The US supposedly has a unique gun culture. Yet, for an economist, culture is a lousy explanation. We seek the origins of culture; the economic and social forces promoting and sustaining it.
Hunting, frontier living, and war can explain how the US gun culture got started, but not its persistence. Gun-friendly rural areas are losing people; population growth is centered in urban centres and suburbs, where gun ownership rates are lower. The US population segments that are growing most rapidly, namely Hispanics, Asians, and Blacks, are the ones least likely to own guns. Moreover, these trends have been going on for decades, explaining why the percentage of US adults living in a gun-free household rose from 50 percent in 1973 to 64 percent in 2014 (General social survey data here).
The US gun culture, I would argue, has been sustained by the direct and indirect marketing and lobbying efforts of gun manufacturers. These manufacturers have gone to - or have been driven to - extreme lengths because of the unique economics of firearms.
The problem with guns is that they last too long. The typical gun, properly maintained, will outlive the typical gun owner (here, here). The IKEAs and H&Ms of this world ensure themselves a steady stream of repeat customers by making cheap products that do not last; reducing product longevity, as well as manufacturing costs, by substituting low-cost components for more expensive longer-lasting ones. But a gun must be robust and well built in order to fire bullets accurately, and at minimal risk to the shooter. Hence gun manufacturers cannot build in obsolescence. They also cannot change the demographic trends, such as urbanization, which take people away from a hunting and fishing lifestyle. Gun manufacturers can only sell substantial numbers of new weapons by persuading people who already possess guns to want more and more of them.
The numbers confirm that sales of new firearms in the US are sustained by existing gun owners buying new, cooler, and better weapons. Although gun ownership rates in the US are steadily falling - in 2014, 22 percent of American adults owned a gun, compared to 24 percent in 1994 (source) - the number of guns owned by civilians is rising: "Since the mid-1990s, the U.S. civilian gun stock has grown from approximately 192 million (65 million handguns) to approximately 265 million (113 million handguns)." A back of the envelope calculation suggests that about half of this growth in the US gun stock can be explained by population growth. The rest is driven by existing gun owners acquiring more weapons. Of key importance are the serious gun collectors, the 14 percent of gun owners who own approximately half of the entire US civilian gun stock (source).
Opposition to various forms of gun control can be readily understood once one realizes how reliant gun manufacturers are on selling more and more weapons to the dedicated gun owners that are the mainstay of the industry.
Take, for example, the idea of banning semi-automatic weapons or assault rifles. If guns don't wear out, then one of the few ways to persuade someone who already owns a perfectly functional firearm to buy a new one is to offer up models with novel features: an ultra-light rifle with a carbon-fibre stock, a rifle that looks like a pair of Lee Miller cowboy boots, fully ambidextrous guns, guns with comfortable shockwave grips, or customizable assault rifles designed for the hunting market (see this Field and Stream article). Any kind of gun control that attempts make guns safer by limiting the types of technologies that can be used in civilian weaponry will come smack up against gun producers' attempts to "upsell" consumers, to persuade them to supplement their old weapons with newer and better ones.
To take another example, consider the gun lobby's stand on background checks. US federal law requires licensed firearms dealers to conduct a background check before selling a weapon, but the law does not apply to private sales, including sales made by unlicensed dealers at gunshows. The NRA states that it opposes universal background checks because they are ineffective, and because universal background checks could lead to a national firearms registry. Yet it is also the case that gun producers have strong economic incentives to oppose universal background checks.
First, universal background checks would be expected to decrease the demand for, and price of, used guns. There are 11 million illegal aliens in the US, and perhaps 5 million people (though official numbers are impossible to obtain) who have spent time in prison, all of whom could potentially be deprived of the opportunity to own guns because of background checks. Allowing these folks to buy guns through private sales helps keep the price of used guns up, which in turn supports higher prices in the new gun market.
The second reason for gun manufacturers to oppose universal background checks stems from the logic of establishing guns as collectibles. If people wish to own guns as an investment, amass collections of certain models or eras of guns, or pass on their guns to their children, it is essential that people be able trade guns with ease. Indeed, since guns last for decades, the presence of a thriving secondary market would be expected to make people willing to pay more for a new gun. Anything that gums up the second hand market - like requiring tedious background-check paper work - will be opposed.
The only way to change the US gun culture is by fundamentally changing the economics of the gun industry; to find a way of making gun manufacturing profitable that doesn't involve arming teachers, selling assault rifles to teenagers, or encouraging gun fanatics to stockpile scores of lethal weapons.
