Tim Noah in Slate asked a few weeks ago about why Iraq is a police state if guns are widespread. He now has some responses. I tend to put the burden of proof as far as gun ownership goes on the state, but I don’t make grand claims about guns being the root of a host of social goods or ills. I lived in a community of 12,000 for 5 years where there was one murder per generation (literally, and the murderers were all of the same family, one generation each contributing a killer into the statistics). And, being eastern Imbler, every home had a gun. You have the same patterns of gun ownership in other types of communities-and all living hell is the result. Some of America’s cities are grotesque parodies of urban settlements racked by gun warfare. Social context matters. And yet if ghetto urban levels of barbarism were prevelant throughout this country-I suspect the arguments would not change much, anti-gun people would assert that barbarism would be combated by cutting the source off, while pro-gun people would affirm that individuals had to defend themselves against barbarism and needed access to weapons. If amicable civility were the norm, both groups would make somewhat different points, though the utilitarian outcomes would be minimal, at least as far as first order outcomes go.
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