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Bittergate
You've probably already read or heard the remarks but here goes:
"It's not surprising that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment."
There you have it: some truth, some correct implicit moralizing, elitist scorn and condescension, some false implicit time series (guns and religion do not closely track economic decline), and some totally unpopular cosmopolitan sympathies. The "they" is the clincher, a hypostatizing and vaguely offensive generalization, yet one which we are all prepared to make in different contexts.
By the way, here is John Lott meets Barack Obama, worth reading for the scene of the encounter.
I think increasingly that Obama is very much a rationalist, in both the good and the bad senses of that term.
If I think about what makes me bitter, it is highway and roadway construction and bad airports and the attendant delays. You can decide for yourself what that makes me cling to.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 13, 2008 at 12:43 PM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
It is possible that economic insecurity would turn more people in small towns to religion. Ditto for feelings about immigration. I have certainly read that the great depression had that effect.
But anybody who knows us hillbillys knows that the richer we get, the more guns we buy. Conversely, I have seen guys sell the guns they did not need when times get tough.
In fact, a lot of guys will deliberately set out to buy guns as a store of value. When times are good, they buy them. When times get tough they sell them. This works out pretty well since guns hold there value well if you buy the right ones.
Of course, a true hillbilly will never sell the guns that he uses on a regular bases. But most guys only have a couple of guns they fire on a regular basis. The rest just stay on the rack and look pretty.
Posted by: Ape Man at Apr 13, 2008 1:10:09 PM
Please.... The man at least ATTEMPTS to express a populist viewpoint and people label him an elitist? If you often feel free to travel in your automobile where the dastardly road construction bothers you (I take it you do own a car), and by air where they horrid queues offend you (you feel you shouldn't have to wait with the rest of the cattle?), then by "they" he isn't talking about you. He's talking to and about people who, if they want to post a comment on the internet, have to go wait in line at the public library.
Now his remarks may seem to you to be ignorantly derrogatory, for that is the attitude that the ignorantly derrogatory label "elitist" brings to mind, but taken in context with the rest of the message aren't so far off the mark. This guy (Obama) is certainly no man-of-the-people, but he is head and shoulders above the other two contenders in this vein. If they ever gave a thought to Joe American, it was to wonder what the poor people were doing while they sipped their champagne.
Posted by: dpirate at Apr 13, 2008 1:14:45 PM
Obama's comment makes perfect sense to me. When times get tough, people look for someone or something to blame besides themselves. Even when it is not their fault (steel-mill closures), they want to avoid the idea that they are part of a failure. (Look at the resurgence of Russian nationalism under Putin.) And no, it's not surprising.
What to do about it? Hope for change? Fine. Take responsibility for oneself, dust yourself off and look for something to succeed in? Better.
Meanwhile, Hillary promises to take care of everyone: "They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families." No -- I don't think so. Hillary is placing herself as the religions solution: "Just vote for me and I'll take care of you." I doubt it.
BTW, I'm an elitist -- grew up in SF, traveled the world, drink "proper" cappuccino, getting a PhD.
Posted by: David Zetland at Apr 13, 2008 1:26:30 PM
Mr. Cowen, have you ever read Friedman's Moral Consequences of Economic Growth? It's a little repetitive but it shows how treatment of others relates to economic prosperity. I think Obama's in the right here, where he says that people have lost faith in government to providew anything economically, therefore they vote on other issues. If I were Clinton, however, I would have tried to remind people that Bill's economy wasn't as bad as Obama said it was, and make him seem like he mustn't have been around in the 90's.
Posted by: Jared at Apr 13, 2008 1:35:18 PM
I think it says that you cling to a heavily subsidized transportation infrastructure with consequences far more dire than a silly little tariff on steal.
Posted by: Stephen at Apr 13, 2008 1:40:34 PM
While this is pissing other people off, it tipped the balance in favor of Obama for me.
Posted by: Paul N at Apr 13, 2008 1:48:19 PM
The reason I have been reading this blog for a while is because u guys express some thoughful and fresh ideas. But this post seems something that can be written by those parrots on TV. Come on u are better than that.
Posted by: Nati at Apr 13, 2008 1:50:59 PM
Hey, he didn't say people turn to guns and god in times of economic decline; he said they vote on gun and god issues when they feel government ignores their concerns about their ecomonic situation.
Posted by: gorobei at Apr 13, 2008 2:32:17 PM
When I read the reactions to his comment I realized that the worst thing Reagan did to the Democratic party was not capturing the Reagan Democrats, but giving them the country club Republicans. It use to be that only a small minority of Democrats were elietist enough not find Obama's statement offensive. It seems only one person in that room of donors realized that he was insulting the people who form the democratic base, and no one on his staff had enough sense to just say he misspoke because they all agreed with the statement.
Posted by: joan at Apr 13, 2008 2:33:27 PM
So be against free trade like Obama is a result of resentment?
He is against free trade and inmigration? that kind of sentiments mean people is looking for scapegoat so he is himself a rensented rusterbelter?
Most commenters here are usually antiinmigration. are they from the industrial cities?
Posted by: k at Apr 13, 2008 2:40:56 PM
This, along with the Wright episode, reveals Obama as a bit of a calculating opportunist who tries to be all things to all people. In other words: the very definition of a politician. He might turn out to be a very effective politician and a good leader, but there will surely be a backlash at some point, perhaps from the very people currently swooning at him as some kind of messianic miracleworker, whose expectations he cannot possibly fulfill, while those who will not have voted for him might grudgingly come around to concede some good points, like they did for Clinton with welfare reform and NAFTA. Perhaps he will be a Lula-like figure who can make the left swallow a little market or trade medicine.
Somewhat offputting however are the sort of people who expect to sweep to positions of power in his wake, not least his wife, who sometimes seems to be running for people's commissar rather than first lady.
Posted by: at Apr 13, 2008 2:41:41 PM
So poor people get bitter and cling to anti-trade sentiment. What's Obama's excuse then?
Also, I'm surprised from reading other comment threads that no liberal has complained about Obama's slur against their party. So, according to Obama, the Democrats haven't done squat for the poor in 25 years?
Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Apr 13, 2008 2:43:24 PM
I want to reiterate that Obama expressed that people vote against "their economic interests" and on culture issues because they don't trust government to do anything about their economic interests. This is probably true and not offensive. Of course I think they are probably kind of right on this issue.
Lott's findings on concealed weapons sort of amuse me, he found concealed weapons to have a weak crime deterrent effect, others doing different math found a weak crime increase from concealed carry, but I think the take away is that concealed carry doesn't make much difference at all. I think Obama is one of the most anti gun candidates we have seen, and that probably doesn't mean much since I doubt that he will make it a priority.
Posted by: Michael Foody at Apr 13, 2008 2:47:25 PM
This guy (Obama) is certainly no man-of-the-people, but he is head and shoulders above the other two contenders in this vein. If they ever gave a thought to Joe American, it was to wonder what the poor people were doing while they sipped their champagne.
