Domestic Terrorism and America’s Gun Dilemma

Is there anything left to say about America’s self-destructive passion for firearms? Perhaps this. From a theoretical point of view, we are faced with a classic collective-action problem. Clearly, it would be in everybody’s interest if there were far fewer guns out there, especially fewer of the military-style weapons that also lend themselves to the massacre of civilians—as we discovered yet again on Wednesday, when, according to officials, a twenty-eight-year-old man, Syed Farook, and a twenty-seven-year-old woman, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire at an office party in San Bernardino, California, killing at least fourteen people and injuring seventeen. But since there are already an estimated three hundred million guns in private hands (nobody knows the exact number), and U.S. gun laws are so lax that many Americans believe that they need a weapon, or many weapons, to defend themselves and their families.