An Expert Assesses Personal Security in An On-edge America

Can carrying a concealed firearm increase personal safety?

The best way to think about a firearm is as a material hazard. If used in one way, it becomes a threat to yourself (including by accident or if a threat takes the firearm from you), used in another way it is a threat to someone else who doesn't deserve it, and used in a third way it is a threat to someone else who otherwise is a threat to you.

Some people should be armed — law enforcement officers, for instance. Additionally, federal and most state laws allow for private citizens to carry firearms for personal defense, particularly if they are themselves subject to threat.

The caveat is that anybody who carries a firearm should be trained and regulated and postured so that they can defend themselves reliably and justly if ever confronted with a threat, without causing themselves or others illegitimate harm. In theory, a society of highly responsible and well-trained gun-carriers, without malicious intent, would be a very safe society.

Is there something special about American culture that either makes it more violent than others, or more vulnerable to violence and risk?

The US suffers a median rate of violent crime (all types, including homicides) similar to the rate in other western democracies, such as Britain, France and Germany, but the homicide rate is much greater in America than in these other countries, particularly with firearms. For instance, in 2010, the US, with a population around five times greater than Britain's population, experienced 244 times more murders by firearms than Britain, with only 41 murders by firearms.

American firearm ownership is bimodal: Most Americans own either no firearms or several firearms. Very few Americans with access to firearms are firearm criminals. Indeed, while the rate of privately owned firearms is around 88,000 per 100,000 Americans, the rate of murders by firearms is 2.97 per 100,000 Americans.

However, Americans suffer more violence in general and more firearm crimes in particular than residents of most other democracies. Even though the frequency of homicide has declined in America since the 1980s, the proportion of homicides caused by firearms has remained the same (around 80 percent). This proportion is higher than anywhere else in the world except Mexico, where firearm crime is inflated by conflicts over illegal narcotics. The US suffers a lot more violence than Switzerland, which has the second-most guns per capita in any democracy and the third most guns per capita in any country, after Yemen.

The lesson of these data is that a high rate of ownership of firearms is a necessary but not a sufficient explanation for the high rate of firearm violence in America.

The next lesson is that a simple ban on all firearms would not eliminate firearm violence, when firearms can be obtained illicitly.

A second necessary cause of the high rate of firearm violence in America is American society's high propensity for violence — we need to correct both this propensity for violence, and reduce the availability of firearms to Americans with such propensity for violence.

Have we slipped into an era where safety is more a goal than a reality? Or has that always really been the case?

The US is remarkably safe on most dimensions, due to great official and private capacity to control risks. For instance, America is exposed to all the natural hazards, such as earthquakes, tornadoes and typhoons, that do not concern places such as Britain, but America has great capacity to control natural risks, and private citizens have great capacity to insure against them.

Similarly, America is targeted by almost every bad actor, if only because America is the leading state in so many areas, and has interests in most areas, yet the US government has great capacity for countering those bad actors.

The issue for everybody everywhere is that terrorism is an increasing risk, and all the drivers are getting worse: urbanization increases social exposure and agitation and access to the technologies and targets; globalization encourages freer movements of people for the benefit of trade and knowledge, but these movements also destabilize; globalization of cultures has homogenized previously stable cultures and polarized others; readier access to the knowledge and materials that can be used as weapons allows for more private challenges to official authority; and new technologies help governments to oppress, while they help private actors to organize against them.

Like any other Western liberal democratic society, American society is not as stable or cohesive as it was, and Americans are more exposed to radicalization, within a free society where the materials for violence are generally accessible.

Is government ultimately responsible for personal safety, or is that up to individuals themselves?

Government is responsible for public safety, which contributes to personal safety. Officials like to talk about public safety because no individual person can be guaranteed safe, but society as a whole expects that most people most of the time will not be the victims of crime, or the victims of poisoning due to improperly handled food, or a crushing due to the shoddy construction of a building. The government cannot guarantee that no American will be murdered, but it tries to make sure that the murder rate falls, or at least does not rise.

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An Expert Assesses Personal Security in An On-edge America

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