Guns harder to come by in New York than you would think

Last week, in response to a multiple homicide shooting in an Omaha mall, I wrote a post showing the mental illness is actually a pretty weak indicator of violent behavior. I made an argument in passing that this would imply that using it as an exclusionary factor for gun ownership, therefore, would be unlikely to limit gun violence.

I want to clarify that a little bit. Most attempts to limit gun access -- as I understand it -- fall into two categories. You can try and limit guns as a blanket policy to everyone, or you can try and limit gun access to key risk groups.

Taking the second one first, if you wanted to limit gun access to groups the important part would be to first identify which groups are most likely to commit acts of gun violence, but as a policy option I don't think really works.

For example, I argued in my post that identifying the mentally ill as a risk group is not particularly productive; they are not on the whole more prone to violence than the general population. Further, you can argue the ethics of such a policy. If you were to say that the mentally ill should not have access due to the risk of violence, what is to say that we should not limit the access of say African Americans or all males under 45? These groups are much more likely to commit violent crimes. Finally, there is always the issue that we do not live in a closed society: risk groups can always get guns from non-risk groups.

These arguments suggest that a blanket policy of gun restriction might be more effective, but the proponents of gun access might respond: "how do you intend to risk overall gun access given the presence of black markets?"

Black markets are always an issue, and to that issue I would like to add the following evidence. The Economist reports on a study of the economics of illicit gun access in NY. Apparently, it is much more difficult to get one than you would think:

As Americans digest the news of another gun atrocity, a mall shooting in Nebraska on December 5th, they cannot be blamed for thinking that guns are in too ready supply. But an article in the latest Economic Journal* suggests that the demand for illegal guns, at least, is not met as easily as people might fear. Sudhir Venkatesh, now of Columbia University, has talked to 132 gang-members, 77 prostitutes, 116 gun-owning youths, 23 gun-dealers and numerous other denizens of Chicago's Grand Boulevard and Washington Park neighbourhoods. He did not find many satisfied customers.

Chicago has unusually tough restrictions on legal handguns. Even so the black market is surprisingly "thin", attracting relatively few buyers and sellers. The authors reckon that the 48,000 residents of the two neighbourhoods buy perhaps 1,400 guns a year, compared with at least 200,000 cocaine purchases. Underground brokers sell guns for $150-350, a mark-up of perhaps 200% over the legal price. They also demand a fee of $30-50 for orchestrating the deal. Even then, 30-40% of the transactions fall through because the seller cannot secure a gun, gets cold feet or cannot agree on a location for the deal.

I was particularly struck with this interesting fact. If you want to close down a black market, you need make it both thin -- lacking in sellers -- and illegal:

Markets can overcome thinness, the paper says; they can also overcome illegality. But they cannot overcome both. A thin market must rely on advertising or a centralised exchange: eBay, for example, has dedicated pages matching sellers of imitation pearl pins or Annette Funicello bears to the few, scattered buyers that can be found. But such solutions are too cumbersome and conspicuous for an underground market. The drugs market, by contrast, slips through the law's fingers because of the natural density of drug transactions. Dealers can always find customers on their doorstep, and buyers can reassure themselves about suppliers through repeated custom. There are no fixed and formal institutions that the police could easily throttle.

The difficulty in purchasing a gun illegally in NY suggests that blanket gun restrictions can in some cases be effective.

(On the other hand, you could also argue that it suggests that there are islands of limited gun access -- implying a federal system of gun access is also possible. People like Mayor Bloomberg have been arguing that we should issue blanket restrictions on gun access because people can buy guns in other states and bring them back into NYC. I don't know whether the study addressed this, but presumably if you had an open market for guns across the river in Jersey it would bring prices in NY down to a competitive level. The continued existence of high prices in NY suggests to me that there is not a globalized market for illegal guns.)

In any case, I argued in my previous post that specified restrictions to gun ownership are unlikely to be effective violence abatement measures. It would appear that, from an economic point of view, NY's blanket restrictions are effective.