Yes, John McCain, champagne sipper at the Hanoi Hilton
Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Apr 13, 2008 2:47:55 PM
This flap is just evidence of how small this election has become in terms of the actual differences in the candidates. According to my principle of "Conservation of Outrage," politicians and the media have to maintain a constant level of outrage in every news cycle. If someone bombs a market in Pakistan with dozens of deaths, then outrage is easy. Politicians and news readers can simply talk about it with facial expressions signaling deep concern. If the only thing that happens in a given news cycle is that someone gets their toes stepped on, the soreness of that toe is treated on par with the destruction of the Pakistani market, and all its carnage. The "deep concern" look remains the same.
Obama just stepped on someone's toe.
Posted by: M. Hodak at Apr 13, 2008 3:03:00 PM
Michael Foody, can you name one single refereed journal paper that claims to find that concealed weapons laws increase violent crime? Lott claims that there is not one refereed paper looking at national or state data that makes that finding. Is Lott wrong? I would be interested in seeing a paper if it exists. Thanks.
Posted by: Bob at Apr 13, 2008 3:05:07 PM
"Obama's comment makes perfect sense to me...BTW, I'm an elitist -- grew up in SF, traveled the world, drink "proper" cappuccino, getting a PhD.-- David Zetland"
Ok, let me spell it out for those people who are too educated to see the problems here:
1) The implicit assumption that views about guns, religion, and immigration that differ from yours don't have any intellectual merit, but are simply a response of (non-Phd, uneducated) people towards their economic circumstances.
2) The implicit assumption that views about guns, religion, and immigration are tied to "antipathy towards people not like them."
Plenty of religious gun owners who are anti-immigration are smart, thoughtful, and educated. Refusal to engage them at the level of ideas as opposed to smugly psychoanalyzing them is a hallmark of the latte-left, and has been even before lattes became popular.
Posted by: A Berman at Apr 13, 2008 3:08:46 PM
Bob, Lott's credibility is most definitely an issue. See Mary Rosh, and the recent Freakonomics battle.
He keeps getting cited because right-wingers want to be agreed with more than they want to be credible, I guess.
Posted by: M1EK at Apr 13, 2008 3:21:15 PM
Obama is morally repugnant. I'd prefer a President who doesn't overtly despise a majority of the citizenry. The man has an ugly soul.
Posted by: jim at Apr 13, 2008 3:32:32 PM
McCain is looking better by the day.
Posted by: Mercutio at Apr 13, 2008 3:49:39 PM
Bob, the debate on Lott's handgun analysis is too complicated for me to do it service in a comment. Look up John Lott in wikipedia the bibliography to get a sense of what is going on.
As far as Obama's remarks I would urge people bothered by the comments to read the paragraph that proceeded the troubling comments, I'm not saying that it will fix the problem for you but I feel this is a case where context softens the problem a lot. I'm sure if you are fair you won't come away thinking he despises people, but the remarks are probably still a bit condescending.
When it comes to smugly psychoanalyzing people, this happens all the time, look at welfare causing dependence and the break up of families, etc. I am not saying it is right, but I am saying that this stuff happens all the time. "They hate our freedom"
Posted by: Michael Foody at Apr 13, 2008 3:57:12 PM
> guns and religion do not closely track economic decline
I'm sure you could find some narrow statistics from Pennsylvania to prove this. But for the rest of us...
We can't help but notice that the same people who vote conservatively, the same people who are big on religion and big on guns, are also the people who are living in the economically weaker areas of the country.
Obama stares truth straight in the face and deals with it. I know it's hard to relate...
Posted by: Stephen Downes at Apr 13, 2008 4:45:33 PM
"It's not surprising that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment."
Anybody wonder who the "people who aren't like them" are in this sentence? Is this an implication that Obama is having trouble with the Pennsylvania working class because he's black?
Posted by: anon at Apr 13, 2008 4:49:57 PM
It can be misleading to quote that sentence out of context, as the 'gotcha' media and punditry have been doing endlessly. For what its worth, here's the full quote.
OBAMA: So, it depends on where you are, but I think it's fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre...I think they're misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to 'white working-class don't wanna work -- don't wanna vote for the black guy.' That's...there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it's sort of a race thing.
Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).
But -- so the questions you're most likely to get about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What's the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is -- so, we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing -- close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we're gonna provide health care for every American. So we'll go down a series of talking points.
But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you'll find is, is that people of every background -- there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you'll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I'd be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you're doing what you're doing.
Posted by: a student of economics at Apr 13, 2008 4:51:37 PM
Thanks student for posting that -- what we are seeing here is an effort at empathy, at figuring out where people are. In a place like Ohio "free trade" means "I lose my job" and neither HRC nor BHO was prepared to try and distinguish one from the other if it meant losing votes.
Thanks Ape Man for the discussion of guns as savings instruments! There's a paper in there somewhere... The larger political point is that in the last election, apparently a lot of people in PA thought Kerry was anti-gun, despite his public protestations and ostentatious duck-killing. "Cling to guns" was not artful, but there is something going on there.
Posted by: Colin Danby at Apr 13, 2008 5:09:19 PM
At the heart of racism is stereotyping - and Mr. Obama is guilty of stereotyping - your call if he is a racist...
I grew up in Western Pennsylvania - small steel town not far from Pittsburgh - the mill is gone as are many of the folks that I grew up with - but what remains - and I have family and friends still in the region - is not a homogeneous group of gun toting born again bigots.
It is - like much of today's America a region that has struggled - but works hard - and plays hard. Many of them are not sure if government has been a good bargain - they pay a lot in taxes - federal - state and local and don't see a very good return on that investment. For every Pennsylvanian who feels that government has let them down, there is at least one who feels that government has gotten in their way that taxes are too high -and bureaucracy is to burdensome...
Posted by: Bruce Humbert at Apr 13, 2008 5:13:49 PM
How is Obama going to unite the country when he holds us in so much disdain? The man is a known racist. An unrepentant liar. And an unapologetic anti-American. He's morally unfit to be a dogcatcher.
Posted by: jim at Apr 13, 2008 5:16:59 PM
Colin, the "effort at empathy" might be a bit of a problem in itself. To be caught in the act of analyzing folks with an anthropologist's or a sociologist's eye, even sympathetically and empathetically, is to set yourself apart from them. People might ask: if "we" are "they" to you, then are you one of us? Failing this litmus test can be fatal to a politician: it was the central failure of the Kerry campaign in 2004.
Posted by: at Apr 13, 2008 5:23:48 PM
Bruce: Before you jump to, and perpetuate, false conclusions, here's what Obama actually said in the very same answer:
"That's...there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it's sort of a race thing.
Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it."
and
"I think what you'll find is, is that people of every background -- there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you'll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I'd be very strong and people will just be skeptical."
