Malcolm Gladwell on Why We Need More Cops and Why Assault-Rifle Bans Don’t Work

How much of the gun-violence problem is actually a crime problem?

This is where popular understanding and facts diverge. A lot of people think that gun violence is something that is used in the commission of some other criminal act—to defend the drug trade, to rob someone’s house. In fact, the overwhelming amount of gun violence is young people arguing with each other and using guns to resolve some grievance or exact revenge. We design our system on the assumption that gun violence is a rational thing that people do to get something. It doesn’t work, because that’s not what it is. It’s kids with beefs, trapped in cycles of revenge and retaliation, who don’t have any other means of resolving their conflicts.

Somewhat controversially, considering your usual audience, you advocate for a lot more cops. Why is that?

Because America doesn’t have any police officers. It’s not controversial. It’s just a fact. European countries have twice as many cops per capita as we do. The central statistic is that as a share of GDP, Western Europe and the U.S spend about the same amount of money on public safety, but in America, the bulk of that money goes to prisons, and a little bit goes to the cops. And in Europe, a little bit goes to prisons, and a lot goes to the cops. If police can in fact prevent crime, which I believe they can, you’d rather spend more on them and promote public safety and prevent crime than spend your money after the fact locking people up under heinous circumstances for decade upon decade. Los Angeles has 8,500 police officers. Berlin has 18,000. It’s just absurd, and any American police chief you talk to, their No. 1 complaint is that their police are just completely overmatched.