Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence

by Jens Ludwig

What if everything we understood about gun violence was wrong?

In 2007, economist Jens Ludwig moved to the South Side of Chicago to research two big questions: why does gun violence happen, and is there anything we can do about it? Almost two decades later, the answers aren’t what he expected. Unforgiving Places is Ludwig’s revelatory portrait of gun violence in America’s most famously maligned city.

Disproving the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people, Ludwig shows how most shootings actually grow out of a more fleeting source: interpersonal conflict, especially arguments. By examining why some arguments turn tragic and others don’t, Ludwig reveals gun violence in America to be more comprehensible—and more solvable—than our traditional approaches suggest.

Drawing on decades of research and Ludwig’s immersive fieldwork in Chicago, including “countless hours in schools, parks, playgrounds, housing developments, courtrooms, jails, police stations, police cars, and lots and lots of McDonald’s,” Unforgiving Places is a breakthrough work at the cutting edge of behavioral economics. As Ludwig shows, progress on gun violence doesn’t require America to solve every other social problem first; it only requires that we find ways to intervene in the places and the ten-minute windows where human behaviors predictably go haywire.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Sociology, Politics, Crime, Economics, Psychology

352 pages, Hardcover

Published April 21, 2025

About the author

Jens Ludwig is the McCormick Foundation Professor of Social Service Administration, Law, and Public Policy in the School of Social Service Administration and the Harris School and director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab.

Ludwig also serves as a non-resident senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and co-director of the NBER's working group on the economics of crime. His research focuses on social policy, particularly in the areas of urban poverty, education, crime, and housing policy.

In the area of urban poverty, Ludwig has participated since 1995 on the evaluation of a HUD-funded randomized residential-mobility experiment known as Moving to Opportunity (MTO), which provides low-income public housing families the opportunity to relocate to private-market housing in less disadvantaged neighborhoods. Ludwig's research on education covers a range of topics from early education to school-to-work transition. His study of the long-term effects of Head Start (co-authored with Douglas Miller) was published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and he recently served on the National Academy of Science's Committee on Strengthening Benefit-Cost Methodology for the Evaluation of Early Childhood Interventions. His co-authored article on race, peer norms, and education with Philip Cook was awarded the 1997 Vernon Prize for best article by the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM). Ludwig has also been actively involved in research on a variety of crime issues, particularly on the topic of gun violence. He is the co-author with Duke University Professor Philip J. Cook of an evaluation of the federal Brady Act published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and a study with Cook, sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh, and criminologist Anthony Braga of Chicago's underground gun markets, published in the Economic Journal, as well as of the book, Gun Violence: The Real Costs (Oxford University Press, 2000), and co-editor with Cook of Evaluating Gun Policy (Brookings Institution Press, 2003). He is also the co-author of a recent study of the effects of anti-depressant medication on suicide mortality published in the Journal of Health Economics.

Prior to coming to the Harris School, Ludwig was a professor of public policy at Georgetown University. He is currently a member of the Board on Children, Youth and Families of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science, a member of the MacArthur Foundation's Models for Change Research Initiative, co-editor of the Journal of Human Resources, and a member of the editorial boards of American Economic Journal: Policy, Criminology, the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. He has served as the Andrew Mellon Visiting Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, and as a visiting scholar to the Northwestern University / University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research. Ludwig received his BA in economics from Rutgers College and his MA and PhD in economics from Duke University. In 2006 he was awarded APPAM's David N. Kershaw Prize for Distinguished Contributions to Public Policy by Age 40.

Reviews

[emily *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unforgiving Places was such an interesting and unique read on gun control in America. Ludwig goes through different situations and policies that we've had throughout the years and dissects what worked and what didn't. I also liked that they added in their own personal experiences and the psychology behind certain things. Overall it was a pretty easy and interesting read.

thank you to the publishers and netgalley for the ARC!

[loads.of.books · Rating 4 out of 5]

What if everything we thought we knew about gun violence was wrong? Jens Ludwig researches two main questions: why does gun violence happen, and is there anything we can do about it?