The problems gun manufacturers face today, namely bankruptcy and slumping sales, are not new. They were faced by many manufacturers in the 1930s, as described in a short depression-era pamphlet by Bernard London". In the 1930s, material goods abounded, but people would not, or could not, buy them. The problem was that "People everywhere" were "disobeying the law of obsolescence... using their old cars, their old tires, their old radios and their old clothing much longer than statisticians had expected..." These "changing habits of consumption" destroyed "property values and opportunities for employment."
London had a solution - planned obsolescence:
I would have the Government assign a lease of life to shoes and homes and machines, to all products of manufacture, mining and agriculture, when they are first created, and they would be sold and used within the term of their existence definitely known by the consumer. After the allotted time had expired, these things would be legally “dead” and would be controlled by the duly appointed governmental agency and destroyed if there is widespread unemployment. New products would constantly be pouring forth from the factories and marketplaces, to take the place of the obsolete, and the wheels of industry would be kept going and employment regularized and assured for the masses.
I am not advocating the total destruction of anything, with the exception of such things as are outward and useless. To start business going and employ people in the manufacture of things, it would be necessary to destroy such things in the beginning – but for the first time only. After the first sweeping up process necessary to clean away obsolete products in use today, the system would work smoothly in the future, without loss to harm to anybody. Wouldn’t it be profitable to spend a sum of—say—two billion dollars to buy up, immediately, obsolete and useless buildings, machinery, automobiles and other outworn junk, and in their place create from twenty to thirty billion dollars worth of work in the construction field and in the factory? Such a process would put the entire country on the road to recovery and eventually would restore normal employment and business prosperity.
If every gun more than five, ten or twenty years old was recalled and destroyed, millions and millions of guns would be gone. There would be a surge in demand for new weapons, creating jobs in the gun industry, and profits for gun manufacturers.
Planned obsolescence is the kind of gun control that the NRA could support, because it would help build a thriving gun industry. Moreover, with the support of the NRA and gun manufacturers, planned obsolescence could fundamentally change the US gun culture, and change guns from something to be hoarded and stockpiled into a temporary plaything to be bought and then thrown away.
Planned obsolescence along the London model is fundamentally different from the Australian gun buy-back described by Andrew Leigh and Christine Neill. The Australian government bought back guns from existing gun owners, destroyed them, and then, through tight import controls, made it hard for Australians to re-arm. The buy-back model worked in Australia because there was no domestic gun industry to protect.
Yet to be successful in the US, gun control has to satisfy the most important policy constraint of all: protecting the interests of gun manufacturers.
The best way to do this is by declaring guns obsolete.
Interesting idea. Implementation seems a bit tricky.
Posted by: Linda Welling | March 05, 2018 at 01:14 PM
A bit! But it gets to the heart of the problem, which most other solutions don't.
Another alternative would be to adopt a purely market-oriented approach, and by that I mean
- correct the market failures associated with gun ownership, like non-pricing of costs created by gun use - everything from water pollution associated with lead bullets (https://gearjunkie.com/lead-ban-ammunition-fishing-sinkers) to the medical and long-term disability costs of people injured by fire arms
- let unprofitable firms fail
I think that's even less likely to happen as obsolescence-by-fiat!
Posted by: Frances Woolley | March 05, 2018 at 01:27 PM
How are gun manufacturers so savvy they can manipulate people so effectively? Doesn’t literally every industry want to have an amazing magic marketing strategy? Also you can’t seriously think people would be ok with having to hand in their old guns in the US. Lots of those guns are heirlooms and your plan looks too much like permanent confiscation. The conspiracy theorists would have a field day. You shouldn’t try to explain a culture you don’t even understand in the slightest.
Posted by: Trevor Adcock | March 05, 2018 at 04:43 PM
I think the points about the second-hand market and heirlooms are valid, and tied to one of your earlier posts about decreased consumer spending on durables (cast iron pans...). Does anyone know if, during the discussion before this amendment was enshrined, anyone worried about the number of guns anyone owned?
Posted by: Linda Welling | March 05, 2018 at 04:57 PM
Linda - the interpretation of the 2nd amendment as a right for anyone to hold as many guns as they want is, if I understand it correctly, fairly recent - I'm not sure this article by Doug Saunders is totally correct, but it makes some interesting points https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/how-us-gun-ownership-became-a-right-and-why-it-isnt/article28078752/.
