CSBS is excited to announce the Visionary Voices Lecture Series with inaugural guest Jens Ludwig on September 16.
The Visionary Voices Lecture Series highlights scholars whose work demonstrates the essential role of social and behavioral science in addressing complex societal challenges. Each year, we invite a speaker who conducts pioneering research that expands how we understand and respond to the issues of our time. The series provides an opportunity for colleagues from across disciplines to connect around inspiring social and behavioral science. The event is free and open to the public.
Abstract:What if everything we know about gun violence was wrong? The conventional wisdom on the right is that gun violence is due to characterologically bad people who are not afraid of what the criminal justice system will do to them; that implies the only solution is to disincentive gun violence with the threat of ever-harsher prison penalties. On the left, the view has been that gun violence is due to economically desperate people doing whatever it takes to survive; that implies the only solution is to disincentivize gun violence by improving the alternatives to crime, by ending poverty.
Following these conventional wisdoms for the past 100 years has been a road to nowhere; the murder rate in America today is almost exactly the same as it was back in 1900. This talk will discuss the ideas in Ludwig’s new book, Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence, which argues that conventional wisdom has not been more helpful because it has misunderstood gun violence in America. Behavioral science provides a better way to understand the problem; and with this improved understanding, we can now see that the problem turns out to be far more preventable than we have long believed.