For a long time, I wanted to read a comprehensive book about gun violence in the U.S. I’m not American, but the situation there seems alarming and frightening. I wanted to better understand the role of guns, policies, and politics, as well as the reasons behind the violence and potential solutions. I was delighted to finally find a book that answers these questions.

The book is filled with data and research. I feel the author did a good job presenting his arguments and approach — it was convincing, interesting, and helpful. He examines the scientific evidence behind gun violence in the U.S., explores legal obstacles to gun control and the registration system, and delves into the roots of the problem.

Ludwig talks extensively about behavioural economics and how people’s behaviour and environmental factors contribute to gun violence. He also offers suggestions and preventive measures that could help improve the dire situation and reduce gun violence.

I particularly appreciated that Ludwig didn’t just focus on the U.S. He also compared the situation with other countries, especially the UK (where I live). It was insightful to hear an expert discuss knife crime in the UK. Ludwig was even invited by the British Prime Minister to provide his expertise on these issues.

On the critical side, the book felt somewhat repetitive and could have been a bit shorter.

Overall, it was an interesting and valuable book on a serious topic. I’m glad I read it.

Many thanks to University of Chicago Press for the review copy provided via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally a book that couldn’t have just been one article.

This was very thought provoking and pretty convincing! Curious to see if it leads to any policy change. That said I think it was a bit of a missed opportunity to not hear from more of the people effected by gun violence, and especially those involved in the successful interventions at the end

[Gabbi]

DNF: I don’t think this was badly written or boring, but it’s a lot more dense than I expected it to be and I’m just not feeling up to reason a book like that right now. I did get about forty pages in, so I counted it as a DNF instead of just adding it back to my TBR.

Date Stopped: 12/6/25

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super interesting and insightful book on how behavioral economics can help us understand and prevent gun violence. Books like this are always a little dry, which I can forgive, but a lot of the statistics here are presented with a caveat of noise and then that noise isn’t explained. Not really a big deal since the research is always like that but it would’ve been nice to see some more nuance

[Abigail Ceremuga · Rating 4 out of 5]

a tough to read topic, but so valuable in providing insights into the US gun violence crisis and ways we could remedy it

[Camille Landon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty gripping and rlly made me #reflect. I love explanations for human behavior that are situational. Also appreciated the shoutout to teachers at the back end. Gonna work on meta cognition w the 6th graders and will report back. I do wish just one person would have edited this though…

[Matt Berkowitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A refreshing, pragmatic, non-partisan, and, above all, rigorously empirical take on preventing gun violence rooted in behavioural economics. One of the best books I’ve ever read on violence in general.

Ludwig’s hypothesis is simple: gun violence = guns + violence. In more detail, Ludwig contends that gun violence is not best understood as a problem of characterologically bad people (an explanation common on the right), nor best solved by appealing to root causes like poverty or inequality (an explanation common on the left). It’s not that socioeconomic factors aren’t a legitimate cause of violence, but economic effects can only account for a small percentage of all crimes, and the factors typically thought to be root causes of violence are very hard to solve.

Instead, we should think of gun violence as a manifestation of system 1 ("fast") thinking that has not been interrupted by the slower, more systematic, deliberate system 2 thinking. This behavioural economics explanation does much better at explaining why, for example, there is so much more gun violence in Greater Grand Crossing than in South Shore, adjacent neighbourhoods in Chicago that are sociodemographically similar but suffer very different levels of violent crime.

The testable claim here is that by improving people’s in-the-moment judgment, violence should be reduced even though poverty, morality, or punishments are unchanged. Ludwig marshals an impressive amount of evidence to support this hypothesis. For example, there are many RCT- and quasi-experimental-based social programs like Moving to Opportunity (MTO), Becoming a Man (BAM), Rapid Employment and Development Initiative (READI), and Choose 2 Change (C2C), which each generated large reductions in violence through various mechanisms that interrupted behavioural decisions that occurred high-stakes social situations in relatively narrow windows of time.

