Cold Comfort: An Interview with John R. Lott

Economist John Lott discusses the benefits of guns--and the hazards of pointing them out.

Jacob Sullum & Michael W. Lynch from the January 2000 issue

(Page 4 of 4)

Reason: You've said that if Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who filed one of the first city-sponsored gun lawsuits, really believes guns are so bad, he ought to take them away from his bodyguards. Explain that comment.

Lott: Daley has been arguing that there's no benefit from owning guns. Yet he has a whole set of full-time bodyguards following him every place he goes. He won't even think about visiting some of the more dangerous areas in Chicago without his bodyguards. But there are poor people who have to live in those areas, who live there at great risk, and he's not willing to let them own guns in order to protect themselves....I view it as very hypocritical, that Daley can understand the defensive benefits of guns when it comes to himself, but he's not willing to afford that same level of protection to the poorest, most vulnerable people in his city.

Reason: You've pointed out that somebody who gets turned down for a gun purchase after a background check may simply get the gun by other means. That's a legitimate point, but don't you also have to consider the possibility that people are deterred from even trying to get a gun because they know there's going to be a background check and they know they won't pass it?

Lott: They may just try to get it the illegal way to begin with. Personally, I don't believe the claims that the Clinton administration makes about the number of people who are stopped from buying a gun. My guess is that to the extent that people are stopped, the vast majority of them are people who may have something on their record from 30 years ago, and they don't realize that it prevents them from buying a gun. These are people who may pose no risk to anybody. In fact, that's one of the reasons why I think there's such a low prosecution rate of those people.

Reason: The feds say they don't have the resources to prosecute.

Lott: I don't think that's it at all. I think you have prosecutorial discretion. I think that you have a case where somebody who's 50 years old may have done something as an 18-year-old that was wrong. The prosecutor looks at it and says, "This guy has been an upstanding member of the community for 30 years, and he had this one run-in as a teenager. We don't really think that he intended to violate the law. We're not going to send the guy to jail for doing this."

Reason: The National Rifle Association criticizes the Justice Department for not prosecuting enough of these cases.

Lott: I think that's a mistake. They're also talking about prosecuting cases where guns were brought onto school property. My guess is that a prosecutor would bend over backwards to bring a case against a juvenile who had brought a gun onto school property. He doesn't want to not bring the case and then have something bad happen later on. That would be disastrous for his career.

But let's say a kid's gone hunting in the morning before school. He has the gun in the trunk of his car, parks it in the school parking lot, and goes into school. Somebody finds out that he has a gun there. The prosecutor looks at the case and says, "This is a good kid, never done anything wrong. He probably just didn't realize he shouldn't have done this. Do I really want to send this kid to jail for three years for this type of violation?" It's wrong to think that these prosecutors are making the types of mistakes that are being assumed.

Reason: You've criticized the NRA for doing a poor job of making its case. What should it be doing differently?

Lott: My biggest complaint with the NRA is that they're too defensive. It seems to me that some of the [mass shootings] that have occurred are a result of gun laws that are already on the books. Rather than talking about what new law should be put in place, we should ask to what extent have well-intentioned laws in the past caused us to get to point where we are right now.

It's only been since the end of 1995 that we've banned guns within 1,000 feet of schools by federal law. Right after the Columbine attack, a friend of mine dropped off his kids at a public school in Seattle, and he e-mailed me afterward, because there was a big sign in front of the school that said, "This is a gun-free zone." The question I had was, if I put a sign like that in front of my home, would I think that people who are intent on attacking my home would be less likely, or more likely, to harm my children and my wife? You may be trying to create a safe area for your family, but what you've ended up accidentally doing is creating a safe zone for [criminals], because they have less to worry about.

The thing that I'd like to see the NRA try to do is to say, when attacks occur, since we can't have the police every place all the time, why not let these people defend themselves? The people who get permits for concealed handguns tend to be extremely law-abiding. They've never done one of these attacks in the 70 years that we've had these types of permits. When these people lose their permits, and it's only a tiny fraction of 1 percent who do, it's usually for reasons that have nothing to do with posing a threat to other people. Laws [like the Gun-Free School Zones Act] are obeyed by honest, law-abiding citizens, not by people who are intent on carrying out attacks. And to the extent that you disarm the law-abiding citizens in certain areas, you increase the probability of these attacks, which perversely leads to calls for more regulations.

Another example is gun locks. If I were with the NRA, I would emphasize the cost of constantly talking about this issue. You're actually endangering people's lives, for two reasons. One, you're exaggerating in their minds the risks of having guns in the home. And two, I would say it's not in everybody's interest to have a lock on their gun. If you live in a safe area and maybe have young kids, that might be fine. But if you live in a city, even if you have kids, I don't think it's really the wisest thing to have the gun locked up, because you're not going to be able to quickly access it to defend your family. And when you compare probabilities, accidental gun deaths in the home are trivial compared to the rate at which other types of deaths occur from crimes where innocent victims are attacked and a gun would benefit them.

Reason: Some advocates of gun rights base their claims mainly on the Second Amendment, while others offer a more utilitarian argument. Which approach is more effective?

Lott: I understand the constitutional arguments, but I think for the vast majority of people the bottom line is whether the presence of guns, on net, saves lives or costs lives. They may be able to understand in the abstract that having guns owned by civilians is some type of restraint on government, but I don't think most of them view that as a problem that they're facing any time soon. For them the bottom line is, What will save lives? And so I think that's where you have to argue.