Skepticamp! (And Some Notes on Guns!)

The 2014 Atlanta Skepticamp is almost upon us! As with last year, there will be lots of little presentations, and for the second time now, I'll be doing one. I'm actually pretty excited about it. I've chosen quite the topic, too: Guns!

So the relation between guns and skepticism might appear rather mysterious, but my general thought runs along these lines: Our contemporary debate about guns tends to run along three strands: Facts about contemporary gun violence; historical and legal claims about the Second Amendment; and philosophical justifications for (or against) gun ownership. And canvassing that ground, or at least a bit of it, will be the purpose of my talk. The skepticism part comes with the sheer glut of nonsense surrounding the debate.

For this post, though, I'd just like to make a tidy list of the references I've looked at so far, first so I can actually shut down my computer without losing all those tabs(!), and second so I have some record of what I've actually been looking at!

So here are the links I've found helpful, sorted by category.

I. The Data:

This Salon piece gives a brief review of the state of the research into gun control, and in particular gives a nice epidemiological perspective. It's essentially a rejoinder to Lott's "data" showing that concealed carry laws reduced crime. It's chock-full of good links.

"The NRA's War On Gun Science" is a nice piece about the more recent history the gun lobby  has of defunding gun research. Truly disheartening.

The Harvard Injury Control Research Center has a nice and short breakdown on the latest state of the research on gun violence vs. levels of ownership.

This is a very interesting study on the use of guns in altercations. It's seeking to ask that small percentage of people who have either seen or been directly involved in any altercation involving guns what their role was (offensive, defensive, victim, etc.). The study interviewed all claims to self-defense, and then had those stories reviewed by criminal judges to make a prima facie claim about whether those uses were legal. The results are about what you'd expect.

This is a useful chart of international comparisons that Charles Blow used as his Op-Ed in the Times shortly after the Sandy Hook shooting.

Some useful Pew data on gun ownership trends.

This is an incredibly useful chart on Wikipedia that breaks down firearm-related violence nationally. The chart is great...but one gripe: You can't easily get it to Excel. The data is larded with text, so it takes some clean-up work to make it easy to chart.

U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health. That's the title of the report jointly published by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine. It's a bleak read. A short journalistic piece giving the broad outlines can be found here.

A short Washington Post piece on the astonishingly high levels of gun ownership in the U.S., with charts!

A very long piece criticizing Lott's More Guns, Less Crime hypothesis, by Ian Ayres and John Donohue. Donohue has done some really first-rate work on, especially, criminological metasurveys. Good stuff. Thick, though.

II. The Second Amendment and the Legal Precedent

This is an extremely interesting and provocative paper by Carl Bogus about the origins of the Second Amendment, and in particular the relation to the institution of slavery in the southern states. A shorter review of the article by Thom Hartmann can be found here.

The ever-cantankerous Richard Posner wrote this fabulous takedown in The New Republic of the horrible Scalia opinion in Heller shortly after it was published. It's really a gem of an article; a first-rate example of legal scholarship for a popular audience.

This is Justice Stevens' dissenting opinion in Heller. It's a model dissent, and does a great job of picking apart Scalia. Note that there are links to the other parts of the issued opinions on the case at the top.

"The Embarrassing Second Amendment" is a nice review of the scholarship and history by Sanford Levinson. His case strikes me as fairly weak, but at least conciliatory and charitable toward the republican libertarian line of argument.

III. The Philosophy

"Why Gun Control Is Not Enough" is a nice, short piece by Jeff McMahan at the Stone in the Times. It's primarily on the philosophy of gun control. The argument is, to my mind, compelling. McMahan did a nice Philosophy Bites episode on the same topic that's short and sweet. It's here.

I wish there were more philosophy on the topic out there, but there just doesn't appear to be much on it right now. McMahan gives a plausible reason for that: the virtual unanimity of the philosophy world outside the small circle of libertarians who write papers to one another. It would be good to see more discussion of the problem in social ethics circles.

A late entry: John Donohue has participated in several debates on the topic of gun control. Unfortunately, while he's obviously a very smart guy, he's a terrible public speaker. But two of his performances may be found here and here.

Enjoy!