The horror of the Oak Creek and Aurora shootings has once again revived the recurring
national debate on the relevance of the Second Amendment for modern society. ---- The
controversy is typically framed by the National Rifle Association – essentially a gun
industry front group – on one end, and liberal gun control advocates on the other. This
polarity generates much heat, yet skillfully avoids any serious consideration of the
underlying cause of the explosive violence in our society, and forces a closing of the
political imagination. ---- It is striking that the extensive media analyses that follows
in the wake of these periodic shooting outbursts scrupulously avoid a salient fact.
Namely, that it is well established in the academic literature that there is a robust
correlation between a nation’s economic inequality and its violent crime rate.1
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