That doesn't sound stereotyping, or racist or disdainful. On the contrary, his point was to challenge racism and stereotyping. It's too bad that a candidate can say thousands of unscripted, yet thoughtful words, and the punditry simply zeroes in on one poorly phrased sentence and play "gotcha!" misrepresenting the whole point of his comment.
Posted by: a student of economics at Apr 13, 2008 5:28:54 PM
SOE....
But you prove my point - how DARE YOU claim that
"People have been beaten down so long"
If you knew them you would know how hard they work and how
undefeated they are - they have NEVER given up - and NEVER will...
Yes life may have been better when the mills were roaring - but
we still have so much to be proud of - great Universities - great
Medical Research Centers and we have moved to service and
software as anchors of our economy.
You and Barrack want to see a half empty glass- those of us
who love this part of America see it as half full - and potentially
overflowing - if government would just get out of our way!
I have no doubt that Obama has many who have fallen under his
spell - but he has shown his true colors by his choice of pastor and
his choice of words.
God Bless America!
Posted by: Bruce Humbert at Apr 13, 2008 6:23:18 PM
Hei Lun Chan - Like father like son. John McCain Sr was a 4star Admiral who married a society gal oil heiress. Meanwhile, Cindy McCain is worth over 100M$ according to CNN ( http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/03/mccains.money.politics.ap/). This is hardly the life of the working class, POW or no POW.
A Berman - It is you that misunderstand. Both of your bullet points are agreedly wrong, but also not at all what Obama was saying. Simply put, what he said was that since no one in politics gives a shit about the poor's economic status, that it is a non-starter. Therefore they (we) will vote according to the secondary issues such as immigration, religion, etc, because then at least we get someone who partially represents them. What is implied is that it is the economics that is ultimately important, but disregarded.
This is just another "I didn't inhale" and "I invented the internet" flap that people react against because they are so willing to think badly of others instead of bothering to investigate the veracity of it for themselves.
Posted by: dpirate at Apr 13, 2008 6:24:08 PM
I can't imagine that the same page that argued convincingly that rust belt americans blamed Japan for the loss of their jobs--not corporate america or union leaders--is coming down AGAINST a politician who would suggest the same sort of arrangement. Personally I think the comment could have been made better but he is trying to be honest. Think about that. He is trying to show how he feels.
He is the only candidate to say conclusively that he wouldn't support ethanol if it were found conclusively to be a net carbon producer versus oil--an honest statement that hurts him. He released earmarks to the public, showing exactly where and when public funds were used at his request in his state. His tech policy was basically written by lawrence lessig. He's the real deal.
But let's freak out about honesty. Let's nitpick about how ownership of guns and church attendance don't correlate negatively with economic growth (first we have to pretend that he was making that positive statement, which he wasn't). Let's assert, for no good reason, that the author is 'bitter' about things other than economic stress and turns to things other than god.
Then this site can come down in favor of another republican, pretending that his free trade proposals will help us and that the democrats will lock up any importers and force us to pay more for steel. Sigh. Democrats are guilty of using economic nationalism to drum up votes. Clearly. It's a damn shame, because they don't need to. But I would rather shoot down a few trade agreements in order to return the notion that the federal regulatory apparatus in washington should and can regulate. I would accept some china bashing if it meant that FAA regulations were following prior to congressional hearings. I would trade the return of the pre-bush capital gains taxes for the security of knowing that the people in charge of government respect the concept for good governance and that they aren't just out to dismantle the place.
So let's stop the rush of commentary about how much more we know about the poor than Obama. It's pointless and it brings us closer and closer to a third bush term.
Posted by: Adam Hyland at Apr 13, 2008 6:39:43 PM
Michael Foody, well I looked up wikipedia, and it didn't contradict Lott's position at all. The only research that seemed to provide a contradictory position were in law reviews, that means non-refereed publications. I asked you for whether there were any refereed publications. Given how strong your claim was, I thought that you might actually know something about this debate, but apparently you don't. What I see there leaves Lott's point unchallenged.
If you do have some relevant information, please provide it. Lott's book Freedomnomics has a nice discussion on this research, and I have gone through the papers that he lists as claiming that there is no effect of RTC concealed weapon laws on crime rates. If he has missed some research that isn't referenced in any of those research papers, please tell me.
Posted by: Bob at Apr 13, 2008 6:58:33 PM
BTW, Michael Foody, simply saying that things are "too complicated" is ridiculous. If you say that there is some studies in refereed journals that find a bad effect from right to carry, give us the names for them. THere are lots of studies that show benefits from these laws:
http://johnrlott.tripod.com/postsbyday/RTCResearch.html
Provide one refereed study that shows that there is a cost from these laws. Lott claims that most refereed studies find a benefit, some that claim no effect, and no refereed academic study by economists or criminologists that find a cost. If you think that this is wrong, don't just say that it is "too complicated." Even though Wikipedia doesn't contradict this, there are apparent problems with Wikipedia:
http://doubletap.cs.umd.edu/WikipediaStudy/namecalling.htm
Posted by: Bob at Apr 13, 2008 7:05:39 PM
It seems to me that at every opportunity you cut Obama lots of slack that you are not prepared to provide others.
Posted by: Randy (Internet Ronin) at Apr 13, 2008 7:24:51 PM
"Does the Right to Carry Concealed Handguns Deter Countable Crimes? Only a Count Analysis Can Say," Journal of Law and Economics, 44:2 (pt.2), 771-798. I think that is the title. I can't find a non-gated.
Posted by: Michael Foody at Apr 13, 2008 7:57:12 PM
Michael Foody, it is true that the paper by Plassmann and Tideman is refereed and it is critical of Lott's methodology, but this paper provides absolutely no evidence that any type of violent crime rate rose after right-to-carry laws were enacted. See here for a copy:
http://johnrlott.tripod.com/tideman.pdf
They conclude at the end of their abstract: "such laws appear to have statistically significant deterrent effects on the number of reported murders, rapes, and robberies."
Posted by: Bob at Apr 13, 2008 8:13:25 PM
Michael Foody, if you can provide just one refereed journal paper to back up the claim that some academics have found bad effects from the law, then please provide it.
Posted by: Bob at Apr 13, 2008 8:20:05 PM
Fair enough, It has been years since I have been in school and have since lost access to all the databases. If that paper does not find differently then I will be unable to do what is asked. In the same class I recall papers that found differently some may not have been refereed. At this point in my life I am unable to point you to any papers if any exist.
Posted by: Michael Foody at Apr 13, 2008 8:47:00 PM
Nameless person: a politician can choose to speak lowest-common-denominator platitudes, and one starts to understand from this kerfuffle why many of them do that.
But if you are going to go much farther than that, if you are going to make any serious effort to understand people, you have to admit what everyone knows, but what you apparently believe a politician cannot say: that this is a nation of different regions and classes, one in which even people who live in proximity to each other may have sharply different experiences and understandings of the world. Any serious seeking of national commonality *has* to involve deliberate acts of empathy.