The book is rich with evidentiary and circumstantial support that the behavioural economics explanation is a much better fit to the data than classical explanations of violence. The only slight weakness was in the book’s repetitiveness, but given the fascinating discussion and novelty of the hypothesis (at least with respect to getting airtime outside academia), I was happy to have the thesis drilled into my brain more deeply. A wonderful read.

[Tedi Beemer · Rating 4 out of 5]

near perfect book; adding to the canon

I rarely post sincere reviews on here, but I have to remark on what I didn’t like about this book, mainly because the argument is so important that I don’t want future detractors to have legs. sometimes the conclusions the author draws from data are misleading at best, like the “cops in chicago only make 1 arrest every 3 months” statistic. that is drawn from crunching the numbers on the number of chicago police officers against the number of arrests made; the author does (in a footnote) go on to acknowledge that it’s possible 50% of officers are working desk jobs generating no arrests, in which case the number is closer to 1 arrest every 1.5 months. that’s probably more accurate, but the author then later cites the “chicago cops make 1 arrest every 3 months” statistic again in the book, in the conclusion. there is so much supposition in this figure that it really feels misleading to use that “finding” as a premise in his greater argument; we all know it’s probably closer to 1 in 1.5 months IF that.

I am a public defender in Albany, and from my experience, the number of arrests an officer makes per month is going to be largely dependent on the nature and activities of their assignment: are they on a special unit investigating drugs and guns? then they probably have a higher arrest per month ratio than officers who work in the animal abuse unit. I don’t think we can conclude that Chicago police officers make X number of arrests per X months from crunching the numbers the way that the author did, so I trust the conclusion - “cops do a lot more than arresting people!” - not at all, because the underlying data used to support that claim does not seem to have been crunched with integrity.

My point is: after looking at the “1 arrest in every 3 months” underlying data, I became concerned about the other assertions and statistics in what is otherwise a phenomenal book. ugh.

[JoyousStrange · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think everyone should read this book. There are a lot of good, evidence based, ideas here that are worth exploring and discussing.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't believe some of the anecdotes he shared about his life lol

[Savannah Quick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really good ideas, I just don't connect with the way he writes and talks about our collective understanding of crime. I think he comes across too condescending in a book that does have a strong and compelling message. Ultimately, I didn't love it, but I hope it becomes really influential.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

*More like a 4.5/5

"While most of these policies enacted over the past fifty years have come from the Right, the view from the Left — that the only solution to the gun violence problem is to fix every other big social problem (that is, to attack its root causes) — has left many Americans feeling like gun violence is too big to fix. That there is, in other words, no realistic alternative approach to get-tough policies. This perspective is its own form of cynicism.

Often with the best of intentions, our policies have, in other words, created far too many unforgiving places."

Jens Ludwig does a phenomenal job at discussing one of the most sensitive subjects in the country, gun violence, going about it in a way that feels both informative and humane. There is no stone left unturned in this book as Ludwig delves into specific details — even using examples from rather personal moments in his own life in order to best get his point across. This book doesn't read as either Republican or Democratic propaganda but as what it genuinely is, a man who has lived in this country and doesn't want to see it destroyed by something that everyone keeps going in circles on without making solid decisions.

The way that this book is paced allows the reader to 1) understand how much work Ludwig put into it 2) understand how much passion he has for opening up the conversation around gun control. As someone who has always felt deep care about this subject but never done much more research other than what I tend to see on the news or on social media, there were plenty of points where I was learning something new and where my own perspectives felt they were evolving.

Again, the subject matter is pretty sensitive especially if you are someone who has been through something similar but otherwise I absolutely recommend this one. I'm excited to be getting back on my groove of reading more nonfiction!

[Greg Talbot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Drawing from the behavioral research of Daniel Kahneman's paradigm shifting link: Thinking, Fast and Slow, Jens Ludwig explores the idea that our fundamental assumption on why crime occurs is unexamined. We may fall tribally into camps that believe crime is due to a failed systems or failed character, but rarely do consider the 10-minute contextual window when crime occurs. As director of the University of Chicago's Crime Lab, Ludwig has seen first hand some of crime that occurs between communities. Two neighborhoods, the Greater Grand Crossing and the South Shore neighborhood are alike racially and economically, but with vastly different observed rates of crime. One would think it's not rational that a meaningful difference would exist - and Ludgwig would agree - there are behavioral differences.

