Chris Blattman

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Conservatives love guns, Liberals love booze, and both are evil?

I would gladly see a cultural shift toward the view that gun ownership is dangerous and undesirable, much as the cultural attitudes toward smoking have shifted since the 1960s.

I am, however, consistent. I also think we should have a cultural shift toward the view that alcohol — and yes I mean all alcohol — is at least as dangerous and undesirable.

…Guns, like alcohol, have many legitimate uses, and they are enjoyed by many people in a responsible manner. In both cases, there is an elite which has absolutely no problems handling the institution in question, but still there is the question of whether the nation really can have such bifurcated social norms, namely one set of standards for the elite and another set for everybody else.

…It worries me when people focus on “guns” and do not accord an equivalent or indeed greater status to “alcohol” as a social problem. Many of those people drink lots of alcohol, and would not hesitate to do so in front of their children, although they might regard owning an AK-47, or showing a pistol to the kids, as repugnant. I believe they are a mix of hypocritical and unaware, even though many of these same individuals have very high IQs and are well schooled in the social sciences. Perhaps they do not want to see the parallels.

That is Tyler Cowen, thought provoking as usual.

There are parallels  but I see at least one important difference: My sense is that prohibition of guns (involuntary or voluntary) is more easily achieved and sustained than that of alcohol (although this is less true in the US than elsewhere). In the long run I suspect demand for alcohol is quite inelastic (insensitive to price), while guns are inelastic only in the short run.

If I’m right, this completely changes the policy approach.

15 Responses

  1. The idea of government restricting freedom to protect free people from themselves is evil and fascist and guns provide more positive benefits to society than negative. Yeah, I said that. The right to own firearms should be UNIVERSAL. Nothing would do more to prevent oppression and genocide. Also, I like booze. A good man’s weakness as James Tyrone said. And I have never shot anyone in 25 years of drinking and gun ownership.

  2. And certainly, the experience with alcohol prohibition in the US and Russia (dramatic increase in organized crime, increased mortality from consuming bootleg alternatives) suggests that’s an unpromising route.

  3. It strikes me as legitimate to take more action to constrain gun ownership & use than alcohol because misuse generates much greater harm to others (negative externalities). That is a separate question from how best to constrain. Given how effective price regulation policies have been in constraining alcohol use & related harm, it is well worth trying to use it to reduce the harm from guns.

  4. It seems to me that alcohol consumption is very elastic, as drinking alcohol is in the first place a social activity. Moreover it is also price elastic. Selling wine by the glass will halve consumption, having tasty alternatives, like yoghurt or fruit based drinks, takes another chunk. Higher prices, smaller portions. All work.
    Drinking is in the first place social. This means that even a small change in drinking culture (from beer to wine e.g.) will cause a big shift both in type and quantity of drinking.

    When I could continue drinking, but my partner for health reasons could not, my own drinking went down with 3/4.

  5. By the way, how does it affect my view towards “gun violence” that 2/3 of gun deaths are self-inflicted? Is it a consistent set of views to be pro-assisted suicide and pro-gun-control?

  6. I’m a bit disappointed in Tyler by this one. Does he also think that there is a “culture of soda” that affects the non-elite classes? Added sugar arguably kills more people than guns or alcohol. And I do think we need a policy response to sugar (stopping subsidizing corn and thence HFCS would be a good start), as I do for guns and for alcohol, but I don’t think any of the three are particularly parallel in their history, elasticity of demand, benefit/cost ratio, etc etc. So the optimal policy responses are likely to be very different.

  7. 1) Lant Pritchett, very funny.

    2) Chris’ sense that prohibition of guns is more easily achieved and sustained than that of alcohol… seems very much to depend on where we’re talking about. I think prohibition of guns in the U.S. is nearly impossible for the foreseeable future, and not just for political reasons. There are about 300 million guns in the U.S., and unlike alcohol guns are a durable good. Contrast that with Japan, where several hundred years ago the government went through a very bloody process of confiscating nearly every single non-government-owned gun in the country (bloody for reasons having more to do with civil war than gun control, though it was a bloody time). Now, because of that period, Japan has very little time enforcing something very close to prohibition. You can point to countries like the UK an Australia, which effectively did ban many times of weapons, but I think the cultural/political response to several massacres is what made that possible. Despite Newton etc. etc. the U.S. has not had any such cultural/political shift, and we have a *lot* more guns to start with. So the U.S. is in a class of its own here.

  8. Here is how cranky I am. It just took me five tries to post the previous comment. It turns out “Yes, very” and “Ouch, I touched it and yes its really hot” and “woo-woo-woo” and “Of course you moron” and “Damn skippy” and “stop blocking my g**d*** post” are all invalid answers to the spam question “Is fire hot?”

  9. I would have thought a professional economist like Tyler Cowen would make the “price not quantity” regulation point, which is that if there are negative externalities to something—and true negative externalities not just that you don’t like that your neighbor (or someone in another state) does it–then lets get prices right with Pigovian taxes/subsidies and get the f*** out of peoples (read: my) face with the “cultural shift” stuff about “desirability” and paternalistic bans and “nudges” from “experts.” Of course if it is really dangerous (as drinking and driving is) then lets devote a Pigovian tax to cover a victim fund the puts the cost on the users (in addition to of course perhaps more draconian taxes on those caught driving drunk). Once we are into “cultural shifts” about “desirability” what about pornography (some like it, some hate it), what about “healthy foods” what about “sustainable consumption” etc. etc. etc. the whole point of freedom is that just because we live in the same state/nation doesn’t mean we have to make the same choices, like the same foods, drink the same drinks, call the same thing “sins”–that’s the beauty of it.

  10. Agree with Lee to a certain extent, but in the end it comes down to appropriate use. Maybe there’s an argument that a hunting rifle is ok, but an assault weapon is taking it outside of that appropriate use. The same with alcohol – it’s perfectly acceptable to have a glass of wine with dinner, quite another to drink 8 pints of beer and get behind the wheel of a car. Until policy debates move beyond the immediate and simplistic to a more real-world view, it”s not possible to have a sensible discussion.

  11. One important difference – the primary purpose of a gun is to kill things, whereas the primary purpose of booze is making babies.

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