I agree with you that Kerry failed; that was my point. But at least BHO is not pretending to be something he's not.
Posted by: Colin Danby at Apr 13, 2008 8:50:44 PM
During the Republican debates, at least the two I saw, questions regarding the respective candidates gun ownership served as something of a litmus test. Obama's rhetoric may smack of elitism, but it's hardly a hypostatizion to suggest that Republican voters tend to emphasize issues pertaining to gun ownership and religion. That Obama believes working class voters emphasize second amendment and immigration issues at the expense of labor and healthcare is nothing remarkable at all. It's an oversimplification that may rub libertarians the wrong way, but it ought to be considered for the way contrasts Clinton's cheap demagoguery.
Posted by: nivek at Apr 13, 2008 9:15:50 PM
But at least BHO is not pretending to be something he's not.
Ha!
See Goolsbee (is Obama pro or anti-trade? also see this boruhaha vs his NAFTA stance). Or Wright (which raises conflicting issues on patriotism and religion and child rearing).
Obama is a politician, which means just like Hillary (see guns) and McCain (see mortgages) that he'll pretend to be whatever his audience wants him to be.
This isn't a problem for Hillary as it's a feature of the Clintons (they call it triangulation), but it's a problem for McCain ("straight-talk express") and it's an emerging problem for Obama. If a) Obama didn't hold himself out as a post-politician candidate and b) people didn't buy this line, it wouldn't be a problem for him. In my mind, he's setting himself up for a bigger fall by pretending he's not pretending.
Posted by: Jody at Apr 13, 2008 9:20:55 PM
If I think about what makes me bitter, it is highway and roadway construction and bad airports and the attendant delays.
I certainly hope you weren't trying to go north on VA 28 towards Dulles (after taking 66 W). The Willard Road interchange construction is nasty. Take the toll road instead, if you can. Dulles's problem includes its bad air traffic control system; they don't handle weather very well, as this past Friday showed.
Posted by: John Thacker at Apr 13, 2008 9:41:05 PM
"Bob": you sound a lot like a John Lott sockpuppet.
Posted by: bartman at Apr 13, 2008 10:48:55 PM
"Being what you're not," as context should make clear, means asserting an identity or cultural habitus that's really not you. I hold no brief for Obama's pandering over free trade, but that's a vice of a different kind. I have no idea what you mean re Wright; BHO's position there seems clear and matches what he has been saying going back to his autobiography.
What does "hold himself out as a post-politician candidate" even mean? What *exactly* has BHO said along these lines? Definitionally anyone who has made a career in elected office is a politician. Sounds like you're setting up a double bind, Jody.
Posted by: Colin Danby at Apr 13, 2008 11:08:43 PM
Colin.
he means rejecting things like 'street money' (paying ward captains to get out the vote, part of the heart of patronage politics).
He means pushing for open governance (really). Getting the law passed last year that allows groups to check pending earmarks online on a federally run database.
He means not cozying up to labor groups in order to get their donations and support.
He means relying on donations over the internet in small denominations rather than large, lump sum payments.
And that is just the start.
Of COURSE obama is a politician. He is just trying to be a better one. He is trying to avoid the BS that comes with the job. It doesn't mean he never panders, and I'm angry when he does (he should have just been pro trade, its not like he was winning Ohio or PA). It doesn't mean that he doesn't engage in negative attacks, because in this day and age, calling someone on their bullshit counts as a negative attack. It doesn't mean he is as fresh as the newly driven snow. It just means he is trying hard to be a public servant in ways that HRC isn't.
Posted by: Adam Hyland at Apr 13, 2008 11:23:43 PM
I'm one of BHO's small internet contributors myself, Adam, for some of the reasons you state.
Posted by: Colin Danby at Apr 13, 2008 11:37:28 PM
A Berman -- you missed my point. "Some anti-immigrant, pro-gun, religion people are crazy" does NOT mean that people with pro-guns, pro-religion or anti-immigrant views are crazy. My dad holds all these views, and he is as thoughtful as you.
Oh, and don't forget that lattes suck.
Bruce -- No.
Adam -- Yes.
Posted by: David Zetland at Apr 14, 2008 12:34:11 AM
The klunker in the Obama quote was the notion of "clinging to religion". After all, Obama's most recent scandal was about his church. The opiate-of-the-masses notion of "clinging to religion" isn't something someone who goes to church for anything other than careerist purposes would say.
Posted by: Foobarista at Apr 14, 2008 1:12:38 AM
I recall a book I read a few years ago that made the case (using the world values survey) that when people feel threatened (by war, crime or economic decline) they tend to become more conservative by the standards of their community. Could this be an alternative explanation for this phenomenon (if it is a real phenomenon) other than bitterness?
Posted by: James K at Apr 14, 2008 1:12:53 AM
I would say the delays make you cling to your blackberry.
Posted by: Travis at Apr 14, 2008 1:20:04 AM
bart,
I agree about the Sock Puppet. Smells like it.
Here is the problem with this drivel. The studies cited are based on US states. Overwhelmingly the rest of
the world has such laws and overwhelmingly they have lower violent crime rates using guns. When S.P. speaks
of the rest of the world, it is always about the odd outlier, Switzerland or Finland, never about the majority.
There is a reason why people entering Canada by car in the West are often examined or searched for firearms,
and often treated with contempt when this happens. Canada has a much lower violent crime rate by the use of
firearms in Canada than does any state in the US. A simple regression, or a more complicated one, using global
data turns most of the Sock Puppet's stuff into garbage.
Regarding nitkpicking comments by candidates, can someone explain to me again why it is that a candidate who
repeatedly stated that al Qaeda in Iraq is made of Shi'i is let completely off the hook, as he also has been
for actively seeking out the support of ministers who declared that America deserved 9/11 and that Catholicism
is an evil religion? Perhaps the endless loop media should play those things over and over repeatedly. Hannity
would look a lot more credible if he did so.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Apr 14, 2008 1:53:54 AM
It's pretty sad when faux pas become major controversies while a candidate's unwavering support for infanticide goes unremarked.....
Posted by: Jacob Oost at Apr 14, 2008 1:58:07 AM
'Yes, John McCain, champagne sipper at the Hanoi Hilton'
And just coincidentally, a member of the Keating Five.
Posted by: not_scottbot at Apr 14, 2008 2:29:53 AM
Actually, Barkley there is a paper by Jeff Miron and a book by Joyce Lee Malcolm that you might find of interest. Jeff's paper appeared in the Journal of Law and Economics. He had data on a wide range of countries, though it was purely cross-sectional, and I prefer using panel data where possible because it is some much easier to effectively account for geographic and time differences. Interestingly, if anything, he finds slightly lower murder rates with less strict gun control, though whether he shows statistically significant results depends upon which version of the paper you look at.
