The Pillow-Gun Sign

I've heard many stories of people who supposedly sleep with a "gun under their pillow." I'm not sure if this is actually true, but I do know some people who actually sleep within arm's length of a gun. I'm sure there are many people who sleep with a gun underneath the bed or - as we've all seen on TV - in a drawer in the lamp stand next to the bed.

If you ask someone who sleeps next to a gun why they do it, you'll almost assuredly get "protection" as a response - meaning home & family protection. A single female might have a different definition of protection, so we'll just cover couples and heads-of-household type folks (who are probably more likely to have a gun for home protection anyway...)

You know, I'm all for protection, but doesn't this mean that if someone comes into your house trying to rob you and/or murder your family, you'll have a gun next to you to scare (or even "disable") the criminal? Of course that's the idea - the gun will prevent a criminal that is already in your house from doing further damage to you or your family.

What people seem to be forgetting though, is that the best way to fight a criminal is before they get into your house.

Unfortunately, criminals breaking into your house have no idea how much of a badass you are because the gun is hidden underneath your pillow. Wouldn't it make much, much more sense to alert criminals early on that you're a gun-totin' ass-kicker? If they knew that you were going to shoot them in the home-field-advantage darkness of your own home, they wouldn't even come inside, right?

Exactly. So what I'm selling now is a sign you can place on your front lawn that says, "My Other Wife is a Shotgun," or something similarly hilarious, along with a picture of a person sleeping with a gun under his pillow. Before criminals even come into your house, they'll know that you're a nut with a pillow-gun that's ready to shoot burglars on sight and they'll leave you and your house alone. There - yet another problem solved by the private sector.

I know your neighbors might think you're an asshole for having a threatening sign on your lawn, but you don't want to get robbed, right? I mean, you've seen those dramatic reenactments on TV where the family is attacked during the night, bound and beaten, while robbers steal all the stuff, right? Good, because that's what I'm thinking about while I write the rest of this post...

Here, I made a sign that I'm sure someone, somewhere would find funny enough to put on their lawn:

---

But wait... What about unintended consequences?

Let's assume our goal is to minimize burglary of your house as well as bodily injury, and the burglar's goal is to maximize his take, or booty, or whatever the hell the kids are calling it these days.

While normal burglars will avoid your house while you're in it if you've got a sign that warns them of your willingness to use your gun, the burglars that are willing to kill for your possessions will take the chance regardless. In fact, they'll most likely appreciate the warning sign on your lawn and they'll hesitate less when they burst into your bedroom firing. Why? Well, if they didn't think you had a gun, they might feel less pressed to murder your family. If they knew you had a gun, the choice to murder you is much, much simpler and should be taken as a given.

There's one problem. Here's another:

While the real security nuts will be the early adopters of my "I Sleep With a Gun Under My Pillow," or Pillow-Gun, lawn signs, after some time there would people who don't sleep with guns under their pillows that put the signs out on their lawns. (Their houses were being robbed at proportionally higher rates than houses with signs out front... Solution: Get a sign!). Pretty soon, everyone who does not want to be robbed will have a sign on their lawn.

So the final hypothetical equilibrium is a world in which everyone has a sign on their lawn that threatens criminals with gun violence. Makes sense, right?

An important thing to realize is that, while the world changes from our current sign-less equilibrium to one where everyone's got a sign, we'd see a reduction in the number of nighttime petty robbers; we'd see less nighttime burglary committed by thieves that don't (or can't) carry guns. They wouldn't just give up though - if they're planning to rob your house, they'll just do it when you're not home. I'll call these guys "Daytime" thieves from now own, and we'll come back to this in a bit.

On the other side of the spectrum, the trip from our current equilibrium to the total-sign equilibrium should also provide an incentive for "nighttime" burglars to carry guns. This is pretty obvious, I think, but just in case you disagree: We're assuming that pillow-guns are used to fight off burglars who (for some reason) rob your house during the night while you're sleeping in it; these burglars have clearly decided that they're more worried about outside people seeing them burglarize than they are about you finding them. This seems to suggest that nighttime burglars are willing to take the additional risk to "immobilize" their victims in order to avoid the risk of being seen by impossible-to-immobilize neighbors. If they knew you didn't have a gun, immobilize might mean "use a lead pipe and some rope, or a baseball bat." However, if they knew you did have a gun, immobilize would have to mean kill.

So, for those nighttime criminals who would rather not kill you for your possessions, the lawn sign diverts them to less efficient daytime robbery. But for those nighttime criminals that value your possession more than they value your life, the lawn sign means that they can't take any risks in immobilizing you. The sign provides the extra incentive needed for a burglar to carry a gun instead of a lead pipe.