Theories of crime prevention, such as James Quinn Wilson's diagnosis of criminal dispositions, gun control strategies and mass incarceration have all been found to limit and sometimes work against the goal of reducing criminal offenses. Outsiders to the communites traumatized by crime may focus on the deterence that harsh penaities promise. Whereas, those touched by violence will focus on the loss of attentive fathers, promising young sons, and community members given excessive punishment due to zero tolerance policing. The post-Floyd awareness of the chasm of racial attitudes and outcomes, demonstrates that the effects of criminal justice are not equally distributed. Ludwig gives the readers understandings between the different characters in the larger narrative of criminal jusitce system: the roles of mayors, police officers, social workers, and even the perpetrators.

The roots of gun violence are not expressed through psychological motivations but as the rising action from the context and prior actions. We come to see violence as a result from arguments, reprisals, adding grievances and inexplicable impulses. Often violence is perpetrated by young men, who are not fully developed cognitively. The violence is more likely do to their immature state and lack of tools to resolve conflice. The gun provides lethality - and increases the probability for the cycles to continue on. It's sobering to see the statistics, and realize the crimes are not usually of psychopaths or premediated. Knowing the roots are behavior allows for matching correctives

Although Ludwig circles his main argument - a behavioral model of criminality, that may be addressed through behavioral solutions modeled with restorative justice and community-relationship events - I felt there were many unexplored areas of gun violence. Although the violence is occuring in interpersonal settings, we don't see how the communications play out. I imagine the rise of social media and algorithmic content amplifies some of these cycles of violence. I would think this could be an area to explore furhter, whether it's through platform filters or governmental intervention. I was shocked that Ludwig's focus was on gang-violence, and he did not peel back the onion further to explore the growing prevalence of school or community shootings. These all too tragic events, which do not happen in other countries, and do compel the need for comprehensive gun/ammo control, are throughly unexplored. The feedback loops with communities on dischord and echoing nihilistic sentiment are ignored to.

Overall, I enjoyed reading Ludwig's book. I think he makes the case that we criminality like a brain with buggy software instead of a neighborhood with structural engineering defiencies. The system 1 and 2 paradigm is useful as an explaination and possibly way to approach a solution. I still think there is a larger unaddressed system here. It's the reason so people watched The Wire and were awed as each season peeled off a different layer of individuals in the criminal underworld. I appreciated Ludwig's sober analysis, even if I felt a deep sadness, knowing there is little political will or community mobilization to pushf or meaningful gun control or restorative justices practice.

America remains a pecuilarly violent nation. Schools are sketched in our collective memory from violent school shootings: Columbine, Virginia Tech, Newtown, Sandy Hook, Robb Elementary. Our legislative bodies are behld by corrupt third parties like the NRA and Gun Owners of America. The Trump administration continues its assault on civil liberities and an indepedant judiciary. Despite strong rthetoric about the need to pacify violent cities like Chicago, Portland, video evidence shows coercision against citizens and unlawful arrests. The System 2 collective actions for gun control and restorative justice may not be a possibility in our political moment, but without them, it's hard to understand how the growing violence from disillusioned young men will abate.

Like Martin Luther King once said, "we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garmet of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly". And so the story is true with gun violence - we meet the challenge in our bravery and ignore it in our peril.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wherein Academia Catches Up To Eminem And Dr. Dre. First up, I gotta give Ludwig credit here, the text is 41% bibliography, which is truly remarkable - on the higher end of any book I've ever read. So, truly, kudos. No matter what those sources may say, the fact that they were so prevalent throughout the text is a good thing where I come from - at worst, it is crystal clear the information being used to present the narrative.

