An analytical problem in the collective discussion about guns was revealed by the aftermath of the Aurora movie theater shooting. The Washington Post directed attention to the fact that horrific crimes such as mass killings do not sway the public opinion on gun control. The reason for this, one might argue, is that violence itself provides evidence for both parties, those advocating more gun control and those advocating gun rights, to make their point. The gun control advocate can point to the efficiency of murdering many people in little time and the need to limit access to guns that provide this ability to would-be murderers. The gun-rights activist can point to the need to have guns to protect from such acts, or in the now famous words of Wayne LaPierre -- only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun.

It appears that the parties are not discussing guns from the same starting premises. One of the frequent arguments made against gun control is that there are too many guns already available. The argument maintains that there is a threshold point at which gun control is simply no longer feasible. Thus, the proponent of gun control has no credibility because he fails to recognize that his solution, control, is no longer a feasible one.

The implicit argument being made by the proponents of gun rights is that the world has reached a point where the policy instruments available for addressing gun violence must accommodate the reality that guns have permeated society. In this paper we attempt to stylize this argument by modeling the tipping point of gun ownership. Using an infectious disease model, we explore the potential efficacy of inoculation and containment.

To think of gun ownership as an infection suggests that exposure to guns or gun violence increases the global rate of gun ownership: when a person is subject to gun violence, even when exposed to the use of a gun with violent intent, the victim may be more prone to become a gun owner. To make sense of this argument, we frame the argument in terms of infectious disease strategies: treatment and inoculation/ containment. A treatment strategy would be a buy-back strategy of guns to reduce the “infection”, a strategy used recently in Mexico City. Inoculation/containment would be an effort at limiting the number of guns possessed by each individual. This is a relevant strategy given that the rate of households with a gun in the home has decreased according to the General Social Survey even as the number of guns in the country has increased.

By using an infectious disease model, we hope to illuminate the debate about guns in terms of feasible policy instruments. An appreciation of the general dynamics of the social challenge informs the design of policy, and that is profoundly missing from the national gun policy debate.