? This is no ordinary social-policy issue: it is literally a question of life and death.
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