And before we get into the meat of the review, I do need to note that Ludwig's reliance on the terms "System 1" and "System 2", while perhaps academically accurate... also makes his arguments less clear and concise, as one has to constantly remember what "System 1" and "System 2" mean. So for this review, I'm going to do what Ludwig should have done and refer to them as "Automatic" and "Thinking".

Basically, Ludwig's entire point is that gun violence is not a question of "bad people" - as he claims the GOP likes to proclaim (in a fair amount of straw man, but perhaps with some valid enough straws) or of "bad environments" - as he claims the Democrats like to proclaim (in a similar amount of straw man/ straws), but rather *bad decision making*. Ummm.... duh, doc. From there, Ludwig's entire premise centralizes on disrupting the Automatic action and forcing the person about to commit gun violence - be it murder or suicide - to *think* about what they're about to do and whether they really want to do it.

So this entire 352 page book that clocks in at 41% documentation is essentially a long way of saying exactly what Eminem and Dr. Dre said in Guilty Conscience over 20 years ago.

Ludwig does in fact lay out the arguments in a very systematic, academic manner. Though he *does* rely *way* too much on Chicago, the *very* place most Americans think of as having the *worst* problem with gun violence in the entire country (and as Ludwig himself admits in the text, having perhaps only the second worst gang problem in the country, IF it is behind LA's gang problem in any given year). But given that at least one recurring example used in the narrative is the doc walking his own dog... maybe there are reasons Ludwig didn't look too much further afield.

But seriously, read the book. Maybe it will help crystallize in your own mind exactly what Ludwig does throughout the text: the arguments and policies of the last century clearly aren't really moving the needle on the issue, so perhaps it is time for new ways of thinking. Of finding ways that disrupt the Automatic system and instead force individuals into the Thinking mode for even 10 minutes (or up to 3 hrs or so, in the case of suicide attempts, apparently).

Maybe if enough politicians read the book, maybe if Barack Obama or Bill Gates put it on their 2025 reading lists, maybe more people will consider these thoughts, and maybe things might actually get better.

Maybe if we'd listened to Eminem and Dre 20 yrs ago, we might have already been there.

Very much recommended.

[Elizabeth]

As heard on The Indicator from Planet Money - What we misunderstand about gun violence

The U.S. is known around the world for its problem with gun violence. The vast majority of murders in the U.S. are committed using guns. But what leads one person to shoot another? The "conventional wisdom" says gun violence is usually the act of calculated criminals or people acting out of desperate economic circumstances. But economist Jens Ludwig believes the conventional wisdom is wrong. Today on the show, he explains why he believes many of us fundamentally misunderstand the problem of gun violence and how behavioral economics reveals some potential solutions.

Jens's new book detailing his research into gun violence is called "Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence" .

Related episodes:
Can credit card codes help address gun violence?
The money going into and out of gun stocks
Guns and The Trump Slump

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org .

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[Moses · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked Ludwig's use of behavioral economics to analyze the causes and solutions of gun violence in America. While discourse around guns usually starts with an ideology and articulates plausible theories to support the ideology, Ludwig's approach uses hard evidence as a starting point and reaches conclusions that don't neatly fit into any ideological bucket. Those on the left will cheer when he promotes tighter gun control (specifically on carrying guns in public) and reducing incarceration. Those on the right will feel vindicated in Ludwig's evidence in favor of hiring more police and against the effectiveness of anti-poverty programs on reducing violence. Some suggestions, such as training people in how to respond in high-stress situations or promoting mixed-use zoning, don't fall neatly into ideological buckets. Overall, his suggestions are persuasive and backed in strong data.
Unforgiving Places has its flaws, however. Ludwig leaned a bit into straw man arguments about the conventional wisdom around guns to make his own approach seem more revolutionary. A big part of his thesis—that most gun violence stems from "heat of the moment" poor decisions in conflicts and other high-stress situations among people who have guns on hand—is hardly a new thought. It was interesting to see the data on just how large of a proportion of gun violence is of this sort (as opposed to mass shootings, armed robberies, premeditated murders, etc), and it is a higher proportion than I expected, but Ludwig's frequent assertions that "conventional wisdom can't explain this" seemed overblown. At one point, in trying to disprove the conventional wisdom that violence is caused by character flaws, Ludwig asserts that levels of self-control are irrelevant to gun violence, then immediately transitions to extolling the effectiveness interventions that train people to think through decisions more effectively in high-stress situations (which I personally would call self-control). The book is also pretty repetitive. The same anecdotes and lines are repeated multiple times. The last chapter summarizes the book by parroting bits from each chapter without adding much of value; I'd suggest skimming or skipping it.
Overall, this is a solid book for understanding what causes a majority of gun violence and what interventions are most likely to solve it.

