Bias Against Guns
By Peter and Helen Evans (05/22/03)
Does the gun-control debate have any connection with the reality of guns in our society? Author John Lott suggests that the answer is "no".
On Monday, May 19th, at the American Enterprise Institute where he is a resident scholar, Mr. Lott addressed an interested gathering on the subject of his latest book, The Bias against Guns: Why Almost Everything Youve Heard about Gun Control is Wrong.
The reason why is because almost everything weve heard about guns and gun-control is provided by the mass media. The startling, documented fact that "Americans use guns to stop crime at least 4.5 times more frequently than to commit crime" is definitely NOT something that can be learned from watching TV or reading the newspapers. Lott stops well short of accusing the media of being manipulated by a gun-control conspiracy, but claims to be puzzled that their criteria for news-worthiness don't embrace the sort of statistics that excite him and other econometricians.
One needn't invoke a conspiracy to explain media bias against guns. The fact is, they love guns: as symbols of fearsome power. Their ratings-oriented incentive structures encourage simple, scary stories about 'victims-we-can-identify-with' being menaced or killed by 'bad-guys-with-guns-we-can-fear'. Lott deplores the resulting one-sided slant with the philosophical attitude of a man who knows he is tilting at media windmills.
In More Guns, Less Crime, his 2000 book, Mr. Lott provided the academic backup for the middle-American bumpersticker tautology which states, "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." In the present volume, he hopes to draw the readers attention to the consequences, intended and otherwise, of existing gun laws on the incidence of violence, and, as he says, "let the facts speak for themselves."
It is the rather romantic belief, among those who consider themselves scientists, that facts really do speak for themselves, but when the commercial media are in loud-mouthed competition for the fickle public's finite moment of attention, it doesn't take an economist to recognize that well-financed info-tainment will beat the plain old facts almost every time.
This puts legislators in an awkward position when it comes to creating or amending our laws about guns. They are politically answerable to their constituents, whose opinions are very likely to have been formed by the commercial media, with its bias toward simplistic scary-gun images. Yet, if they draft legislation based on this incomplete and erroneous picture, it will fail to achieve the reality of enhanced safety and security for their constituents.
In this vexed matter of gun control, "the facts" have a knowledgeable and articulate spokesperson in John Lott. We trust that he will not waste his time and talent trying to interest the media in something they are structurally incapable of appreciating but, instead, address himself to those conscientious legislators and already-concerned citizens who recognize that, in a free country, gun control is an aspect of self-control. Such people are more likely to be interested in dealing with the reality that lies concealed behind the veil of media coverage.
We all have a vested interest in getting real when we get down to the debate on gun-control.
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