Joyce's book looks at murder rates in Britain over a thousand years. She shows that their murder rates were extremely low before they had any gun laws and gun ownership was extremely widespread. I agree with you about the low murder rate in Switzerland (though Jeff doesn't have that in his data set) despite its very high gun ownership rate, but there are also other countries such as Israel. My book, The Bias Against Guns, has some international evidence that you might find interesting.
The bottom line is that the claim that there is a positive relationship between guns and murder rates is usually due to a selective sample of countries.
Posted by: John Lott at Apr 14, 2008 2:51:32 AM
What you cling to?
$20/barrel oil........
Posted by: tieornot at Apr 14, 2008 7:16:40 AM
If you often feel free to travel in your automobile where the dastardly road construction bothers you (I take it you do own a car), and by air where they horrid queues offend you (you feel you shouldn't have to wait with the rest of the cattle?), then by "they" he isn't talking about you. He's talking to and about people who, if they want to post a comment on the internet, have to go wait in line at the public library.
This is really nonsense.
Seventy-five percent of poor people in the U.S. own cars (and I'm talking about people who meet the government definition of poverty -- not lower middle class people). And as for internet access -- a computer capable of net access can be had for literally nothing (large numbers of older but perfectly functional computers -- all capable of internet access -- are disposed of every day). And basic dial-up internet access can be had for $5-10/month (and a majority of poor Americans have cable TV -- which costs a lot more than $5-10/month).
This poor huddled digital masses trope needs to retired along with John Edwards' fictional shivering girl whose family couldn't afford to buy a $10 coat at Walmart (or a $2 coat at a resale shop).
Posted by: Slocum at Apr 14, 2008 7:49:06 AM
Ah yes, he wanted to empathize with us cattle. He just happened to say it behind closed doors to Dem donors who think that way in a condescending manner. Total coincidence.
Posted by: Scott at Apr 14, 2008 7:55:25 AM
"At this point in my life I am unable to point you to any papers if any exist.
Posted by: Michael Foody at Apr 13, 2008 8:47:00 PM"
Good to see someone own up as Michael did, and at some point, we all should.
VS. Bob": you sound a lot like a John Lott sockpuppet.
Posted by: bartman at Apr 13, 2008 10:48:55 PM
AND bart,
I agree about the Sock Puppet. Smells like it. Barkley Rosser.
Posted by: Tom at Apr 14, 2008 10:09:56 AM
"We can't help but notice that the same people who vote conservatively, the same people who are big on religion and big on guns, are also the people who are living in the economically weaker areas of the country."
Huge generalizations there -- how many policy decisions would we want to hang on "we can't help but notice", followed by a stereotype. And what about the occasional bad urban neighborhood, where drug gangs and churches coexist, but where conservatives are not welcome? But still, by "economically weaker", don't you mean, "less densely populated"?
Tyler, I'm guessing that makes you cling to short bicycle commutes. I think I may be wrong.
Posted by: Eric H at Apr 14, 2008 11:19:43 AM
No, it's not true that whenever one uses the word "they" one is distancing or distinguishing oneself from the other. If one is in California and asked about people in Pennsylvania, it is clear and common to use the pronoun "they" in reference to the people in the other state, whether they are family, friends, or voters. But just as a test, please in all your studies of consumers use the word "we" for the rest of your life.
Posted by: rod at Apr 14, 2008 11:32:40 AM
Tom, I don't appreciate your tone, my original point was that the results of right to carry laws were ambiguous given the balance of the research, I don't have access to the literature to defend my claims any longer, and have never been an expert on the question. I am commenting on a blog and there are different standards. I pointed to a paper that disagreed with some of Lott's claims and not with others.
"After having found that right-to-carry laws do have measurable effects on
crimes, the next step is to examine why states differ in their responses to
these laws. What makes Mississippi and Virginia, two states with general
increases in crime rates, so different from the other states? In what respect
is Idaho, a state with significant decreases in murders and robberies but
significant increases in the number of rapes, different from Florida, Montana,
and Oregon, which experienced significant decreases in all three crime categories?
Answers to these questions will enhance our understanding of why
right-to-carry laws lead to fewer crimes in many but not all states and will
make it easier to decide when the adoption of such laws should be
recommended."
I don't seek to damn Lott. I don't have a strong opinion either way on the issue because I don't see any results that convince me that guns cause or decrease crime.
Posted by: Michael Foody at Apr 14, 2008 11:44:02 AM
I don't think crime is the whole story. What about deaths because of involuntary accidents with weapons? That will not show up in the murder rates but it should be computed in the impact of looser gun permits.
Posted by: carlo at Apr 14, 2008 12:04:31 PM
"Tom, I don't appreciate your tone, "
Michael, you could not readily defend your position at this time, and stated so. I think that was very honest of you. My point is that we have all been there, relying on our memories, but instead of digging in deeper and resorting to name calling you took the high road. I'm not making a comment on whether your claims are valid or not. I hope this clarifies my earlier statement.
Posted by: Tom at Apr 14, 2008 12:45:54 PM
I appreciate the clarification.
Posted by: Michael Foody at Apr 14, 2008 12:59:50 PM
"He's talking to and about people who, if they want to post a comment on the internet, have to go wait in line at the public library."
Really? Nobody in rural Pennsylvania can get on the internet from home? You spend a lot of time there?
Posted by: RJ at Apr 14, 2008 2:28:07 PM
"He's talking to and about people who, if they want to post a comment on the internet, have to go wait in line at the public library."
Really? Nobody in rural Pennsylvania can get on the internet from home? You spend a lot of time there?
uh, RJ, the issue is not access it is COST. Not everyone can afford a computer, and a monthly charge for an ISP.
I myself am on a dial-up line, with an 8 year-old computer (Windows ME !), and I do NOT have cable TV (or a cell phone).
And I am middle-class.
Posted by: rich at Apr 14, 2008 2:49:34 PM
John Lott,
I was unable to access the article itself, but the abstract to the Miron paper has two paragraphs. Here is the first one in its entirety.
"Violence rates differ dramatically across countries. A widely held view is that these differences reflect differences in gun control and/or gun availability, and certain pieces of evidence appear consistent with this hypothesis. A more detailed examination of evidence, however, suggests the role of gun control/availability is not compelling. This more detailed examination, however, does not provide an alternative explanation for cross-country differences in violence."
The next paragraph then discusses analysis bringing in the role of drug prohibition enforcement, saying that this helps clarify things without saying precisely how, although it is certainly reasonable that this could be a factor, given the well-known role of drug gang murders in the homicide rate at least at times in some parts of the US.
So, my statement that international evidence turns the apparent US evidence "into garbage" is overstated. However, I would also note that at least based on this abstract, it does not clearly support your arguments, with indeed the thrust remaining that "certain pieces of evidence" appear to support the opposite conclusion, even if this is not upheld in a more detailed account. Maybe there is a table or a chart somewhere in the paper that can be interpreted as pushing the other way, if apparently without statistical significance, but such a conclusion most certainly was not strong enough to make it into the abstract.