[Jonno · Rating 3 out of 5]

The research described in Chapter 8: Weight of Evidence is really cool. Randomized controlled trials have demonstrated ways to reduce gun violence that have nothing to do with gun legislation, and that could be enacted on a municipal level. Examples include providing affordable housing in low-poverty neighborhoods, converting vacant lots into green spaces, and providing more lighting.

The rest of the book is not fun to read. Ludwig is a fan of condensing diverse and nuanced viewpoints into monoliths. For example, he claims repeatedly that before the advent of behavioral economics, EVERYONE thought that every criminal was acting from pure rationality or psychopathy and that NO ONE thought situational factors played a role. Perhaps economists thought this way, but not the public. People know about crimes of passion, emotional triggers, talking someone down, the benefits of street lighting, etc.

After describing the traditional way of thinking, Ludwig portrays behavioral economics as (a) consisting only of a framework wherein people either use System 1 (fast and easy) or System 2 (slow and effortful) thinking; (b) the one solution to all our problems; and (c) not psychology. Regarding the first point: Are there any other ideas in behavioral economics? Is it really just that one framework? Regarding the second: No "one weird trick" is going to solve everything. This is a complex issue, and applying the System 1/System 2 framework might help a great deal, but it's not going to solve everything. Regarding the third: Ludwig has a bizarrely narrow conception of what psychology is. He seems to think it only deals with pathologizing and essentializing mental illnesses.

Ludwig would do well to read more psychology research. He seems convinced that if you can get someone to stop, slow down, and engage System 2, they'll do what Ludwig wants them to do. I just don't think that's true. It ignores the power of social pressure, as well as concerns about status and reputation. In my experience (and I admit I haven't researched this in a systematic way), people who have few material resources come to value their reputation as though it's an investment. Also, young adults both commit crimes at the highest rate and are most attuned to what their peers think of them.

[Alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worthwhile read, although he gets a bit repetitive and behavioral economists can be a bit insufferable. It's especially interesting for Chicagoans because all the data is pulled from there. The work relies heavily on Kahneman's theory of System 1 and System 2 thinking. (He also really likes Jane Jacobs' ideas about urban life.)

The basic hypothesis is that people tend to think of crime either as being caused by bad people or by social factors. Both of those causes presume that crime is a considered choice. He argues that a lot of it isn't: it's caused by rapid fire decisions in a thinking system designed for approximations and which is vulnerable to stress. What's more, the "unforgiving places" of the title both poorly train our thinking AND place stress on us.

He believes that there are interventions that can reduce these risks. And yes, this does involve the police -- though the key is not simply about numbers, but how they work. (This book will not be popular for abolish the police fans, but I've never believed in their "places will self police" idea, because we simply have zero evidence people behave that way.)

When I thought about it, I realized that in some ways this is what I've always believed. I don't fear mugging or a planned mass shooting as much as I fear getting into an argument with someone and having them pull a gun, because I believe people act impulsively when they have a gun. And it turns out that not only am I right about the impulsivity, but that gun carry raises crime -- by about 20% according to the research.

[Jen Juenke · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was not what I expected. What I thought was going to be a book about how Americans are just unique to gun violence, because of more guns and high amounts of inequality.

However, the author quickly disabuses the reader of the usual scapegoats of inequality and the amount of the guns on the streets.

The author argues that its our reflexive, System 2 thinking. Its our knee jerk reaction to a situation that leads to gun violence. Gun violence is more of a crime of passion, then an economic risk, or anything else.

