A firearm can serve a murderer or the person defending himself against one. Its presence tells us something about the means available; it does not explain the decision to attack. An examination of homicide must distinguish the instrument’s lethality from the conditions that produce violent conduct.
In my March 19, 2025, Aporia article, “Murder rates: The smoking gun,” subtitled “Why liberals are wrong about gun control,” I examined differences across countries and American communities. My central question was whether concentrating on firearm restrictions diverts attention from the deterioration of social restraints. The comparisons raise questions about family life, criminal enforcement, and people’s expectations of their own futures.
The outcome being measured matters. A decline in shootings and a decline in total homicide are different findings; both deserve examination. A person killed with a knife remains a homicide victim, while differences in weapons’ lethality can affect whether an assault proves fatal.
Defensive use also belongs in the calculation. A restriction can affect a criminal’s access to a weapon, a threatened citizen’s ability to resist, or both. The relevant inquiry concerns what a particular law changes in practice, including its enforcement and the availability of illegally obtained firearms.
Population averages require similar care. A national homicide rate combines communities with markedly different experiences, while a citywide rate can conceal substantial differences between neighborhoods. Comparisons must account for those differences before attributing an outcome to the strictness of a jurisdiction’s gun laws.
The historical record raises a further question: how much does incarceration follow crime, and how much does it prevent? Christopher Muller’s study of Black incarceration, cited in my article, examines changes through slavery, agricultural labor arrangements, and subsequent economic transformations. My criticism concerns the explanatory weight given to criminal conduct, family disruption, and public incentives alongside those structural forces.
Placing the Great Society beside a subsequent rise in incarceration does not, by itself, establish causation. It does justify examining whether particular programs weakened incentives for parents’ remaining together or encouraged continuing dependence. A policy’s declared purpose cannot settle questions about its effects.
Family structure matters because children acquire restraint and expectations through repeated experience. Adults’ keeping commitments, supervising schoolwork, and imposing consequences give a child practical instruction in responsibility. My argument is that explanations of violence become incomplete when they neglect these ordinary processes.
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s account of the Black family under mass incarceration emphasizes the circumstances surrounding disadvantage. Those circumstances deserve attention, but violence also helps perpetuate them. Residents’ fearing retaliation, businesses’ facing theft, and children’s encountering intimidation can make an already difficult neighborhood harder to escape or improve.
Evidence from immigrant families complicates explanations centered on racial identity. A 2021 study of second-generation Nigerian Americans, using Current Population Survey data from 2009 through 2019, found educational attainment exceeding that of several comparison groups. After adjustment for age, education, and disability, their wages reached parity with those of third- and later-generation White Americans. journals.sagepub.com
Immigrant selection and parents’ educational credentials help explain these outcomes. The findings nevertheless require a closer examination of differences within racial categories, including family expectations and educational practices. Skin color alone cannot account for the range of results.
Policing requires examining specific practices with the same discipline. The National Academies’ review of proactive policing, linked in my original article, provides a framework for evaluating strategies individually. Protecting residents requires knowing which interventions reduce crime, what burdens they impose, and whether their effects persist. A society’s ability to restrain violence depends partly on its ability to raise children who govern themselves and to impose credible consequences on people who threaten others.
Keith Ablow questioned me about these arguments in March 2025, shortly after the Aporia article appeared. That interview now makes its first appearance on America Out Loud PULSE, with Keith asking the questions and me explaining the evidence and reasoning behind the piece.
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