Thinking about gun violence

• Author: Philip J. Cook
• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12519

DOI: 10.1111/1745-9133 .12519

THE 2020 STOCKHOLM PRIZE

Thinking about gun violence

Philip J. Cook

Sanford Professor Emeritus of Public

Policy and Economics, Sanford School of

Public Policy Duke University, Durham,

NC 27708

Correspondence

PhilipJ. Cook, Sanford Professor Emeritus

ofPublic Policy and Economics Sanford

Schoolof Public Policy Duke University,

Durham, NC 27708.

Email:pcook@duke.edu

Abstract

The Stockholm Prize for 2020 was awarded for research

on gun violence and its prevention, and recognizes the

growing depth and scope of this field. I am honored to be

a co-recipient, together with Franklin E. Zimring. This

essay focuses on three of the topics that have been on my

agenda over the course of the last 45 years: how best to

conceptualize and measure the problem of gun violence;

the availability of guns to violent offenders; and how and

why to improve police investigations of criminal shoot-

ing incidents, including assaults and homicides.

KEYWORDS

clearance rates, costs of crime, Firearms, gun violence, instrumen-

tality, underground markets

The Stockholm Prize for 2020 was awarded for research on gun violence and its prevention. I

am honored to share the prize with Franklin Zimring, who published the first systematic empir-

ical findings in this field. His seminal work demonstrated that the type of weapon used by the

perpetrator of a violent attack is not just an incidental detail, but has a plausibly causal effect

(over and above the intent of the perpetrator) on whether the victim lives or dies (Zimring, 1968,

1972). My first contribution to the field (Cook, 1976) extended this “instrumentality” argument to

robbery, documenting that target choice, mode of intimidation, likelihood of injury, and amount

stolen were all shaped by whether the robbers used a gun. Since then I have undertaken a vari-

ety of other projects related to gun violence, and scores of other researchers have contributed as

well. Indeed, the research desert that Zimring discovered 50 years ago has blossomed; scholars

from criminology, public policy, economics, public health, law, and other fields have joined in

the effort to develop a strong evidence base for understanding and reducing the heavy burden of

gun violence (Cook & Donohue, 2017; Hemenway, 2017). The 2020 Stockholm Prize is implicit

recognition of the growing depth and scope of this field1.

In this brief essay I focus on three of the issues that I have found particularly compelling

over the years.2The first is how best to conceptualize and measure the problem of gun

Criminology & Public Policy. 2020;19:1371–1393. © 2020 American Society of Criminology 1371wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/capp

1372 COOK

violence, a problem that I worked on with another economist, Jens Ludwig (Cook & Ludwig,

2000). While the usual measure of the “problem” starts with the number of people shot and

killed or wounded, that approach only illuminates one aspect of the social burden imposed by

gun violence, and the “body count” is not necessarily proportional to the overall burden. One

implication of our “social cost” perspective is that while the majority of gun deaths are sui-

cides, the greater part of the “problem” is associated with the wide-ranging effects of the crim-

inal misuse of guns. Furthermore, much of the cost is not directly linked to actual victims; it is

the anticipation of victimization that engenders widespread anxiety, disinvestment in impacted

communities, and costly efforts to avoid and mitigate attacks. This point is illustrated all too

well by one example, mass shootings in schools, which are far more important than they appear

in the victimization statistics—these events are very rare (fewer than 1 in 100,000 schools per

year are attacked), but most children are taught to be concerned about them and schools devote

substantial time and scarce funds to school safety drills in preparation for an active-shooter

event.

The second topic is the availability of guns to violent offenders. One conclusion from my

research has been that even in America, with 300 million guns in private hands, offenders often

face substantial barriers to obtaining one. Among other things, the scarcity of guns helps explain

why most perpetrators do not use a gun in robbery, despite the evident advantage of attempt-

ing to control their intended victim with a gun rather than knife, club, or fists (Cook, 1976,1987,

2009). The availability of guns to offenders differs widely among individual offenders, and also

across communities, where it is linked to the general prevalence of gun ownership. Despite this

well-established linkage, the typical transactions that provide guns to offenders are quite different

than the transactions that arm the general public. In particular, while a majority of gun-owning

households obtained their guns by purchase from a licensed gun dealer, that is rarely the prox-

imate source of guns used in crime (Cook, 2018b). In large part the supply of guns to offenders

involves the diversion of guns from legal commerce and ownership,a process that is facilitated in

a community where gun ownership is prevalent. There is, in short, a substantial negative exter-

nality to licit gun ownership (Cook & Ludwig, 2006a).

Third, I discuss a relatively new (for me) research program on how and why to improve police

investigations of criminal shooting incidents, including assaults and homicides. There has been a

secular decline in homicide clearance-by-arrest rates in recent decades, and arrest ratestend to be

particularly low in cities and neighborhoods with high rates of violence. Police departments have

emphasized crime prevention through proactive methods (Leovy, 2015;Weisburd&Majmundar,

2018), while detective work receives lower priority.Indeed, police investigations have been dispar-

aged as reactive, occurring after the damage has been done. But that characterization ignores the

established mechanisms by which solving past crimes prevents future crimes: deterrence, inca-

pacitation, and possibly interruption of private revenge cycles (Cook & Ludwig, 2019b,2019c).

Recent research has provided suggestive evidence that homicide clearance rates can be increased

by improved management techniques and other reforms (Braga& Dusseault, 2018; Wellford, Lum,

Scott, Vovak, & Scherer, 2019), and that with additional resources it is feasible to increase clear-

ance rates for shootings even without reforming investigation practices(Cook, Braga, Turchan, &

Barao, 2019).

These three topics illustrate that my gun violence research agenda, and the field more gen-

erally, has been shaped from the beginning by policy concerns. The project is not science for

its own sake; rather, scholars in this arena typically seek to provide a scientific basis for shap-

ing policy. For the most part the agenda is focused on reducing the harms caused by the mis-

use of guns. It is important to note that for millions of Americans, guns provide a source of