Firearms and the World's Ills

It seems like anti-firearms groups are always trying to link guns to all sorts of things. David Kopel responds to an attempt to link guns and poor economic development.

Guns are a tricky subject with a lot of this stuff. Some attempts are laughable of course. People are attempting to show that gun ownership causes civil rights problems. Isn't self-defense and owning the means to self-defense a fundamental civil right? If so then wouldn't strong gun control equal a civil rights problem? Secretary of State Rice made some excellent remarks on this subject on Larry King.

Now I can imagine that many bad things do actually correlate to gun ownership fairly well. In an urban or suburban society, guns aren't strictly necessary to perform work. You don't need to hunt for subsistence. Most neighborhoods are pretty quiet. In general shooting is a hobby, much like golf only with more of a sulfurous scent.

However when things start going bad people start looking for guns. If you live in a high crime area, a gun starts getting attractive. Firearms ownership rates will rise. If you don't believe the authorities can or will protect you, then they will rise even more. This creates a correlation, but not causation. Gun ownership is just metric for various forms of tension because of the link to self-defense. This is why in many areas of the country and the world you see gun ownership rise shortly after things start going bad.