Taxing guns vs. taxing crime

"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. The interaction between offenders and potential victims has so far received relatively little attention in the literature on the economics of crime. The main objective of this paper is twofold: to extend the "market for offenses model" to deal with both "product" and "factor" markets, and to apply it to the case where guns are used for crime commission by offenders and for self-protection by potential victims. Our analysis offers new insights about the association between crime and guns and the limits it imposes on the efficacy of law enforcement and regulatory policies aimed to control both crime and guns"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.