Why Gun Control Isn’t Happening

The gun control debate in the US is a contentious one. When you really try to dig into the statistics used by both sides in support of their positions, however, it’s easy to wonder if you’ve stumbled into an alternate reality. Did you know that there is a “clear link between weak gun laws and high levels of gun violence,” while at the same time, “guns save lives?” Either the gun control debate has spawned an impressive new form of mathematics, or a lot of people on both sides are just cherry picking statistics that they happen to like.

Of course, when you look at the US as a monolithic nation, there’s plenty to cherry pick from. There are vast differences in attitudes towards guns and violence, depending on the region of the country that you happen to be in. A map has been circulating the internet recently, created by journalist Colin Woodard, which outlines 11 distinct regions in the United States. Woodard argues,

Our conventional way of defining regions — dividing the country along state boundaries into a Northeast, Midwest, Southeast, Southwest, and Northwest — masks the cultural lines along which attitudes toward violence fall. These lines don’t respect state boundaries. To understand violence or practically any other divisive issue, you need to understand historical settlement patterns and the lasting cultural fissures they established…. There’s never been an America, but rather several Americas — each a distinct nation. There are eleven nations today. Each looks at violence, as well as everything else, in its own way.

The essay is well worth a read. Regions like the Deep South, Greater Appalachia, and the Far West were settled by fiercely independent groups, with an “eye an eye” religious tradition, unwritten codes of personal honor, support for capital punishment, and (particularly in the South) institutionalized violence through slavery. Yankeedom, on the other hand, was predominantly settled by Quakers, with a strong emphasis on self-restraint and social engineering to create a model society.

I strongly believe it’s worth considering gun violence in the US in the light of these regional cultural differences. I’ve done some back-of-the-envelope stats, trying to map states to particular regions. It’s not perfect, since some states include two or three different regions, but I’ve tried to bucket them based on where population density is highest. Also, just for the sake of simplicity, I’m only using the seven largest (by either geography or population) regions: Greater Appalachia, the Left Coast, the Midlands, Tidewater, the Deep South, and Yankeedom.

First, let’s look at gun ownership rates vs. murder rates:

[caption id=”attachment_712" align=”aligncenter” width=”753"]

Gun Ownership (%) vs. Murders (per 100,000)[/caption]

Two regions prominently stand out as breaking the trend: Tidewater and the West. Tidewater includes the DC metropolitan area, which has absolutely absurd amounts of violence. The West has a significantly lower population density than the rest of the country, which is a factor in reducing gun violence. For the rest of the regions, there is a correlation between the percentage of the population that owns guns, and the number of murders that occur for every 100,000 people.

How about gun laws?

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Gun law restrictiveness (0–100) vs. Murders (per 100,000)[/caption]

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence ranks each state on the restrictiveness of their gun laws, from 0 (no restrictions) to 100 (most restrictive). Again, what we see here is a general correlation between regions with strong gun laws, and regions with fewer murders.

What about violent crimes overall, not just murders?

[caption id=”attachment_716" align=”aligncenter” width=”752"]

Gun ownership (%) vs. violent crimes (per 100,000)[/caption]

Not as strong of a regional correlation here, but still worth noting that violent crime is higher in most regions with higher levels of gun ownership. But do higher levels of gun ownership cause more violent crime? Not necessarily. In 1999, slightly more than 1 in 4 gun owners had a weapon for protection. Now, almost half of all gun owners indicate that their primary purpose for owning a weapon is protection. The psychological impacts of violent crime are huge, even if you are not directly a victim. To that extent, it’s understandable why individuals in higher-crime regions would want a weapon for protection. Suddenly, all those gun violence statistics don’t seem so contradictory. Individuals in states with stronger gun control laws don’t mind, because they don’t feel like they need guns.

Don’t forget as well, the regions with higher levels of gun ownership and violent crime are also the ones that tend to be self-reliant, distrust government intervention, and believe in an armed deterrence and eye for an eye form of justice.

While I believe that breaking down the US into its component regions helps to explain opinions about gun control, it certainly doesn’t help solve the violence. Obviously, in an ideal world we would be able to reduce crime, murder, and accidental gun deaths on a national level, without impinging on anyone’s Second Amendment rights. However, the one thing that just about everyone has in common is a lack of trust in the Federal government. Across all 50 states, just 8% of the population approves of how the Federal government operates, while 56% approve of their own state’s government.

What does this mean for gun control? Any Federal-level solution will almost certainly get stuck in Congressional gridlock, as we’ve already seen, while individual states are unlikely to shift because their populations generally approve of the laws on the books. On a regional level, pro-gun control Yankeedom is pitted against the pro-gun rights Deep South:

For now, the country will remain split on how best to make its citizens safer, with Deep South and its allies bent on deterrence through armament and the threat of capital punishment, and Yankeedom and its allies determined to bring peace through constraints such as gun control. The deadlock will persist until one of these camps modifies its message and policy platform to draw in the swing nations. Only then can that camp seize full control over the levers of federal power — the White House, the House, and a filibuster-proof Senate majority — to force its will on the opposing nations. Until then, expect continuing frustration and division.

I don’t think anyone would disagree with the idea that reducing the number of crimes and deaths is a good thing. Ultimately, as a nation we will have to figure out how to achieve that goal while still accommodating for regional views and interests.

Image: Flickr