Quote of the Day
Even if we can’t do all that much about guns, we can make real progress on gun violence by reducing interpersonal violence. In fact, a growing body of data and evidence shows that preventing shootings in the first place is not only possible, but enormously cost-effective compared to the traditional policies of U.S. partisan politics.
This, in fact, is the central problem: going back at least to the 1930s the Left and Right have bitterly disagreed about how to reduce violent behavior. The Right tends to think of violence as being caused by intrinsically bad people who are unafraid of the criminal justice system. The only response, under this perspective, is to try to disincentivize gun violence with the threat of ever-more-severe criminal justice punishments. The Left tends to think of violence as due to bad socio-economic conditions, which leads desperate people to resort to crime and violence in order to feed their families. The only response in this view is to disincentivize violence by improving the alternatives to crime and ending poverty.
But the root of gun violence is not what we think it is. Both the Left and Right, despite their heated disagreements, share an implicit assumption about gun violence: That before anyone pulls a trigger, they carefully weigh the pros and cons beforehand. That gun violence is a deliberate, rational act.
That’s not what most shootings in America are. Most shootings are not premeditated. Most shootings, instead, start with words—arguments that escalate and end in tragedy because someone has a gun.
Whatever people are doing in the middle of a heated argument, it’s most definitely not a careful, deliberate weighing of pros and cons. In those moments, most people are instead acting emotionally, almost automatically—not even really thinking about what we’re doing, in the usual sense of “thinking.”
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There are social programs that help people better understand their own minds and how to prevent their emotions from taking over. My research center has partnered with a remarkable set of non-profits in Chicago including Youth Guidance, Brightpoint, and Youth Advocate Programs to study programs that help young people recognize when they’re about to engage in something like catastrophizing (or something else) that makes the risk of violence more likely, and how to avoid that. These sorts of programs, and even lower-cost versions that detention-center staff can deliver, have been shown to reduce crime and violence by 20 to 50%.
Jens Ludwig
May 15, 2025
We’ve Been Thinking About Gun Violence All Wrong
This sounds plausible. But the study was published in 2016. If it was that successful and that inexpensive, why was it not adopted statewide or even nationwide by now?
Basically, there is no catch-all solution here. There are answers that will address part of the problem, and other answers that address a different part of the problem.
(And, of course, there are yet other answers that don’t help the problem at all, or make it worse. Trying to disarm the law-abiding, while not disarming criminals, is an example of that.)
I haven’t seen the latest stats. My understanding is that nearly two-thirds of gun deaths in America are suicides, and a lot of the rest is gang activity. We certainly need to address suicide prevention, which is a mental-health issue… and we certainly need to address gang violence, which is a law-enforcement issue.
Unpremeditated violence seems like a very small percentage of gun-related violence. But dealing with it, from a social and/or psychological perspective, might yield good results, and I’d certainly be in favor of trying it… as one of several approaches for different aspects of the problem.
Why wasn’t it adopted?
Lack of grift and lobbying opportunities for politicians. That’s pretty much always the reason when something successful isn’t adopted.
Theory is plausible However, implementation has to be done by social workers who don’t have a clue.
“Whatever people are doing in the middle of a heated argument, it’s most definitely not a careful, deliberate weighing of pros and cons. In those moments, most people are instead acting emotionally, almost automatically—not even really thinking about what we’re doing, in the usual sense of “thinking.”
…
There are social programs that help people better understand their own minds and how to prevent their emotions from taking over. ”
So let me get this straight. People who shoot other people aren’t thinking rationally, so our solution is to teach people to think rationally?
Is he aware that basically no one thinks rationally? The entirety of science is an attempt to force a basically irrational brain into a step by step process that will, slightly more often than not, produce results that are more in tune with objective reality than with the preconceived notions of the scientist? And that the job of “scientist” is so difficult that the vast majority of us refuse to participate in the process at all?
People aren’t rational creatures. They might be rationalizing creatures, but in no way are they rational. Attempting to teach them to be rational is doomed to failure. The only possible solution to violent behaviors is to remove the economic incentives to violence (black market activity like the drug trade) and to systematically identify the small group of low empathy, low impulse control people prone to violence and ruthlessly removed them from the population as quickly as they are identified.
