America’s Gun Problem: the Purposeful Killer – Muddle-headed Killer Choice

Published in Nanfang Daily
(China) on July 30th, 2012
by TanG Xuepeng (link to originallink to original)
Translated from by Peter Nix. Edited by Katerina Kobylka.
Recently, the armed attack in Aurora, Colo., caused the tragic death of 12 and the injury of 58 others. The Aurora attack also reignited intense controversy in America over guns.

Many people have seen Michael Moore’s famous documentary “Bowling for Columbine”; he concluded that the attacks in schools and public areas were the results of American politicians’ permissive attitude towards guns and the National Rifle Association’s resistance on behalf of gun dealers’ profits. However, this conclusion is a shallow one, because most of the guns Americans can easily buy are handguns, which aren’t capable of continuously firing large numbers of bullets, and make up an extremely small portion of gun dealers’ profits. The biggest source of profits for gun dealers is still that kind of high grade, deadly weapon.

Thus, America’s guns issue is a contest involving tradition, culture and society. When the first group of Europeans arrived in America, they faced a tribal society. They had to face the wild beasts of the forest and the native Americans. From a certain perspective, guns could be seen as a tool for production; they could help in both protecting your life and hunting animals. So Americans needed to use guns, communication, cooperation and trade to create an ordered society when there were no laws. After forming groups of friends and communities, they formed a system of community militias. The Americans were able to overthrow the English colonizers because Washington unified the power of the community militias. Lincoln was able to win the Civil War because he used increased weapon production to sufficiently equip the northern militias. From this angle, letting the population have guns was the reason America was born.

After America developed into a mature, modern country, the population’s widespread possession of guns became less confidence inspiring. In the 1960s a large number of important people were assassinated: the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King, Malcom X, and others. This resulted in the 1968 “Gun Control Act”. The Reagan administration signed the “Firearm Ownership Protection Act” in 1986, essentially destroying all the benefits of the previous act. Reagan himself had been hit by an assassin’s bullet, but seemed unmoved by his experience, showing the hardness of a conservative willing to defend his ideology with his own life. Reagan himself said that before exterminating the Jews, the Nazis implemented gun control, removing the Jewish people’s ability to defend themselves. So, not allowing citizens to own guns is a signal of a government that will do whatever it pleases. Of course, there is a flaw in Reagan’s reasoning. The Weimar Republic that preceded the Nazis already had strict gun control laws; Hitler strengthened them. After Reagan, only reforms such as background checks on gun buyers (such as the “Brady Law”) or ballistic “fingerprinting” systems to make guns “recognize people” could be implemented. It became impossible to implement comprehensive gun control.

Why is it like this? I think it’s in large part the result of a societal contest. Americans continue to believe that government is by its very nature “bad” and deserving of suspicion. The government is also unable to seize 100 percent of the guns. In the presence of globalization and an underground economy, anyone who wants a gun will be able to get one. That creates an unequal situation. In Martin Killian’s view, the greatest advantage of guns is their equalizing effect. In the era of fist fighting, physical advantages and disadvantages determined the outcome, but in the time of guns, a weaker person who finds themselves in danger can make a pre-emptive attack, thus a new equality has been “created.” Economist John R. Lott has taken an even more extreme step, writing a book called “More Guns, Less Crime.” His idea is that if all law abiding citizens had guns, criminals wouldn’t know who they could safely target, effectively making the collective body of law abiding citizens more menacing.

This logic appears sound. Certainly, in the American states with the most murders, the majority is states with strict gun checks, where most people don’t want to have guns, and the gun ownership rate is less than one gun for every 10 people. This means the collective deterrence power of the population is insufficient, and murderers are unafraid. However, “More Guns, Less Crime” applies for reducing crimes with a specific target – for example, premeditated murder-robberies. If the gun ownership rate rises, criminals would fear committing these crimes. It doesn’t apply for purposeless massacres, when the murderer just wants to kill people and isn’t killing a specifically targeted person. That’s because as long as they want to kill someone, all they have to do is pick up a gun and shoot. Since there isn’t a goal, innocent people can’t possibly anticipate the killer, so the deterrence effect is nullified. The Aurora case and the campus shootings are all of this variety.

Thus, gun control is really just a choice. If you think targeted crimes are more common, then legal gun ownership is worth it. If you think muddle-headed killings are more common, then gun control is worth it. Furthermore, if you think the first situation is the main threat, then as a law abiding citizen, your best strategy is to go buy a gun right away, because this will raise the community and city citizenship’s collective deterrence (counter attack) power. More interestingly, even if you are a believer in gun control, but you feel it’s very difficult to change the current situation, so temporarily it would be impossible to implement gun control, then you might consider that muddle-headed massacres are unavoidable, so it would be better to buy a gun immediately to take care of murders committing targeted crimes. Thus we can see, as long as the murder rate is rising, people have a motivation to buy large amounts of guns; now after the Aurora shooting, people are actively buying guns. This is the societal contest’s “deviation principle.”