Posted by: Frances Woolley | March 05, 2018 at 05:30 PM
Trevor - "you can’t seriously think people would be ok with having to hand in their old guns in the US"
Of course not. But think how wonderful it would be for the gun manufacturing industry!
You are right that I can't understand a gun culture that opposes requiring gun owners to store their guns where children can't get at them, and use basic preventative measures. I can't understand a gun culture that rejects the idea of people taking personal responsibility for the damage their guns cause, just like every car owners is required to accept responsibility for the damage that - intentionally or unintentionally - their car causes.
If you're interested in having a serious discussion about the issues, this Rand study is a good survey of the evidence on the effectiveness or otherwise of various gun policies: https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy.html.
Posted by: Frances Woolley | March 05, 2018 at 05:39 PM
Doesn't this suggest an obvious answer - the phone-gun. Once your phone is your gun you will need a new one every few years.
Posted by: Stan | March 05, 2018 at 06:55 PM
With regard to the second amendments discussion, my understanding is that at the time, southern slave owners were worried about northern abolitionists trying to outlaw their slave patrols that they saw as necessary for slavery
With regard original post, I’m uncertain that people really take into account the resale value of most things they buy (bit expenditures like housing and cars, being the exception). I try using that argument to encourage by students to buy textbooks for my courses (e.g. the cost is not as ridiculous if you take into account the resale value) but it seems to have little effect, lol.
Posted by: Derek | March 05, 2018 at 07:59 PM
"You are right that I can't understand a gun culture that opposes requiring gun owners to store their guns where children can't get at them, and use basic preventative measures. I can't understand a gun culture that rejects the idea of people taking personal responsibility for the damage their guns cause, just like every car owners is required to accept responsibility for the damage that - intentionally or unintentionally - their car causes."
So you won't understand the gun culture that exists. That culture definitely exists you can think its crazy, selfish or whatever, but it exists undeniably. People don't like paying for the damage they cause to others. Do college students who keep up their neighbors with loud music want to pay the costs they inflict on their neighbors? Do people who dump motor oil down storm drains want to have to pay for the costs of the environmental damage? No one wants to pay for the costs of their actions.
You're proposal is a political non-starter. If we are going to discuss politically nonviable policies why not just advocate taking all firearms by force without compensation and shutting down all gun manufacturers. Those policies are just as viable as what you have proposed.
If you want to talk about viable second best solutions, at least make sure they are actually viable something that understanding the gun culture would help you with. As opposed to your current strategy of assuming the culture must be driven by gun manufacturer advertising and lobbying, when in fact its far more grass roots than you give it credit for.
Your claim, "Hunting, frontier living, and war can explain how the US gun culture got started, but not its persistence." is trivially false. Cultural practices can persist long after they stop being useful to people. Something that is readily apparent in every culture that exists or has existed. These people do still hunt anyway even in suburban or urban areas, they have cars you know. The Scotch-Irish and Native cultural influences run deep in lots of the US and at the end of the day men love weapons as watching any group of young boys for more than five minutes would show you without a doubt. You can tell them their culture is outdated and harmful all you want. It just makes them distrust and hate you more.
Not that I find this culture anything but baffling. It's just that you shouldn't recommend second best policies designed to get around your opponents objections to first best policies unless you actually understand why they object. Your post is representative of every critique that has been made against economic imperialism. I am usually more than for such imperialism, but you give it a bad name.
Posted by: Trevor Adcock | March 05, 2018 at 08:15 PM
But what makes this situation unique to the US?
Posted by: Brett Reynolds | March 05, 2018 at 09:01 PM
I disagree that gun manufacturers are creating gun culture in the u.s., nor that there is any social cost to such a culture, or a legitimate
reason to want to change it. The only reason to change it is cultural -- there is a culture of gun ownership you don't like.
The mere presence of guns does not increase homicide rates. You can argue that it increases homicide rates by firearms, by definition, but overall homicide rates are not affected by gun ownership rates.
There are many violent societies that have huge homicide rates (but very low gun ownership rates). E.g. Germany has a gun ownership rate of 30 per 100 people, and a lower homicide rate than Portugal, which has only 8 guns per 100, or the UK, which has only 6.2 (1/5 the rate of gun ownership in Germany or France or Canada). In fact, the UK is one of the most dangerous places in Western Europe in terms of homicide rate, but has the lowest gun ownership rate by far.
