Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence

Jens Ludwig

University of Chicago Press 394 pp.

Gun violence is one of our most intractable problems – and one of the most tragic. Day after day, the news is filled with lives senselessly cut short. Our society has come up with a parade of solutions – tougher sentences for gun crimes, dedicated anti-gang squads, and more – but they have not made a dent in the problem. In a new book, University of Chicago criminologist Jens Ludwig offers a bold new approach – and we would be wise to listen.

Lugwig, a professor at the university and co-director of the school’s Crime Lab, argues that most shooting are not the evil acts of inherently bad people. Rather, they come about because of simple arguments, often over the amorphous issue of “disrespect,” which suddenly become violent. They are less El Chapo or Jeffrey Dahmer than “Why did you step on my foot.”

Many shootings are the result, Ludwig says, of an extreme form of something most of us do: “catastrophizing,” or making a negative thing out to be worse than it actually is. A small disagreement about whether someone has cut a line in a fast-food restaurant can appear to be a must-win battle for each side to maintain its dignity. A fight over a $20 bicycle can be seen as so important that it ends in a deadly hail of bullets.

The good news in this behavioralist take on gun violence is that there are fairly simple things that can be done to address it – and Ludwig offers up some good ones. Community Violence Intervention, which some smart cities are now using, sends “credible messengers” – people with backgrounds similar to many of the shooters – into high-crime neighborhoods to teach people how to de-escalate. High school health classes can find time amid the sex education and nutritional advice to integrate basic lessons on conflict minimization.

Unforgiving Places is a welcome addition to the vast literature on guns, most of all because of its promising new approach. On a subject that has become gridlocked in left-right battles over “gun rights,” it is refreshing to see proposed solutions that can appeal to both liberals and conservatives. And it is heartening to read a book about gun violence whose last chapter is entitled “The Case for Hope.”

—Adam Cohen