{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Jens Ludwig on American Gun Violence","description":" Let\u2019s cut to the chase: \u201cThe overwhelming majority of murders in the United States involve guns,\u201d says economist Jens Ludwig. \u201cAnd in fact, most of the difference in overall murder rates between the United States and other countries are due to murders with guns.\u201d This may seem intuitively obvious to outside observers, but studying guns within the United States has long been a fraught endeavor, and the amount of research isn\u2019t commensurate with the impact on U.S. society. That said, Ludwig has taken on exploring the roots of American gun violence, work that serves as grist for the Crime Lab he directs at the University of Chicago and for many of his books, including his latest, Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence. What\u2019s he\u2019s found is that the folk wisdom around gun violence doesn\u2019t rally hold up to the evidence. In this Social Science Bites episode, he explains to interviewer David Edmonds how \u2013 using insights about \u2018system one\u2019 and system two\u2019 thinking developed by Daniel Kahneman \u2013 cognition in individuals has more explanatory power than traditional variables like poverty, education and environment. \u201cI think system one plays an underappreciated role in all interpersonal violence, all of the issues, and this way of seeing what is driving violent behavior among people is equally true for knife violence in the UK and on and on,\u201d Ludwig says. \u201cSo I think this is really a universal thing about people's behavior. This sort of frame on the problem helps make sense of a bunch of patterns in the data.\u201d Ludwig is the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, Pritzker Director of the Crime Lab and codirector of the Education Lab at that campus, and codirector of the National Bureau of Economic Research\u2019s working group on the economics of crime. He and his labs are routinely recognized for their work. The Crime Lab in 2014, for example, received a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, while eight years earlier Ludwig himself was awarded the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management\u2019s David N. Kershaw Prize for Contributions to Public Policy by Age 40. Some of the books he\u2019s co-authored or co-edited include 2000\u2019s Gun Violence: The Real Costs, 2003\u2019s Evaluating Gun Policy, and 2012\u2019s Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs. ","author_name":"Social Science Bites","author_url":"http:\/\/www.socialsciencebites.com","html":"