What caused the historically unique volatility in American homicides since 2019, driven by gun homicides? While there is no shortage of candidate explanations, a coherent understanding has been elusive because of the widely held view that gun violence, like other crimes, stems from a rational weighing of benefits and costs as in Becker (1968). This model does a generally poor job of explaining recent trends in homicide. Behavioral economics helps explain what the Becker model cannot. This view starts with the fact that most shootings don’t further some larger goal like robbery or gang wars over drug turf (“instrumental violence”); they’re arguments settled with guns (“expressive violence”). Why do arguments start or escalate? The behavioral model points to automatic cognition that is fast, effortless but sometimes prone to error. The pandemic increased automaticity by increasing distress – a cognitive “bandwidth tax.” Recent homicide trends, driven by changes in expressive violence, are mirrored by similar trends for deaths from drug overdose, car crashes, and suicide (especially for Black Americans, the group most affected by violence) – “deaths of decision-making.” Also relevant is a large rise and fall in gun carrying, which might partially stem from Becker-like mechanisms: Large changes in handgun sales and police stops, both of which may also have been affected by the killing of George Floyd. Since American gun violence is mostly arguments with guns, no wonder homicide trends are due mostly to changes in the number of arguments and the odds a given argument had a gun present.

By Jens Ludwig.

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