American gun control is doomed to remain unsolved. After massacres occur, people get excited for a while. As soon as the commotion is over, the level of attention paid to the gun problem drops. Once these kinds of societal game rules have been established, they are very hard to change.


近日,美国科罗拉多州的奥罗拉枪击案造成12人死亡58人受伤的惨剧。奥罗拉枪击案也重新点燃了美国枪支问题的全民争论。

  很多人都看过迈克尔·摩尔的著名纪录片《科伦拜恩的保龄》,他的结论是,造成校园和公共场所枪击案悲剧的根源是美国政客对于枪支的放纵以及步枪协会为了军火商的利润所进行的各种反抗。但是,这个论断是肤浅的。因为美国人日常能买的枪大多是不可大量连续射击的手枪,它在军火商的利润份额里面是非常小的。军火商最大的利润来源还是那种高级别的杀伤性武器。

  所以,美国枪支问题是一个传统、文化以及社会博弈的问题。当第一批欧洲人来到美洲的时候,面对的是部落社会。要面对丛林的野兽以及印第安人。枪支从某种意义上说,可以归类为一种生产工具,既要防身又可以打猎。所以美国人必须通过枪支、交往、协作和贸易来创造无法律的秩序。美国人形成了朋友圈和社群后,建立了社区民兵系统。美国之所以能够推翻英国殖民者,就是华盛顿整合了民兵系统的力量。而林肯总统之所以能打赢内战,也是鼓励武器生产来充分武装北方的民兵系统。从这个意义上说,让民众拥有枪,是美国能够诞生的一个理由。

  当美国充分发育为一个成熟的现代国家之后,民众广泛地拥有枪就变得不那么令人信服。1960年代一大批伟大的人物遇刺:肯尼迪兄弟、马丁·路德·金和马尔科姆等等,使得1968年出台了《枪支管制法》,里根政府在1986年签署了《武器拥有者保护法》,相当于将1968年的成果完全摧毁。里根本人是被刺杀过的,但是他几乎不为经历所动,显示了保守主义者用生命捍卫意识形态的硬度。里根自己就表示,纳粹在消灭犹太人之前,实施了枪支管制,解除了犹太人任何自卫反抗能力。所以,不准许民众有枪,是政府可以为所欲为的一个信号。当然,里根的说法是有瑕疵的。纳粹之前魏玛共和国时期就有严格的枪支管制,希特勒的确强化了它。里根之后,只能在枪支购买者背景审查方面推进(如《布雷迪法》)或者建立枪支弹道“指纹”系统,让“枪支认人”,但没有能力进行整体性的枪支管制。

  为什么会是这样?我觉得社会博弈起到很大的作用。美国人一直认为,政府本身就“坏”,要值得防范。而且政府也是无法充分收缴枪支的,在全球化和地下经济的作用下,想搞到枪的人一定会弄到枪。那么就造成了不平等性。按照Martin Killias的观点,枪支最大的好处是平等性。如果在拳头时代,体力上的优劣产生结果。但在枪支时代,弱者发现危险可以先发制人,新的平等被“创造”了。经济学家约翰·洛特甚至更为极端地推进了一步,他写了本书叫《更多的枪、更少的罪》,他的意思是,如果守法公民都有枪,那么罪犯就不知道对谁可以稳操胜券地下手,相当于守法人群整体性增加了威胁力。

  这个逻辑似乎可以成立。的确,在美国杀人案发生最高的州中,大部分都是枪支审查很严的州,更多的公民不愿拥有枪,持枪率都少于10%的人均一枪水平,这意味着公众整体威慑力不足,使得杀人者没有顾忌。但是,“更多的枪、更少的罪”适合特定目的的犯罪的减少——比如看准下手目标的劫杀,因为公众持枪率上升而显得不敢下手。但是,它不适合无目的的杀戮,即杀手就是想杀人,而不是杀特定目标的人。因为杀手只要想杀人,直接掏枪就可以。因无目的,无辜的民众无法猜测杀手,从而威慑模式瓦解。奥罗拉枪击案、校园案等等大案都属于此。

  于是,枪支管制其实就是一种选择:如果你觉得特定目标的犯罪多,那么持枪合法就是值得的。如果你觉得无厘头杀人多,那么管制枪支就是值得的。而且,如果你觉得第一种情况是主流,那么作为守法公民,他的最优策略就是赶快买枪,因为这将提高社区和城市的整体合法公民威慑(反击)力。更有趣的是,即使你是一个枪支管制主义者,但如果你觉得改变现状很难,暂时实现不了枪支管制,那么你会想到,无厘头的杀戮是无法规避的,还不如赶快买枪来应对有特定目标性的凶杀。于是,我们看到,只要凶杀率上升,公民就有动力大规模买枪;现在奥罗拉枪击案之后,民众也非常积极地买枪。这就是社会博弈的“偏化原理”。

  美国的枪支管制注定是无解的。杀戮发生了,民众就会激动一番。一旦事过境迁,对枪支问题的关注度就会下降。这种社会游戏规则一旦建立,很难推翻。
This post appeared on the front page as a direct link to the original article with the above link .

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