Iceland has a gun ownership rare of 30 per 100, and the same homicide rate as Japan, which has a gun ownership rate of 0 per 100. Both are homogeneous, safe societies, except one has a gun culture and the other does not.
Mexico, on the other hand, is twice as violent as the U.S, with 1/10 the guns per 100 people as the U.S. Brazil is more than twice as violent with a gun ownership rate of only 8 per 100. Jamaica is twice as violent as Brazil with the same gun ownership rate. Russias has twice the homicide rate of the U.S. but only 10 guns per 100 people.
The U.S. homicide rate is basically the weighted average of Latin America and Europe, say 1/3 latin america, 2/3 europe. In fact, just looking at the demographic make up of the U.S. determines the homicide rate remarkably quite accurately.
Gun ownership rates is not a factor in a homicide rates, it's just something that a lot of people are offended by.
Posted by: rsj | March 06, 2018 at 01:36 AM
Perhaps the gun manufacturers should change the bullets so that the older guns can't use the newer bullets. Every few years they could change the bullets so people have to update their guns.
I guess that there would be safety issues with people using the wrong bullets in a gun or people trying to make their own bullets. And maybe they are just too easy to make so that other countries could make them and export them to the USA. But if you're ok with blocking metal imports why not go the whole hog and ban bullet imports as well.
Posted by: mpledger | March 06, 2018 at 04:20 AM
Brett - "But what makes this situation unique to the US?" - the number of gun manufacturers in the US, and the unique nature of the US political system. Although the long gun registry became a massive political issue in Canada, generally there's widespread acceptance of, e.g., requirements that hand guns are registered, all firearm owners are licensed, safe storage requirements, etc. One can argue that civil war, war on drugs, racism, poverty, violence etc also make US unique, but any explanation along those lines can't really explain why gun ownership is so much lower in urban areas.
Stan - gun-phone - I love it!
mpledger "Perhaps the gun manufacturers should change the bullets so that the older guns can't use the newer bullets" This is a good question. After all, guns don't kill people, bullets do. I guess mostly it's the same issue as underlies the non-obsolescence of guns themselves - basically a bullet is a small bit of metal, and there are only so many ways to design a small bit of metal.
Posted by: Frances Woolley | March 06, 2018 at 09:12 AM
"With regard to the second amendments discussion, my understanding is that at the time, southern slave owners were worried about northern abolitionists trying to outlaw their slave patrols that they saw as necessary for slavery"
This would explain why Vermont has had the loosest restrictions, and the best protection for gun rights, of all the US states since their time as an independent Republic in 1777. I mean they only abolished slavery at the late date of...1777
Posted by: Andrew_FL | March 06, 2018 at 04:59 PM
You're assuming that the NRA is fully a creature of the gun manufacturers, and would welcome a proposal like this that blatantly panders to their interest. But this is naive. The NRA serves the common interest of the gun makers and their customers. It can't function without the support of gun buyers, as well as gun makers. And customers despise planned obsolescence, in all product categories, not just guns. They may tolerate it in some cases like Ikea, but only if enticed by by low prices. Obsolecence-by-fiat doesn't lower prices, and it can only be implemented by the great bugaboos of the gun culture: a gun owner registry and confiscation. There's absolutely no way gun buyers would put up with their organization adopting a policy like this. If the NRA tried, it would instantly lose it's entire membership and a NRA v2 would take it's place.
Posted by: Lawrence D'Anna | March 06, 2018 at 08:42 PM
Lawrence - "The NRA serves the common interest of the gun makers and their customers. It can't function without the support of gun buyers, as well as gun makers."
Can you think of a policy that the NRA supports that benefits gun users and hurts gun manufacturers? Think, e.g., of the tedious paperwork involved in importing weapons to the US, as described here: https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/210/~/requirements-for-importing-new-or-antique-firearms%2Fammunition. Streamlining that process would be great for gun consumers, but I've not heard that the NRA is lobbying for streamlined imports.
I agree with you that the NRA is able to exert political influence because it has both gun consumers and gun makers on board. But without funding from gun makers, do you think the NRA would be able to mobilize gun consumers nearly as effectively? I'm thinking it would be more like AARP - influential, but not dreaded and feared by politicians in the same way.
On your points re the impossibility of declaring guns obsolescent by fiat: I'm not seriously advocating scrapping all old firearms. I've held an old Lee Enfield rifle, and felt the appeal of owning something so strong and solid and powerful. The point is get people thinking about the economics underlying the gun industry.
