“An armed society is a polite society.” Maybe the 190,000 weapons the Pentagon has lost track of in Iraq were meant to improve Iraqi manners.
If an armed society is a polite society, as the gun nuts like to say, then think of all the good manners we’ve brought to Iraq by losing 110,000 AK-47s and 80,000 pistols, some of which no doubt are slaughtering American soldiers and Iraqi civilians right this minute.
Hey! Sometimes you have to just look on the bright side, or you want to scream.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
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