OSD 216: O(culture)
There’s a math tool called Big O notation. It’s mostly used in computer science, and it’s useful for describing how efficiently a function will perform as the amount of data you give to that function grows. For example, if you come up with a new way to search a list, you might say, “This search function’s time complexity is big oh of n-squared.” That’s written as O(n²)
, and it means that as the list you’re searching grows (“n” means “the number of things in the list”), the time for your function to run will grow by that amount squared. If n doubles, the time to search the list will quadruple. If n grows by 10x, the time to search the list will grow by 100 (i.e. 10²). And so on. So “what’s the Big O of this algorithm?” is a really important question in basic computer science.
Mathematically, an interesting thing about Big O notation is that in analyzing your function’s performance, it actually ignores most of the function. It focuses only on the dominant component, because as n grows, that dominant component is what matters. Everything else is swamped by it. From Wikipedia (edited lightly for clarity):
Suppose the time it takes to complete a problem of size n is
T(n) = 4n² − 2n + 2
. As n grows large, the n² term will come to dominate, so that all other terms can be neglected. For instance when n = 500, the term 4n² is 1000 times as large as the 2n term. Ignoring the latter would have negligible effect on the expression's value for most purposes.
This is a newsletter about guns. And sometimes we talk about the criminal misuse of guns. So what’s the Big O of that equation?
Before we get into that, a quick diversion. If you leave gun rights people alone for too long, we start fantasizing about a world without gun laws. (We consummate that yearning by deciding we need to buy one more set of ceramic plates.) What it would be like, what we’d do, etc. But hark, gun freedom is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.
If you are a young man, have the bad luck to have been born in one of the worst neighborhoods in the US, and are in or adjacent to a gang, there’s a statistically decent chance that you live as though no gun laws exist. Private party transfers, permitless carry everywhere, no SBR laws, full auto everything, the whole deal. Even the reason to carry is the same — generally they carry for self-defense.
On paper, that’s the gun rights dream. But obviously in practice, the result is just that a lot of people die senselessly over turf battles and personal disputes.
Meanwhile, elsewhere the US is replete with examples of ubitquitous-gun-ownership/low-violence subcultures, across every demographic group. You can even shift over time instead of space. Pre-Gun Control Act, you could mail-order guns to your house, no questions asked. Pre-National Firearms Act, you could do the same with machine guns. And like today, for each high-violence subculture you could point to a dozen low-violence ones. The gun isn’t the dominant term in the equation. The culture around the gun is.
One objection could be, “Fine, but surely the gun has some effect. Take the gun away and the violence wouldn’t happen.” In a sense, sure, yes. If you assume into existence the ability to pass a law that says, “You can only use guns for good stuff but not for bad stuff” and then have that actually happen, then sure, by definition that would reduce violence. But law hasn’t demonstrated even the power to prevent someone from acquiring a gun, let alone successfully controlling how they use it. That’s how much culture dominates in this equation — it determines how many guns will exist in a subculture, and then also determines how people will use them.
This drives a lot of the confusion about gun laws. Because gun control groups don’t know about high-guns/low-violence subcultures (literally not aware of the statistical reality that, to use David Yamane’s phrase, “guns are normal and normal people use guns”), they look at high-guns/high-violence subcultures and think that the guns are the dominant term in the equation. That’s where you get slogans like “it’s the guns” and “more guns = more deaths” — like most ideas, they seem pretty true when you haven’t looked at the counterexamples.
So groups get confused about why people aren’t persuaded. It’s because those people are looking at a fuller equation and see that culture is the dominant term. This would be like trying to reduce drunk driving and saying, “More alcohol leads to more deaths. But the most committed drunk drivers are hard to reach directly, so instead let’s start by cracking down on those booze dealing Michelin-starred restaurants.”
That would be perfectly rational if someone thinks that alcohol is the dominant term in the equation. So they’d push for common-sense wine pairing control, and then they’d get confused about why sommeliers keep making memes about them. One explanation is that sommeliers don’t care about drunk driving. But the better one is that the sommeliers are using their expertise to recommend a better model of people’s behavior.
As a gun owner, you have an opportunity to be a good sommelier. It doesn’t mean being exclusive. It’s the opposite, really. It means making yourself visible as an example of how to do this stuff well, and even more importantly it means being a sherpa to newbies who need advice. Outcomes with gun ownership have always been O(culture)
, and if we keep being good sherpas, that’s going to become common knowledge.
This week’s links
“You need physical security”
Reflections on the occasional need to be your own first responder.
“Lawyer. Passport. Locksmith. Gun. (A talk about risk and preparedness.)”
A more exotic version of the first talk.
A felon found a gun and turned it in. He could go to prison for it.
How gun laws work in real life:
When Steven Cooper found a gun and ammunition in the Chevy Blazer his brother gave him, he did what he thought was the right thing.
He wrapped the gun in a sweatshirt, put it inside the secured door of his apartment building, and waited for his parole officer to show up.
As a felon for a violent offense, Cooper isn’t allowed to possess a firearm and doing so could send him back to prison for years.
He turned the gun over to his parole officer and told her it probably belonged to his brother, who recently died and left behind some belongings in the car.
Cooper’s parole officer called the Duluth police, who put Cooper in handcuffs and took him to jail.
Camden County, Missouri is refusing to help the ATF with anything…
… including, in this case, supplying the zoning info for a few people’s FFL applications to be processed 🤷♂️
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