Amen, and amen, especially to that last paragraph.
Absol-freak’in-lutely!
90% of violence comes right out of people with criminal intent, and low impulse control.
Drug just facilitate that behavior.
And the same communist mental health academia that started this crap are the ones that want some government funded nationwide brain-twisting to stop it?
How convenient.
But I’m compelled to point out that humanity killing each other over covetousness and perceived wrongs started with Cain and Abel. And hasn’t improved since.
And that their overly fatten-egotistic approach is the exact problem they say their trying to cure.
Because there obviously isn’t any fore-thought put into the proposal.
I would ask exactly who has been issuing mind-altering drugs to the public at large and especially the school shooters they would be curing?
And that the only difference between them and street thugs is a prescription pad.
Sorry, humans been killing each other since the dawn of time.
Academia ain’t going to fix it.
Removing suicide, (cause you want to kill yourself bad enough, you will. guns or no.)
Most of the problem is right down in the ghetto. Over drugs and territory.
And that’s mostly colored people.
Mexican cartels and black gangs, slinging drugs to idiots. With white clown-world CIA running it all or being the useful idiots using the crap.
Curing the problem is about tolerance. And our inability to look clearly at who is doing what.
And when you have a 100,000 people a year dying from OD? And all the violence that comes before and with those OD’s? Rape, theft, robbery, murder. Setting people on fire and watching them burn, necrophilia, all in the NY subway?
Saying you need to get rid of guns isn’t even admitting you have a problem, let alone looking for a cure to the problem.
Academia needs to go look in the f’in mirror and get a clue before we figure out they’re the big part of the problem.
And we need to start hanging those we deem un-worthy of deporting.
If that turns out to be racist in your eyes?
Whine about it in the next life or some other part of the world.
It ain’t about what you look like, it’s about what you do.
The correlation between “diversity” and crime is high. Deport the diversity and make a more homogenous nation, and violent crime (along with all other crimes) will plummet. We get what we tolerate.
England (and much of Europe) used to be relatively peaceful and low-crime. They got that way by executing or enslaving /imprisoning / deporting the malcontents for centuries. Same thing in Japan. Not “nice,” but undeniably effective.
So, basically, “Don’t get mad, Bro,” is the solution. And we need a bunch of “Don’t get mad, Bro” programs, paid for by government grants.
Nope.
I have absolutely no idea how you got that from what I said.
Homogenous white communities generally have low crime rates.
Homogenous Asian communities generally have low crime rates.
Homogenous Arabic / ME communities generally have low crime rates.
Crime tends to happen by criminally-inclined people against outgroups in close physical proximity that they feel OK attacking, because they are outsiders. The only group that makes a fetish of not prioritizing their own people are whites, which is why they are attacked to often by non-whites, even in white-majority nations. “Diversity + proximity = war,” I’ve heard it succinctly put.
Interesting, the the only large homogenous group communities with high violent crimes rates I’m aware of are either black or have low average IQ. (both groups typically have very short time-preferences)
How many murders are committed by someone prohibited from possessing firearms?
And how does Mr. Ludwig define ‘most shootings’? 99%? 75%? 51%?
Preventing people from committing crimes is very noble. However, has any society ever been able to do so?
My suggestion is barbaric and would likely never even be considered with implementing. But I am going to say out loud anyway.
Everybody gets a free one.
Every person has ONE free murder without any legal ramifications. Do you think people who make a habit of hurting others would last ? They would either be killed quickly or disappear to parts unknown, with no more actions taken. Judges would render only just decisions or be judged kill worthy. Lawyers and business persons the same.
I don’t think many would actually commit murder. But the threat of having it done alone would curb a lot of people changing their path for the better. Just in case.
