Overview

The gun control debate is more complex than we often acknowledge. What is often phrased as a single question -- should we have gun control -- Is actually made up of three distinct policy questions. First, who should we permit people to have guns? Second, which guns should be allowed? Thirdly, how should we regulate the acquisition, storage, and carrying of the guns people may legitimately own? To answer these questions we must decide whether (and which) people have a right to bear arms, what kind of right they have, and how stringent that right is. We must also evaluate divergent empirical claims about (a) the role of guns in causing harm, and (b) the degree to which private ownership of guns can protect innocent civilians from attacks by criminals, either in their homes or in public.Hugh LaFollette sorts through the conceptual, moral, and empirical claims to fairly assess arguments for and against serious gun control, and ultimately argues that the US needs far more gun control than we currently have in most jurisdictions.

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No philosopher has contributed more substantially to the literature on gun policy ethics than Hugh LaFollette, as he demonstrates in this outstanding volume. In Defense of Gun Control features exquisite sensitivity to the implicated empirical issues and a penetrating, fair-minded analysis of the ethical issues, before concluding with an array of moderate gun control proposals-some of them quite novel. This work will be of interest to scholars, university students, and others who seek a balanced examination of gun rights and gun control in a single continuous discussion. -- David DeGrazia, George Washington University and co-author of Debating Gun Control In Defense of Gun Control is an outstanding, short, readable treatise on how an intelligent person might approach the gun control debate. This book should be read whether or not you agree with the author's ultimate conclusions, and I would argue, whether or not you are extremely interested in guns or gun control. It provides a highly useful template for how initial non-experts (all of us on most issues) can thoughtfully approach any public policy question. -- David Hemenway, Director, Harvard University Injury Control Research Center This is the best book to date on issues of gun rights and gun control. While it includes history, statistics, and analysis of the statistics, it is above all a work of careful, sustained, rational argument informed by the facts to the extent that they are known. It is particularly strong in its analyses of the nature of moral rights and of what rights people actually have. This is not another polemical tract of the sort that tends to dominate discussions in the US. In developing and defending his views about issues of ethics, law, and policy, LaFollette is scrupulously fair to the views and arguments of all parties. His is a voice of sanity in this polarized but vitally important debate. -- Jeff McMahan, White's Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Oxford

Hugh LaFollette has offered an informative, compelling and readable contribution to the philosophical literature on America's gun debate, which, as of yet, is still relatively small. He gives an overview of three major sets of arguments for and against gun control: armchair arguments, rights based arguments, and empirical arguments. He appraises each in turn, and ultimately points out how and where the gun rights position is wanting, and why the case for gun control is stronger. He concludes by detailing several proposals for gun control. These include some well-known (and much debated) regulations, like gun registration and background checks on gun purchases, but one idea that is rather novel and little discussed, mandatory liability insurance for gun owners. * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *

Author Information

Hugh LaFollette is currently Cole Chair in Ethics at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. He mainly teaches and writes in ethics, especially practical ethics. He is author of three others books, editor of many more, and Editor-in-Chief of the International Encyclopedia of Ethics. He is currently preparing the second edition of that eleven volume reference work.

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