For four years the Obama administration ignored the issue of gun
control, seeing it as a political loser. However, the tragic school
shootings in Newtown, Connecticut created an opening for those who
long sought to restrict gun ownership. Yet Congress should look
before it legislates, since gun rights generally correspond to the
liberties fundamental in a free society.
Four years ago Dave Kopel of the Independence Institute, William
& Mary economist Carlisle Moody, and author Howard Nemerov
published an article assessing the relationship between guns and
freedom (“Is
There a Relationship Between Guns and Freedom? Comparative Results
From 59 Nations”). Coming to a simple conclusion is impossible:
guns are widely accessible in Israel, Switzerland, and U.S., as
well as Lebanon, Ivory Coast, and Somalia.
Naturally, the United Nations was on the case before President
Barack Obama. In 1999 UN Secretary General Kofi Annan contended
that widespread firearm ownership has “damaged development
prospects and imperiled human society.” More recently the global
organization has been pushing an international convention — so many
trees have given up their lives on behalf of UN negotiators! — to
regulate the international trade in small arms.
The three researchers found that data on gun ownership wasn’t
easy to collect. For instance, Great Britain banned handguns, using
registration lists to confiscate outstanding weapons. No surprise,
Britons have resisted these efforts by lying to their government.
Noted Kopel, Moody, and Nemerov: “The English tradition of hiding
guns from the government dates back to at least 1642.”
Americans also lie, even to pollsters seeking to survey gun
ownership. The authors suspect that some Americans may be
protecting their privacy. In other cases “the owner may fear that
the survey data might be given to the government, and would be used
against her if she did not comply with a gun confiscation law
enacted sometime in the future.”
There almost certainly are more guns in circulation in America
than there are Americans. If the number is seriously undercounted,
the practical obstacles facing any serious gun control would grow
dramatically.
In any case, Kopel, Moody, and Nemerov do their best utilizing
indexes on political liberty, corruption, and economic freedom.
They find that countries with significantly higher gun ownership
have greater political and civil liberties. The political freedom
index (from “Freedom in the World”) is compressed, making analysis
difficult. Nevertheless, noted the researchers, “the average of the
countries in the first quartile is ‘free,’ while the average for
all other quartiles is ‘partly free.’”
Gun-owning societies also are notably less corrupt. The top
quartile, reported the three authors, is “mostly clean.” The next
three quartiles suffer from “moderate corruption.”
Finally, nations where people own more firearms also tend to
have greater economic liberty. The differences are limited — after
all, it’s hard to find a nation today where government doesn’t
intervene promiscuously in the economy. Leftist cant about “laissez
faire” notwithstanding, even the U.S. went far down the statist
path long before Barack Obama was elected president. Still, the
difference matters.
When it came to political liberty, Kopel, Moody, and Nemerov
found that the countries in every quartile averaged a rating of
“moderately free.” There was a certain self-selection bias to the
data: Only 59 countries had gun registration figures, and they were
most likely to be relatively freer than nations without comparable
numbers.
Still, the authors reported: “the first quartile had the highest
average, but not quite 70, which is the threshold for ‘mostly
free.’ For all three indices of liberty, the top firearms quartile
rates higher than every other quartile.”
Similar results were found when the three researchers ran the
numbers per quintile. The authors found: “When we looked at the
countries with the most guns, we saw that they had the most freedom
as measured by the liberty indices, but the relationship was only
pronounced for high-gun countries. There was no difference between
medium-gun and low-gun countries.”
The article then flipped the analysis around to look at gun
ownership in the nations which enjoyed the greatest liberty. Kopel,
Moody, and Nemerov found that “the freest countries… had the
highest density of civilian firearms, and averaged the best”
corruption scores. Moreover, “’Partly free’ countries had much
lower ratings in all indices than all ‘free’ countries. ‘Not free’
countries had the poorest scores.” Finally, among the freest
nations, “higher levels of corruption and lower levels of wealth
may have a significant inhibiting effect on gun ownership.”
There’s quite a mix of countries, of course, and some relatively
free societies allow little gun ownership. Correlations are
imperfect while causations are difficult to demonstrate.
Nevertheless, the three researchers found that the relationship
between more guns and both economic liberty and corruption to be
statistically significant.
The authors run through several possibilities. Freedom obviously
can yield greater gun ownership. For instance, “Political systems
that are more open may allow people who own guns, who want to own
guns, or who want other people to have the choice, to participate
more effectively in the political system, and to have their
concerns addressed.”
More important, gun possession can promote liberty. Obviously,
widespread firearm ownership promotes wars of independence and
revolution. Gun possession also better enables a free people to
resist foreign invasion and occupation.
The authors point to how firearms can help minorities within
nations: decades ago “American civil rights workers were able to
protect themselves from the Ku Klux Klan because so many civil
rights workers had guns.” Kopel, Moody, and Nemerov also theorize
that “the exercise of one right may, for some persons, foster more
positive attitudes about rights in general.”
There are contrary arguments, of course — in some countries,
particularly failed states, guns may exacerbate violent chaos. Even
in Great Britain, Kopel, Moody, and Nemerov write, “gun culture is
an epithet” for conditions that may damage a nation’s freedom.
However, in the U.S. “gun culture” means something very different:
“images such as father taking his son on a hunting trip, or of
young people practicing target shooting with .22 smallbore rifles,
under the supervision of expert marksmen at a gun club.” For most
Americans, gun possession and use is a symbol of individual
and social responsibility.
Kopel, Moody, and Nemerov are serious researchers who do not
offer a slam-dunk for the right to own firearms. The three
admitted: “there are many casual mechanisms by which guns and
freedom can advance or inhibit each other.” However, there is
strong evidence that gun ownership is related to freedom. That
suggests taking “more sophisticated, carefully tailored approaches
to gun policy, that attempt to address the negative effects, and
that are careful not to reduce the apparently significant positive
effect.” The latter point — the “significant positive effect” —
deserves repeating.
Tragedies like the Newtown murders reflect human evil, not gun
ownership. There are legitimate issues — how to better keep guns
out of the hands of those who are dangerously mentally ill, for
instance. But that effort must not become an excuse to disarm the
responsible and law-abiding. No less than our basic liberties
are at stake.
