Taking a Centrist, Economic Look at Gun Control

A few years ago I read an excellent article on bigthink.com(that i really cant seem to find) that suggested Americans should reframe large political issues from their moral foundations to economic issues to offer a way forward. That is we should rethink gridlocked political debates as utilitarian, pragmatic math problems. 

I have tried to do just that with the gun control debate.

Strict gun control proponents cite all too common school shootings, inner city violence and stray bullets killing innocent bystanders as reasons to push stricter gun laws.

Gun enthusiasts cite their 2nd Amendment right and their right to protect their families as reasons to push for little to no regulation of guns. 

These are both sound but moral arguments that at the surface seem difficult to reconcile. Perhaps an economist would disagree. 

Economists are great at asking what is at stake in a debate and doing a cost- benefit analysis of what things are worth. So lets try this thought experiment. 

Firstly lets figure out what it is we are talking about and differentiate between different types of weapons. Lets draw out an extreme comparison between an m1 Abrams tank on the one hand and a kitchen knife on the other. 

	Pros (Utility)	Cons (Societal Cost)
Kitchen Knife	Cut cucumbers, open pickle jars, slice steak	You could go out in public and start slicing people, but you wouldn't be able slice very many people before you get taken down
M1 Abrams Tank	jackshit	If you got into a tank, you could probably kill a lot of people and blow up a lot of shit before you die

The utility for a kitchen knife far outweighs any potential societal risks and the opposite is true for the M1 Abrams tank. So for these very common sense reasons there has never been an American argument about the legality of these two items. But now between these two clear cut extremes where does a semi-automatic assault rifle fit in?

The answer to this question is surely different depending on who is answering and where they live.

	Pros (Utility)	Cons (Societal Cost)
Semi Automatic Rifles in rural Alaska	Hunting, Shooting Bears, Survival	Negligible
Semi Automatic Rifles in Inner City Chicago	Could be used to protect from home intruders	School Shootings, Stray bullets killing little girls on the way home from school, gang violence, use against police officers

There is a practical and intuitive difference in the value of a semi-automatic rifle between these communities. Americans on both sides of this debate must realize this.

So must politicians. The job of national policy is to craft law for the greater good of the American people while still encompassing these disparate realities. For that reason most of gun regulation is left to local legislatures. However given the rise in the number of mass shootings local politicians must take an honest economic look at the societal value of guns and abandon their traditional hard line moral stances.