Social Science Bites

Let’s cut to the chase: “The overwhelming majority of murders in the United States involve guns,” says economist Jens Ludwig. “And in fact, most of the difference in overall murder rates between the United States and other countries are due to murders with guns.” This may seem intuitively obvious to outside observers, but studying guns within the United States has long been a fraught endeavor, and the amount of research isn’t commensurate with the impact on U.S. society. That said, Ludwig has taken on exploring the roots of American gun violence, work that serves as grist for the Crime Lab he directs at the University of Chicago and for many of his books, including his latest, Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence. What’s he’s found is that the folk wisdom around gun violence doesn’t rally hold up to the evidence. In this Social Science Bites episode, he explains to interviewer David Edmonds how – using insights about ‘system one’ and system two’ thinking developed by Daniel