How to Stop Gun Violence Before It Starts

For the past 25 years, U of C professor Jens Ludwig has examined why gun violence happens and what we can do about it. In his new book, Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence, Ludwig discusses why we’ve been thinking about the gun violence problem in the wrong ways. He explains that most shootings are not premeditated. Rather, they are the result of arguments that escalate into violence. Using data-backed interventions from behavioral economics, Ludwig shows that the problem is not as hopeless as we have long thought, once we understand the problem itself correctly.