I loved all of the examples that the author laid out, how more cops do not necessarily mean less violence (the story of the grandmother in the wheelchair surrounded by cops, threatening people is branded in my memory).

Mr Ludwig provides examples of things that are working. Breaking the Cycle of Violence, learning how to talk and step back and think about what the situation is really happening, are all things that we need to teach the younger generation.

I liked that Mr. Ludwig just didn't say ok no more guns, or just give people money, no he looked at the behavior and the thinking patterns of people who shot/killed someone with a gun in Chicago to find the answer to Chicago's gun violence.

This book is for anyone interested in gun violence and how to combat it.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for this honest review.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s an interesting argument that we should be using more behavioral economics to reduce shooting, basically by getting more people to not use their immediate response systems. That makes intuitive sense in that we know so many shootings are a result of essentially minor arguments/heat in the moment fights where the availability of a gun makes things much worse. It’s quite persuasive and an interesting approach in a world where gun control doesn’t feel likely.

What’s interesting about this though is it really illustrates how we often treat crime as a unified thing in the press, but it really is a lot of subset things. On the one hand, societally we have an interest in reducing gun violence (the author notes that high levels of gun violence hurt neighborhood investment so it has further knock on effects). But a lot of what freaks out your middle class/upper middle class really is how property crime could turn into gun violence. And this book’s illustration really shows how the property crime elements are different from these shootings. That raises some public policy questions about what can you do to address that issue?

As an aside, the other thing I really wonder when I see all these stats about declines in murders is if they’re controlling for shootings where the victim survives. It does seem like we’ve gotten better about emergency treatment so it would be good to have some metric that combines shooting and murder.

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hope this behavioral economics view on what's behind gun violence becomes seminal reading for people. It's a little hampered by the writing in some spots, but overall a read I'd highly recommend.

pg. 236 "In English class you're assigned a novel. Of course, you're learning something about the key ideas in *War and Peace* or *Catcher in the Rye* or *Tom Sawyer*. But you're also learning something else that's arguably much more important. As you discuss the book in class, you realize: You've got one take on what the book means. You were *sure* that was the right take. But in class you hear other people offer up *different" takes on exactly the same book. The teacher encourages everyone to take everyone else's takes seriously. You learn that different people can see the same thing differently. You start to ask yourself questions like 'How do I know that my beliefs are more correct than hers? Where do accurate beliefs come from?' You learn you can be too confident in your original ideas. You learn to be more open to alternative ideas. That's metacognition. [Psychologist Jonathan Baron calls this] 'actively open-minded thinking.'"

pg. 243 The different approaches for people who think "police" or "social program" are four-letter words is great.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe could've been a long-form magazine article, as it gets a little bit repetitive at the end, but for the most part this is a super-interesting look at the research (including the author's own) around gun violence. He postulates a relationship that gun violence = guns + violence, which of course makes sense but nonetheless isn't the common framing for either the right (bad people commit crimes) nor the left (gun control would get solve our crime problem). In particular, he points out that most gun crimes are not premeditated (property crimes spike toward the end of the month, after people's SNAP benefits have run out, but gun crimes do not) but rather reflect poor impluse control. And therefore that some neighborhoods, with similar demographics, have much lower violent crime rates, basically because of "man on the street" effects, with more police/security/bystanders around to intercede before violence escalates. The conclusions I thought were pretty weak, not least that the answer is to give Chicago Public Schools more money, when that organization has been horribly mismanaged, but altogether this is an interesting and insightful book.

[Jenny D · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book doesn't follow left or right paradigm on gun violence, instead it uses behavioral economics to talk about two things especially, one is interrupting conflict, so it doesn't escalate through informal social control and the second is programs that focus on rerouting system 1 thinking back into our more nuanced and careful system 2 thinking. I'm not sure I agree with these in the case of suicide but I do agree that the fallibility of humans can be controlled by better teachable public education on conflict resolution and the temporariness of feelings and being able to have empathy for the person you're in conflict with and recognize that perception is personal and not necessarily a shared thing, meaning that everyone has a different view about the conflict and being more curious instead of angry might be helpful. Overall, adds some new dimensions to the gun violence debate and is a great and interesting read.