I would agree that there are a lot of other factors involved here, many of them hard to model, such as history and culture. The US, for better or worse, has a history of gun-loving and owning, and so we are very high in gun ownership, even if insufficient cracking down on drug gangs may explain our high murder rate relative to the rest of the world (heck, our enormous use of capital punishment sure as hell has not kept it down!).
I am also open to the idea that there may be some nonlinearity or non-monotonicity going on here, and have said so before with the "barn door already opened" argument. Gun control may be more effective at reducing crime in countries that have few guns, such as Japan, whereas in the US there are so many guns around that, well, they got out of control a long time ago. Hence, in the US, it may be possible that in some states allowing the packing of heat in bars, churches, and elsewhere might actually reduce homicides, although as a professor not far away from Virginia Tech and its sad anniversary, I remain opposed to the idea of allowing guns on campuses, not keen on having to discuss grades with potentially crazed students potentially packing heat, although, of course, some of the craziest may be doing so anyway, as we all know.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Apr 14, 2008 3:23:57 PM
Obama can fix the airports for you. They are reconstructing O'Hare Airport for $15 billion. A new airport would have only cost $6 billion. Talk about productivity and efficiency...!!!
Posted by: jorod at Apr 14, 2008 3:46:10 PM
On gun control, I suggest you read "10 Things You Can't Say in America" by Larry Elder.
Also, don't you think the shooters would just use knives to kill people? What about baseball bats? Are you gonna outlaw baseball bats? In some countries, people who throw stones are branded terrorists. Are they going to outlaw stones?
Posted by: jorod at Apr 14, 2008 3:52:33 PM
uh, RJ, the issue is not access it is COST. Not everyone can afford a computer, and a monthly charge for an ISP.
Nonsense. A functional used computer can be had for free (or nearly free). Dial-up internet can be had for the cost of a fast-food meal ($6/month).
I myself am on a dial-up line, with an 8 year-old computer (Windows ME !), and I do NOT have cable TV (or a cell phone).
And I am middle-class.
If you are truly middle class but have neither cable or a cell-phone, that is by choice not necessity. The statistics show that a majority of Americans below the poverty line have cars and cable TV. If those people do not also have basic computers and dial-up net access, that, too, is by choice rather than necessity.
Posted by: Slocum at Apr 14, 2008 4:04:10 PM
"Obama can fix the airports for you. They are reconstructing O'Hare Airport for $15 billion. A new airport would have only cost $6 billion. Talk about productivity and efficiency...!!!"
Obama is a senator, not a mayor or governor. Try again.
Posted by: meter at Apr 14, 2008 4:11:15 PM
"Also, don't you think the shooters would just use knives to kill people? What about baseball bats? Are you gonna outlaw baseball bats? In some countries, people who throw stones are branded terrorists. Are they going to outlaw stones?"
For you, yes. Clearly, thinking isn't your strong suit: don't want you to hurt yourself around sharp objects.
Posted by: meter at Apr 14, 2008 4:16:10 PM
jorod,
Uh, one of the things that does seem to be associated with having lots of guns around is
higher suicide rates and death due to accidental shootings within families, safety and all that.
It is a lot easier to kill yourself with a gun than it is with a knife, or some of those other
things you mentioned (and it is also easier to kill someone else, and if we are talking the sort
of assault weapons the NRA insists we have freely available everywhere, lots of other people, such
as at VA Tech last year on April 16).
Of course, you might assert someone's right to commit suicide. Fine. But, we also know that there
are a lot of people out there who contemplate suicide and get talked out of it to recover later who
are very glad that they were so talked out of it. The plethora of guns means that there are that many
more people who do not survive their lowest moments to reconsider and get their lives together.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Apr 14, 2008 4:34:07 PM
I have just done a quick look at the data. It is less clear there is much of a relationship
regarding accidental deaths, but there looks to be a strong relationship between suicide rates
and gun ownership rates by region of the US. I have just done a back-of-the-envelope estimate,
which I am sure John Lott would be able to critique (where is the panel data???), but it suggests
that if the US as a whole had the same rate of gun ownership as the lowest region (NY plus NJ),
the US might have on the order of 15,000 fewer suicides per year. This is a crude estimate, but
this is also a pretty substantial number.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Apr 14, 2008 5:12:46 PM
"If I think about what makes me bitter, it is highway and roadway construction and bad airports and the attendant delays."
Spoken like a true elitist whose only real concern is finding the next great unknown restaurant and getting there on time.
astudentofenconomics previously quoted more of the full context of Obama's comments. Included is this statement:
"But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives."
I believe this is at the heart of what Obama meant. For evidence for the difficulties faced by the middle and lower classes go to http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/04/the-coming-coll.html
Your comment at the top of this thread is beyond the pale. Spoken like someone who has never suffered any deprivation or known anyone who has. Also spoken like someone interested in fanning the flames of what should be a non-existent controversy. Have you no intellectual integrity?
You should be ashamed of your cold heart.
Posted by: lxm at Apr 14, 2008 6:38:28 PM
lxm, you have to understand that for (certain) libertarians and limousine liberals compassion is extended only to those in faraway lands - it's the exoticism that stokes these heretofore alien emotions.
When it's rustbelt jobs facing extinction, it's market manna from heaven: those that are phased out thru no fault of their own should adapt and seek out "better, more productive" sources of income - you know, like IT startups or mortgage origination or something.
Posted by: meter at Apr 14, 2008 7:13:57 PM
O'Hare airport is off-topic, but it always costs more to renovate and retrofit something in-place, as compared to a green-field project with no backwards compatibility constraints and no requirement to keep the whole thing functioning at all times throughout all the changes.
And a hypothetical new airport costing some lesser amount is a pure fantasy anyway: where would you find a large plot of land for it anywhere near the city, how would you overcome endless NIMBY and environmental impact and eminent domain and litigation delays, etc. etc.
Posted by: at Apr 14, 2008 7:48:30 PM
"RJ, the issue is not access it is COST. Not everyone can afford a computer, and a monthly charge for an ISP."
You were broad brushing as much as Obama.
Posted by: RJ at Apr 14, 2008 8:46:23 PM
"RJ, the issue is not access it is COST. Not everyone can afford a computer, and a monthly charge for an ISP."
You were broad brushing as much as Obama.
Posted by: RJ at Apr 14, 2008 8:47:45 PM
Dear Barkley:
You can download a draft of Miron's paper here. The consistently statistically significant results in Table 7 were cut in the final published version of the paper (that is what I was referring to when I wrote "though whether he shows statistically significant results depends upon which version of the paper you look at"). Also, if you didn't pick up on it before and you are asking about the comparability to my results, my point about panel versus cross-sectional data still stands, and I think that cross-sectional data tends to be biased against finding a benefit from guns.