Posted by: Frances Woolley | March 06, 2018 at 10:47 PM
"the interpretation of the 2nd amendment as a right for anyone to hold as many guns as they want is, if I understand it correctly, fairly recent"
I am a Portuguese without any serious knowledge of constitutional history of the USA, but this seems very dubious:
a) Almost all other amendments of the Bill of Rights grants individual rights (the only semi-exception is the 10º - "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.")
b) The British Bill of Rights granted to all Protestants the individual right to own guns
c) It is not clear what collective meaning the expression "the people" could have - if it means "the states", why not say explicitly that (and note that in the 10º it says "are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people", instead of using "the people" as an alias to the states)
d) the debate about the "militia" was associated with the debate about the "dangers" of a standing army - but this only make sense if the guns used by the "militia" are not permanently in the hands of the government; in other words, if the idea is all potential members of the militia having a gun at house (and using that gun if they are called to serve in the militia)
e) There are some court sentences saying that the 2º amendment on apply to guns that can be used in a militia; although this recognizes that the purpuse of the guns is to be used in a militia, implicitly also recognized that the idea is the individuals being the owners of the guns that they will use if are called to serve in a militia (if anything, the "militia model" could be an argument to consider that the second ammmendment endorses more guns like "assault weapons" - that, in modern days, probably will be used by a militia - that personal revolvers)
Posted by: Miguel Madeira | March 08, 2018 at 12:33 PM
Instead of controling guns, may the US can start with controling ammos, implementing a quota on how many ammos may be purchased per licensed gun per year. To reduce stocking, it might even be necessary to return shells when new ammos are purchased. This does should not limit the right to own guns or collect guns, but reduces the rounds a gun may be shot.
Posted by: Donglai | March 13, 2018 at 10:13 AM
Donglai - one first step down this road would be licensing guns and only letting people with gun licences buy ammunition. Here's Rand's assessment of requiring licenses to buy guns or ammunition - https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/license-to-own.html. Short answer: not much evidence on the effectiveness of this kind of policy. Also some places tax ammunition, but that seems to be more to raise revenue than restrict ammunition use.
Posted by: Frances Woolley | March 13, 2018 at 01:41 PM
Here is also a nice article showing no correlation between gun ownership rates and homicide rates
https://medium.com/@bjcampbell/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-between-gun-ownership-and-homicide-1108ed400be5
Posted by: rsj | March 26, 2018 at 03:01 AM
rsj - I put more faith in this study by Rand: https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy.html.
Posted by: Frances Woolley | March 26, 2018 at 11:53 AM
Frances,
It's mostly apples and oranges, which is one problem with this debate. What would be the benefit of reducing murder by gun but not reducing the overall murder rate? If that is your goal, then you have some special animus towards guns not supported by a desire for public safety. In other words, this is a cultural complaint, not a public safety complaint. So if we change the topic from gun crimes to homicides, then we don't see any kind of relationship between gun ownership rates and homicide rates. Having said that, there may be a benefit to things like controlling firearms by mentally ill people or other adjustments of that nature, but note that this doesn't have anything to do with lowering the overall gun ownership rate, which is the topic of your post. So there's a bit of a bait and switch going on here -- you are blogging about the gun ownership rate as if a high rate is undesirable, but there is no public health data to back that up. There may be data to back up restrictions on gun ownership by fringe populations or stand your ground laws, but not a relationship between high gun ownership rates and high homicide rates or any other public safety issue. Nothing in the study you cite contradicts that claim, as the study doesn't attempt to model a reduction in gun ownership rates, but only a reduction in some types of gun regulations.
Another important thing to keep in mind is that in areas where guns are heavily regulated, there doesn't seem to be an effect on gun ownership rates. Most guns are just held illegally. This is the case in Germany and France, for example, where there are twice as many illegal guns as legally held guns. This adds another wrinkle to arguments that adding more gun regulations will reduce the overall murder rate.
Finally there is the issue of gun deaths versus gun homicides. The vast majority of gun deaths are suicides and there is also a number of gun deaths that are classified as self-defense and are not homicides. It's not cleat to me why you'd want to reduce these in and of itself. This goes to the issue of whether people have a right to end their own life or to protect themselves. Again, this is a moral or cultural question, but I wouldn't agree these should be public policy goals.
Posted by: rsj | March 27, 2018 at 08:19 AM