[Joseph King · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jens Ludwig runs the Univ. of Chicago Crime Lab; traditional views state that gun violence is due to either 1) 'wicked' people who need to be locked up, or 2) 'poor people' who make a cost-benefit decision to commit violence. Ludwig found that South Shore has less violence that Greater Grand Crossing...even though are both in Chicago and both poverty-ridden, etc. Ludwig proposes that Kahneman & Tversky's system 1 and system 2 thinking are a better model to utilize to understand gun violence. System 1 is "quick/reflexive/irrational' in the heat of the moment. System 2 is the rational analysis of SODAS - Situation, Objective, Disadvantages, Advantages behind better decision making. Crime interventions should interrupt the Sys-1 thinking...shift one's thinking to SODAS. He offers real-world data & crime stats to justify this approach. Very interesting and very thought provoking book,

[Niek · Rating 4 out of 5]

The central thesis of Jens Ludwig’s book is that most gun violence is not the result of bad actors making cold, calculated decisions. Instead, it often grows out of spontaneous interpersonal conflicts that escalate in particular places and moments. This perspective helps explain why many traditional policies aimed at reducing gun violence fail to make much of a difference.

Ludwig writes in a clear, accessible style and makes a compelling case for a different and behaviorally informed approach. Rather than focusing only on long-term social problems or tougher punishments, he highlights practical interventions that can interrupt conflicts before they turn violent. These include increasing “eyes on the street” - such as bystanders, community members, or professionals who can step in when tensions rise - making environmental improvements like better lighting and cleaning up vacant lots, and supporting programs that help people manage conflict and control impulsive reactions.

[Victor Soupene · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible book that was difficult to put down. I appreciate the authors thesis which focuses on filling in the gap in the literature on what contributes to the majority of firearm homicides. The book was slightly repetitive, and I would challenge the author to think about how the “competing” hypotheses (ie bad character v root causes v arguments) are not actually mutually exclusive and that they may work in conjunction (eg living in an impoverished area with a lack of businesses leads to an environment that is more conducive for arguments to lead to firearm violence).

I also am skeptical of the authors suggestion that the findings outlined are transferable to firearm suicides, given the lack of evidence. However, I will continue following their work and reading about the community violence interventions being implemented to see if there is potential for reducing firearm suicides. Overall, a great resource for anyone wanting to get into the weeds of firearm violence research.

[John Old]

"The central claim of this book is that American gun violence is driven largely by System 1 thinking--the automatic, below-the-level-of-consciousness type thinking that is useful for navigating routine situations but gets us into trouble when we are navigating fright interpersonal interactions." Exemplified by a comparison of two adjacent Chicago neighborhoods that are demographically similar but have very different rates of gun violence. Conventional wisdom puts blame for violence on "bad" people and/or poverty. Ludwig says most gun violence arises from arguments managed by Kahnemann's fast system 1 rather than because a bad or poor person uses their system 2 to determine that violence will achieve some goal.

[Seth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book I would encourage everyone to read. A great example of how social science can counter incorrect traditional beliefs with a simple mix of intuition and rigorous evidence. It's a book that left me with both strong feelings of societal missed opportunity and optimism for achievable ways to decrease gun violence. The use of real examples (especially personal ones) make this book feel much more rooted in the real world than many academic books. The only real weakness I thought it had was a feeling of repetition with examples and perhaps wording that made me wish it finished about 50 pages earlier than it does. I also wish the author had maybe dove into the COVID crime surge and how that data point fit or stray from his hypothesis.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

You must read this book. This is the best book I have read on why crimes escalate into murder when a gun is introduced into the equation. I wish everyone in a position of power to effectuate change in their community would read this book. The solutions are not obvious on the surface, but when you go deep, they make sense and, of course, as you look at something this complex (gun murders), a complex solution (several solutions working in tandem), may be what is needed. If you really want to know why ten-minutes may mean the difference between life and death, read this book.