So let's compare the two extremes:

1. Nobody shows "signs" of carrying a gun (AKA completely concealed weapons): We'll have just about the same number of total burglars as we have now. We'll have slightly more nighttime thieves, though - who are more worried about being seen by neighbors than they are of being caught by you, especially when there's low risk of you carrying a gun - and they'll rob your house and take your stuff based on what they think you have inside your house, just like they're apparently doing now. Compared to the other equilibrium, though, daytime thieves are relatively more careless now when it comes to robbing your house when you're not home (I'll explain more in a bit.)

-or-

2. Everybody shows "signs" that warn of pillow-guns: We'll have a separating equilibrium with nighttime burglaries committed by thieves that are willing to "deal" with your gun threat while robbing your house (even if you're lying about having a gun - they don't want to take the chance), while the remaining burglars will become daytime thieves, provided the added inefficiency of timing the homeowners' schedules and figuring out elaborate schemes to not get caught by neighbors doesn't override the value they place on your possessions. If your possessions are valuable enough, they'll figure out a way to get them, day or night.

Let's simplify even further.

If you, personally, decide to put up a pillow-gun sign out in front of your house, you'll ultimately get the following (we're dealing with probability here):

A) A decrease in the number of nighttime burglars.
B) A nearly-equivalent increase in the number of daytime burglars (not all nighttime burglars would switch burglary times.)
C) An increase in the incentives for burglars to become more calculating & patient.
D) An increase in the odds of being killed during a burglary.

If, on the other hand, you choose not to put out a pillow-gun sign and burglars perceive no threat of gun violence, we'll get:

A) An increase in less violent nighttime burglars (ones that'll ignore you ...or maybe they'll use "a lead pipe & rope.")
B) A nearly-equivalent decrease in daytime burglars.
C) No extra incentive for nighttime thieves to become calculating and/or more patient daytime burglars - they'll be relatively more careless.
D) A decrease in the odds of being killed.

The most important difference between the two situations is going to depend almost solely on the perceived value of the stuff in your house. If you increase the perceived value of your possessions, the number of total burglaries (as far as your house is concerned) is equivalent in both scenarios.

Why? If you are perceived to own "worthless crap," the thieves that would have switched from nighttime burglary to daytime burglary will not put out the extra effort to rob you during the day, and we'll have slightly less total burglaries in this case. If, on the other hand, you are perceived to own valuable stuff, the thieves that are scared off by pillow-gun signs will put out the extra effort to rob you during the day, and will get basically an equivalent number of total robberies (more daytime and less nighttime, but same number).

So here's the answer: If your house looks terrible from the outside and potential thieves believe you have nothing worthwhile to steal, putting a pillow-gun sign out on your lawn will probably slightly decrease your chances of being robbed, and increase the odds for someone else.

...But if your house looks expensive and appears to contain very valuable stuff, putting a pillow-gun sign on your lawn will likely have no effect on your chances of getting robbed, but it will increase the odds that you'll be murdered during a robbery (instead of tied up & beaten, or even ignored.)

So don't buy a Pillow-Gun Sign, and don't let anyone know you've got a gun underneath your pillow, either. That is, of course, unless you've got a death wish and/or a house full of junk that needs to get stolen while you're at work.

---

This one seems a little violent, but probably gets the point across. It also might be a little too ironic:

If anyone can think of better slogans for the Pillow-Gun signs, please let me know so I can trademark them. ...And I've already thought of "Keep Honking, I'm Reloading... The Gun Under My Pillow."

---

You know, the whole point of this post is to present an argument against the pro-gun types who say a populace full of weapon owners is better for the safety of everyone. This is a common argument I hear against gun control laws - and I disagree, clearly. While I'm against excessive gun control, I'm more against a society full of "vocal gun owners." Owning a gun shouldn't be a stand-alone threat against humanity, it should be well thought out, private & personal response to the threat the world seems to pose to you. I'd argue that this threat is shockingly minimal, and not owning a gun provides incentives for other, more effective safety precautions, but if you really believe you need to own a gun, you'll probably benefit infinitely more from the psychological confidence than you would from actually ever using it.

Unfortunately, the more vocal you are in your gun ownership, the more other people (...your children...) perceive society as a whole to be a threat. I'd say that, right there - the perception of threat - is a huge contributor to a lot of our irrational fears in this country...


---

UPDATE 10/16/07: Darrell sent me this link, which explains the next best thing to sleeping with a gun underneath your head. It gets funnier the more I think about it...