FWIW
https://www.amren.com/videos/2025/05/how-much-crime-would-there-be-in-an-all-white-nyc/
Violence is like cancer. There is no single cause and thus no single cure or preventative. However a LOT of violence is cultural. And OUR culture has become more and more coarse, embracing and celebrating violence. This can’t help but make people look at violence as an acceptable form of action. And while sometimes it might be necessary, it is more often than not an unnecessary response. Currently in America much, perhaps most violence is wrought by a distinct minority….one that embraces violence culturally. A minority who we are not generally allowed to point fingers at. The BLACK culture. Address the fact that 50% of murders are committed by black males between the ages of about 12 and 40…perhaps 5% of the population. After that we can begin to worry about the rest.
“…systematically identify the small group of low empathy, low impulse control people prone to violence and ruthlessly removed them from the population as quickly as they are identified.”
And:
“The correlation between “diversity” and crime is high. Deport the diversity and make a more homogenous nation, and violent crime (along with all other crimes) will plummet. “
“Homeogeneity” can come in lots of flavors. Skin color, technically, is not necessarily an indicator for non-homeogeneity, but it is a handy, and usually, fairly reliable, marker for potential cultural differences. Which doesn’t mean that “no difference” in skin pigmentation reliably indicates “no difference” in cultural matters; Chechens are white and reliably quite violent, at least under certain circumstances.
Math, however, is pretty reliable across all other divisions; there are numbers going back decades consistently indicating a large percentage of violence in American society is repeatedly committed by a remarkably small group. That this group is predominantly of darker pigment, and of a specific age group, is, as math confirms, a pretty reliable indicator. “Skin pigment” and “age” are very easy classifications to make from a distance, “cultural orientation” and “IQ” not so much.
In addition to major cultural classifications, there are also minor cultural classifications; see: American Appalachia, where a family of 12 generations is still referred to as “the new people,” and none of either the Hatfields or the McCoys were named Vintavious or LaQuishia.
It would seem that cultural tolerance for a severely dysfunctional sub-culture is at least partially, maybe even substantially, responsible for much of the problem, if for no other reason than it accommodates a level of variance in cultural diversity which is at odds with peaceful homeogeneity. The human brain is, at its base, a classification tool, ands it performs that function rather well; it makes no difference if that cultural diversity is one of dark skin vs light skin, blondes vs brunettes, or Ford drivers vs Chevrolet drivers, the categorization of cultural differences sets a marker, as does tolerance of cultural behavior incompatible wth a harmonious – and peaceful and productive – society. Were it the case that F150 owners were frequently represented in unsocial behaviors, they would be regarded differently, and semi-politely, excluded in favor of non-predominantly violent Silverado owners.
Honoring the reliability of math would, seemingly, drive an initial solution by very severely – and with permanence*- embracing Mr. Sorrentino’s proposal of exclusion simultaneously with attempting Rolf’s imposition of cultural homeogeneity. I concede that such an approach might fail spectacularly, but so has everything else, and exclusion of the most violent and, seemingly unredeemable, element of society has the potential of providing a certain amount of breathing room for wider application of solution(s).
* And, by “with permanence” I mean “exclusion forever from society by whatever means.” No reconciliation, pardons or do-overs. At the very least it might constitute some degree of pour encourager les autres.
Ammunition is quite cheap compared to incarceration / deportation
The problem with identifying, targeting and sequestering / imprisoning / tracking those prone to commit crime and violence has been determined to be “racist” become some ethnic / racial groups are WAAAAYYY disproportionately represented, so it’s disallowed because RACIST is the worst thing ever… according to people who run the most ethnic of ethnostates, and their various western lackeys.
Ever wonder why so much push has been made the demonize “racism” since the communists failed to make headway on economic grounds in western countries? Hmmmm… what a marvelous way to divide and neutralize a strong and cohesive group. Look up the history of the word, realize it was virtually a nothing-worth until the 50s, and only came into existence in 1902, yet has come to be a signifier of the highest virtue (to NOT be “racist,”) even though it totally handcuffs you in actually attempting to deal with real problems.
Valid point, most certainly, but I did not say permanent exclusion was feasible in today’s environment, only that it was mathematically sound.
Cultural predisposition for confounding labels does seem to hinder widespread resolution. Or, at least reduces it to the individual level where resolution must be accomplished contemporaneously, which is quite substantially less efficient than a much broader and more gentle approach.
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