He is the Pritzker Director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab, codirector of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s working group on the economics of crime, elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, and a member of the Committee on Law and Justice of the National Academies of Science. His work has been featured in leading peer-reviewed scientific publications as well as national media like the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and PBS NewsHour, among other outlets.
Ludwig applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence, and reported the following:
If one opens up to page 99 in Unforgiving Places, I think they will get a fairly accurate look at the reading and writing of my book. In my case, the Page 99 Test sems to work.Learn more about Unforgiving Places at the University of Chicago Press website.
On page 99, I’m explaining that research shows there is not a decrease in gun violence when economic times or circumstances are good. Which is one of the many counterintuitive things I write about in the book: after all, if conventional wisdom says that gun crime is due to economic hardship, shouldn’t the two things be related? But as I show on this page, plenty of research shows that gun violence and economic desperation (or plenty!) are not related at all—one does not seem to have any bearing on the other.
This goes to the heart of the bigger thesis of my book. For decades we have misunderstood the causes of American gun violence, and thus, we have also misunderstood how to reduce it. Far from being the product of poverty, or just “bad people,” gun violence happens because an argument escalates into something more dangerous. Since American politics is not at a point—and may never be—where we can eliminate all guns in the country, or lock up everyone who ever might use a gun, we have to find a new way toward reducing gun violence. The good news, as I detail in the book, is that we already know how to do this—and the solutions are often easier and cheaper than what we are trying to do now.
--Marshal Zeringue