As to the nonlinearity, I guess that I would point to the increases in murder and violent crime rates that we have observed in every place from Ireland, the UK, Jamaica, DC, and Chicago when handgun or gun bans have gone into effect.
As to your concerns about letting permitted concealed handguns on campus, show me an example where your concerns have arisen either on campuses or elsewhere. There are about 5 million permit holders and only small areas where guns are banned in right-to-carry states. Do you see the types of problems you fear in those areas? In Colorado or Utah which have laws letting permit holders carry guns on campus or other schools around the country that also do so, have there been problems that you can point to? Do you think if a problem occurred that it would get a lot of publicity? You might find these two op-eds here and here of interest.
Posted by: John Lott at Apr 15, 2008 12:31:44 AM
John,
I can see that there are good reasons why this version of the paper was not published. Lots of caveats there, simultaneity and endogeneity problems all over the place.
However, the biggest problem is one that is recognized but glossed over: income. The results obtained appear to be due to Central and Latin America, which have higher homicide rates and higher measured rates of drug enforcement than the US. But these are all lower income countries than the US. The US is simply way ahead of all the other high income countries when it comes to homicide rates. If one simply did this (or these studies) on the high income countries, the US effect would drive results pretty strongly.
I also note that you avoid the point about suicides and guns. I just saw a major study out of the Harvard Public School of Health from a year ago (released on April 10, 2007) by Miller et al. They found after accounting for a bunch of other variables that suicide rates in the 16 US states with the highest rates of home gun ownership were twice as high as in the 6 states with the lowest rates of home gun ownership. I note that more people die from gun suicides than do from gun homicides. This is a bigger problem than homicides, and the results are substantial. Indeed we may be easily talking about upwards of 10,000 or more per person, as I suggested above. I remind that this is more than died on 9/11 or US soldiers who have died in Iraq.
I have not pursued the issue of campus deaths. Maybe they make no difference, but I would still prefer to have fewer guns on campuses, even if it is just to reduce the suicide rates, which tend to be high on many campuses.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Apr 15, 2008 3:17:31 AM
I meant to say 10,000 or more persons per year.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Apr 15, 2008 3:19:52 AM
Dear Barkley,
If you send me your email address, I will email you a copy of the final published paper by Miron. The findings in the published paper are also as I described above, not consistent with the argument that you are making.
Whatever problems exist with Miron's work exist multiple fold with the Miller et all paper (actually a series of papers where they simply change the endogenous variable for their very small data set). They look at 48 states during just one year (given the CDC survey data is available for multiple years there is no explanation for why they pick the single year that they look at (hint)). No explanation for why they leave out DC (hint). The Miller et al paper controls for only about six control variables.
You might find this paper by Cutler, Glaeser, and Norberg on suicides interesting. I have also done published research on suicides and guns. The point of both papers is that there are lots of ways to commit suicide. Studies by economists don't show any impact on overall suicides from gun control. There are some studies that show an impact on gun suicides but even those don't show an impact on total suicides. If you are interested, I have a paper with John Whitley on this in the 2001 Journal of Law and Economics.
As to the issue of campus attacks, the pieces that I cited discuss multiple cases where attacks have been stopped by people with permits. If you can't point to one case where a multiple victim attack was caused by a permit holder and you can point to any other problems with permit holders (accidents etc.), I am not sure how you can simply say that they might make no difference.
Posted by: John Lott at Apr 15, 2008 5:46:22 AM
If anyone needed further proof that Obama is the Messiah, this is it. His three-line sentences are subject to more hermeneusis than Jesus and Mohammed combined.
More seriously,in the context of the entire sentence, Obama's message is not so elitist. It would have been had it implied that rural voters are stupid, ignorant or both. In fact, bitterness and frustration, and even hatred, can be very rational reactions. To think they cannot be is in my view a very strong assumption on human nature, one indeed that assumes that if you are sentient you cannot behave "badly". This is platonic-socratic intellectualism.
Posted by: gappy at Apr 15, 2008 10:04:50 AM
Obama is one slippery fellow and a perfect screen on which the left can project its aspirations.
Posted by: Rich Berger at Apr 15, 2008 2:44:31 PM
John,
I am at rosserjb@jmu.edu. Feel free to send me some stuff, but not too much.
I am not aware of any problems in Utah, and I am less bothered by teachers having guns
than I am by students. I have done some checking, and there is a general complaint about
much of the literature due to problems of autocorrelation, but I do not think this is the
venue for getting into all kinds of econometric messiness. But it all does throw doubt on
a lot of studies, including some of the panel data ones.
Regarding suicides, I would say that the cultural issue is much more important than it is
for the homicide issue. So, Japan has few guns but lots of suicides, as its culture actually
approves of hara-kiri under appropriate circumstances, while our culture is very anti-suicide.
This leads to the oddity that while the gun-homicide relation is weak or negative within the US
it is closer to being positive globally, Miron notwithstanding (and I have noticed that they left
out a rather important variable that I suspect would undo their results), the gun-suicide relation
looks stronger within the US and much weaker globally.
Regarding Miller et al, you complain that they used "only" six other variables. But that is more
than Miron used, and his variables are very fuzzy as he himself admits. Indeed, you stress studies
about gun control and things, but measuring "gun control" is very fuzzy. Measuring home gun ownership
is a well-defined continuous variable, and the relationship between that and suicided, especially gun
induced suicides, looks pretty strong and robust within the US, if not across countries.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Apr 15, 2008 5:27:17 PM
John,
I took your hint on D.C. It it is rock bottom, #51, in both gun ownership and in suicide rates. Miller et al messed up by leaving it out? Here are the top five states in gun ownership: WY, MT, SD, WV, ID. Here are the top five in suicide rates: MT, NV, AK, NM and WY tied. Here are the bottom five in gun ownership rates: D.C. NJ, NY, MA, and RI. Here ar the bottom five in suicife rates: D.C., NJ, NY, RI, and MA. Looks like a very strong correlation to me, very strong.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Apr 15, 2008 6:10:13 PM
I'm confused? The American people and the media are so intent in dissecting every little word these canidates say but are unwilling to do any self reflection? While Obama was making a sweeping generalization, it was a well oberved stereo-type. Maybe he was a little out of line, but not out of touch. I just spent an entire 4 months of studying world religions with some deeply small city Christians who are Black and not too well off. Bitter and frustrated (and very ultra Christian) would be an understatement in describing the group I was with. Perhaps not the greatest sample of the whole small-town mentality, but it is easy to see where Senator Obama was coming from. It's almost (well it is) the same as stating all politicians are "slick".
Posted by: Jamie at Apr 15, 2008 6:51:01 PM
Dear Barkley:
The final published version of Miron's paper was just emailed to you.
