Episode 40: Gun Control

The Science of Everything Podcast

James Fodor

Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, Science

4.8 • 819 Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2012

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A science-based discussion of the issue of gun control in the United States. After reviewing some basic statistics about crime and gun ownership, I examine the empirical evidence concerning the relationship between gun ownership and violent crime, highlighting the many difficulties associated with such studies and the limitations of this literature. I then discuss some more specific aspects of the gun control debate, including the question of who commits most violent crimes, how deadly guns are compared to other weapons, and how criminals acquire guns. I conclude with a discussion of the evidence for and against various types of gun control measures, and some thoughts on contemporary US gun culture and its impact on gun policy. If you enjoyed the podcast please consider supporting the show by making a paypal donation or becoming a patreon supporter. https://www.patreon.com/jamesfodor https://www.paypal.me/ScienceofEverything

Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh, wow, oh, oh, wow, oh, wow, oh, man.
0:15.0	Oh, wow. Hello, you're listening to The Science of Everything podcast episode 41, gun control, and I'm your host, James Fodor.
0:39.8	So this is somewhat of a special episode in that it's the first episode ever to be inspired by actual current events in the world, in this case, the recent tragedy at Connecticut, or in Connecticut, in the United States.
0:50.2	So what we're going to be looking at in today's episode is the science and research that's
0:54.5	been done on the issue of gun control and also the relationship between guns and violent crime.
0:59.3	Now, there's certainly a lot of ideology that's put out there in the news and other sources
1:02.9	about this issue, but in my view, far too little actual science.
1:06.1	And so that's what we're going to be looking at in today's episode.
1:08.3	Specifically, we're going to be looking at, first of all, I'll just outline the two basic sides of the argument in terms of guns increasing or reducing
1:14.1	violent crime. Then we're going to talk about some of the problems with measuring the relationship
1:18.0	between crime and gun prevalence. We'll also then go into look at some of the results of
1:22.3	measurements and other studies that have been done and what they can and cannot tell us. After that, we're going to look at a few more specific aspects of the issue, including various more specific hypotheses that have been
1:31.7	made about guns, including what I call the average Joe thesis, the guns are the hypothesis
1:36.0	that guns are more deadly than alternate weapons that criminals might use, whether or not guns
1:40.1	are actually useful for home defence, and the issue of whether the US has a gun culture
1:45.5	that's significantly different from other countries.
1:47.4	We'll also look at this some of the evidence on where criminals acquire their guns and
1:51.1	what can be potentially done to stop that.
1:53.0	And finally, we'll end the episode by looking at some potential principles of regulations
1:57.5	of firearms that may be evidence-based in terms of reducing violent crime.
2:01.6	And so we'll look at both what he is evidence-based and what he's not.
2:04.9	Okay, so let's get started.
	...

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