Shattering the paradox of guns and crime: Incidence, prevalence, and the 2020 Stockholm Prize

• Date: 01 November 2020
• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Author: Lawrence W. Sherman
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12522

Received: 11 August2020 Accepted: 12 August 2020

DOI: 10.1111/1745-9133 .12522

THE 2020 STOCKHOLM PRIZE

Shattering the paradox of guns and crime:

Incidence, prevalence, and the 2020 Stockholm

Prize

Lawrence W. Sherman

Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental

Criminology, Institute of Criminology,

University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Correspondence

LawrenceW. Sherman, JerryLee Centre

forExperimental Criminology, Institute

ofCriminology, University of Cambridge,

Cambridge,UK.

Email:LS434@cam.ac.uk

Abstract

The apparent paradox of guns and crime is that gun

homicide rates have been dropping for three decades

in the United States while the number of guns in cir-

culation has been rising. Those trends form an appar-

ent paradox because guns are so much more lethal,

given an attack, than other weapons, and in general, the

more weapons in a state, the higher the rate of death

from firearms. As both winners of the 2020 Stockholm

Prize have shown, an additional element of evidence is

needed to understand why there is no true paradox.With

the declining percentage of households owning guns

(at least until COVID-19), the prevalence of gun owner-

ship has been declining, even while the incidence (mean

number of guns owned per owner) has been rising. The

key to reducing gun violence, and perhaps suicides as

well, may thus be reduced prevalence, even with rising

incidence.

KEYWORDS

gun prevalence, gun incidence, violent crime, crime trends,

weapon lethality, gun policy

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© 2020 The Authors. Criminology & Public Policypublished by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society of Criminology

Criminology & Public Policy. 2020;19:1355–1357. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/capp 1355