In addition to Utah, Colorado also has a state law that lets licensed concealed permit holders, including students, carry guns with them on campus (the Univ of Colorado is the only school exempted). Many states leave it up to the individual school to decide whether concealed handguns are allowed and there are some schools that do allow it. Also, I previously pointed out that these student age permit holders are extremely law-abiding and rarely lose their permits. Why do you think that their behavior will change when these same individuals are at school?
I disagree about the autocorrelation issue being a problem, but let me ask you a question: why have every single one of the multiple victim shootings in the US involving more than three people being killed occurred in gun free zones?
Just like attacks last year at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Neb., the Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City and the recent attack at the Tinley Park Mall in Illinois, or all the public school attacks, they had one thing in common: They took place in "gun-free zones," where private citizens were not allowed to carry their guns with them.
The malls in Omaha and Salt Lake City were in states that let people carry concealed handguns, but private property owners are allowed to post signs that ban guns; those malls were among the few places in their states that chose such a ban. Why don't we see at least some of these attacks occurring in malls that let people carry concealed handguns?
These horrible incidents limited to just gun-free zones in the U.S. In 1996, Martin Bryant killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Australia. In the last half-dozen years, European countries — including France, Germany and Switzerland — have experienced multiple-victim shootings. The worst in Germany resulted in 17 deaths, another in 14 deaths; in Switzerland, one attack claimed the lives of 14 regional legislators.
As to suicides, I am interested what you reaction to the Cutler et al paper that I suggested that you look at. You will find their point that it is something other than gun ownership that is going on in these rural areas that causes high suicide rates. Note that it is ruralness that is common among the states that you point to with the high gun ownership and suicide rates. Here is also my paper with Whitley.
I complained about both the Miron and Miller papers for using few control variables, a problem that could have been fixed in some part by using panel data with geographic and time fixed effects. I mentioned the Miller paper using few variables because you had made an issue about how much the Miller paper had controlled for. I was merely responding to your claim on that point. What really bothers me about the Miller paper was that there is no explanation for why all the data (which is readily available is not used). Is there an explanation that you can think of for why only one year of suicide data is related to the survey data? The use of DC does not effect their cross-sectional estimates on suicide, but it does effect their results on murder rates. I should have been clearer on what paper I was referring to.
Posted by: John Lott at Apr 15, 2008 9:28:33 PM
Isn't it interesting that Obama can talk about what he believes black Americans are feeling bitter about, and no one thinks it is presumptuous or condescending? Considering that although his parents are African, and American, neither is African-American, so he is not descended from American slaves. if he talks about the feelings of black Americans, he is doing so as an outside observer, to some extent, isn't he?
So why are some of the folks in Pennsylvania so sensitive? Is it because they don't care for compassion coming from a privileged black man?
I don't know, just asking.
Posted by: jonathan Wheatley at Apr 15, 2008 9:41:31 PM
This will be my last comment on this now aging thread.
John,
Thanks for the Miron paper. Please send me the one you did with Cutler also.
However, if the main explanation to "fix" the results that you guys come up
with regarding guns and suicide is rural loneliness and alienation, I am not
convinced, although, well, we have heard about how those poor people in small
towns with longstanding economic problems become bitter and cling to guns and
religion and hating immigrants and... (ooooops!)
To be more specific I did some quick googling. Here is what I have found.
I would say that the most obvious predictor of suicide within the US should
depression rates. So, I looked thaose up. For youths the two most depressed
states are Idaho and Nevada (so far so good, both have high suicide rates along
with their high gun ownership rates). The least depressed are Louisiana and
South Dakota. South Dakota!? Of course, it is third in gun ownership rates.
A quick check finds that its youth suicide rate is twice the national average.
Ooooooops!
(BTW, Robert Putnman has eastern South Dakota being the part of the country
that has the highest rate of social capital, which is negatively correlated with
depression.)
Then we have the adult depression rates. The lowest are in Hawaii and New Jersey,
both of which have low suicide and gun ownership rates. The highest two are
Utah and Rhode Island. Rhode Island!? This state is not only #2 in density of
population (after New Jersey), not much rural isolation and alienation there,
but it is in the lowest five in both gun ownership and suicide rates. Ooooooops!
So, John, with your panel data studies you may have succeeded in throwing serious
doubt on the apparent relationship between guns and homicide that one sees from a
simple cross-section of US states, even if I would say that the econometric issues
remain sufficient to retain doubt that you have proven that loosening gun control
laws will necessarily lower homicide rates (and I repeat that this is not the
appropriate venue for a debate about strictly econometric issues, although I would
warn that I am not someone you really want to get into a debate about those with).
But, I doubt you will be as successful with a similar argument on suicide and guns.
That will take a whole lotta fixin'. Just to be anecdotal, a friend of mine recently
attempted suicide and failed. He was using a razor blade with alcohol and pills. I
think if he had owned a gun, he would be dead now. I fear that those pushing the
Supreme Court to overturn D.C.'s restrictive law on gun ownership will be partly
responsible for the increase in suicide rates there that I forecast will be coming
as a result.
On Miron, well, not only have they left out income, which I think will completely
undo their findings, but their measures of gun control are weak (they note that the
US and UK are scored identically), and furthermore I find their argument and variables
on "drug enforcement" truly bizarre. They amount to drug seizures. We are supposed
to say that if the police seize fewer drugs there will be fewer gangland drug-related
murders? I would say that drug seizures are related to the scale of the activity of
drug gangs, with Peru being one of their poster boys, and that drug gangs just happen
to engage in killing lots of people with guns. I do not see putting this in a regression
as providing a convincing "fix" on the stronger international relation betweeen guns
and homicides that still looks pretty convincing to me, despite some outliers.
On the broader issue, John, and speaking as someone who won a sharpshooting medal on
his way to becoming an Eagle Scout, I think that a society with very few guns is a better
society than one with lots and lots of them, ceteris paribus. It may be people that kill
and not guns, but it is a lot easier for people to kill when there are a lot of guns around,
including killing themselves, for which all those arguments about allowing people to
pack heat in churches and schools are utterly irrelevant. In this, I agree with the
remarks you have been publicizing that Obama supposedly made about gun ownership not
necessarily being such a wonderful thing.
Which brings us (or at least me) full circle back to the original issue about which this
thread was concerned, the meaning of Obama's statement about small towns and guns and
religion and hating immigrants and bitterness and hating immigrants, and so on, with me reminding you again that your "ruralness" argument about suicide would seem to fit in
with them. Oh well...
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Apr 16, 2008 4:16:12 PM
"Resolved from Hanover Township, Lancaster County, June 4, 1774; that in the event Great Britain attempting to force unjust laws upon us by the strength of arms, our cause we leave to heaven and to our rifles."
But they were just bitter about the mill closing, I guess. Google Pennsylvania Rifle and Pennsylvania Dutch and you'll see that this is a longstanding cultural tradition that predates the mills closing down.
Posted by: Aaron at Apr 18, 2008 5:59:29 AM
