Guns & Other Freedoms.('The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You've Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong')(Book Review)(Brief Article)

Each of us has a favorite part of the Bill of Rights; for me-as for many others-it's the First Amendment. But a good rule of thumb is to consider that particular freedom most important which, at a particular time, is most under attack. And that's why John R. Lott Jr. of the American Enterprise Institute deserves the status of Hero of the Constitution in our time: He stands up for the embattled Second Amendment, the section of the Bill of Rights most hated by today's smart set. Try the following thought experiment. Imagine a fellow who goes on TV and says, "Muslims tend to be violent and creepy," and another who says, "Gays tend to be violent and creepy." In both cases, there would be a justifiable explosion of outrage at the proclamation of such unfair and bigoted stereotypes. But now try to imagine a third fellow, who declares that "gun advocates tend to be violent and creepy." His outburst would probably occasion, at most, a press release from the National Rifle Association; the mainstream media and the public at large would likely see nothing exceptionable in his statement.

In his new book, The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You've Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong (Regnery, 349 pp., $27.95), John Lott explains how the defenders of gun ownership have been saddled with this undeserved reputation-and provides the statistical truths that the anti-gun activists don't want you to know. The picture he paints is quite striking. Gun ownership is an important factor in reducing the crime rate; it makes ours a less, not more, violent society. For example, states with concealed-carry laws have seen large decreases in the number of multiple-victim public shootings; which only makes sense, because a violent criminal intent on a murder spree is more likely to shoot at targets he can confidently assume to be unarmed. This is part of the more general benefit of allowing citizens to engage in defensive gun use. One study found that in the ten states that adopted concealed- carry laws between 1977 and 1992, overall murder rates fell after the laws were passed. Lott's book is full of information of this kind-which is highly inconvenient for media outlets that want to traffic in gun scaremongering.

-- In today's academy, University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein is one of the most valuable resources on the side of liberty. In Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism (Chicago, 311 pp., $39), he offers a detailed intellectual defense of a liberal social order with a government that is limited but-just as important-strong and effective in performing the tasks that are proper to it. The book is a complex and challenging attempt to respond to the objections raised to classical liberalism in recent years by specialists in law, economics, and philosophy; as such, it frequently addresses controversies outside the ken of the average educated reader. But Epstein is an engaging man, with a quick mind, and will not permit careful readers to lose sight of the fact that his effort is aimed at protecting the very heart of the American project. His thought is sophisticated, but the insights are intimately connected to a commonsensical realism:

The key . . . to making (and understanding) these decisions [on important life choices] is to avoid thinking in terms of categorical judgments . . . It is hopeless to ask categorically whether we value family more than professional attainments, or a pristine environment more than a warm and safe home. Typically, we value both, so our key decision is never made in the abstract, but always at the margin. When the question is posed grandly, as family versus work, or environment versus home, it is as though we are allowed to choose between only two points on the private indifference curve, (1,0) or (0,1), without having the luxury of any intermediate solutions. In practice, however, we are usually at some point closer to the middle of the range.

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