October 25, 2013

THE WAR FOR GUN REFORM:
why the nra is crazy like a fox


Earlier this year, the nation discovered even the horrific mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school couldn't generate enough political will to pass gun reform through Congress. Gun control advocates couldn't understand how after a string of recent massacres, the pro-gun lobby wasn't even willing to compromise on background checks to prevent felons and the mentally deranged from illegally buying guns. Over 90% of Americans support this policy, including over 90% of gun owners [1]. In fact, the NRA itself used to officially support the idea in the 1990's [2]. So why did the NRA fight so hard to kill background checks? 

The answer is that if the NRA conceded on reasonable background checks, they know that gun control advocates would simply pocket this victory and use their political capital to push for more stringent measures that the NRA actually opposes like an assault weapons ban. By holding the line on universal background checks, the NRA forces its opponents to waste all of their political capital fighting for this modest provision so they will have fewer resources left over when the debate then turns to assault weapons.

In this post, we will model the battle over gun reform with a fun analogy to Risk the board game. The winner will be determined by which side allocates its limited political capital to ensure the best chance of winning their prefered outcome in the gun control debate.

What is "Political Capital?"

There are many different understandings of "political capital." But I think the most useful definition is that political capital refers to all the expendable resources a political actor has at their disposal to pass the different items on their agenda. This includes the number of lobbyists on staff, money to spend on ads and other campaign activity, and volunteer hours. It also includes resources that are harder to measure, but are nevertheless limited, such as how many favors politicians are willing to do for you, the amount of public goodwill you've accumulated to leverage for political gain, and the amount of time the media will give you to make your case.

In the fight for gun reform, gun control advocates choose how to allocate their political capital either to pass universal background checks or to pass an assault weapons ban. Similarly, the NRA chooses how to allocate their finite capital to stop either one or both of these issues from passing. 

Assumptions

We'll construct our game based on the following fairly realistic assumptions:
  1. The more political capital you use to fight for an agenda item, the more likely you are to win on that issue.
  2. Political capital is finite and expendable, even if we're not exactly sure how to measure it.
  3. It's easier to defend the status quo than pass new policy reforms.
  4. In the status quo, the NRA controls all the political ground. If nothing passes, they win on gun control by default.
  5. If gun control advocates can't even pass universal background checks, they have no chance of banning assault rifles.
  6. The NRA cares about preventing an assault weapons ban more than it cares about preventing expanded background checks.

Risk the Board Game as an Analogy for Political Capital

In Risk, the classic board game of military conquest (trademarked by the fine folks at Hasbro), each player attempts to conquer all territory on the map by choosing how to deploy their side's armies to battle over each chunk of land. The more armies you use to attack your opponent's territory, the higher your probability of winning when the dice are rolled.

Now, when you play Risk, you know that the rules aren't a perfect model for how wars are decided in real life. However, there is some intuitive logic to the idea that the more armies you send into battle, and the fewer armies your opponent uses to defend their territory, the better your chances of winning the battle. Similarly, with political capital, we don't know exactly how to measure every resource a political group has at its disposal, but we nevertheless can say that the more of your finite capital you use to push for a given policy reform the more likely you are to win on that issue. 

Since we don't know exactly how to quantify political capital, for fun we're going to see what happens if we set up a game based on the assumptions listed above and pretend the rules of Risk determining the probability that each side will win a battle apply to political capital allocation in legislative battles as well. We know it doesn't actually work exactly the same in the real world, but I think this analogy demonstrates some important points. As we shall see, the rules for who has the best chance of winning a battle in Risk just so happen to fit our assumptions about the way political capital works.

Rules of the Game

The most important assumption is that if gun control advocates can't pass universal background checks, which should be low hanging fruit, then they have no chance of passing an assault rifle ban. This is because background checks are more broadly popular, and some center-right Senators who would never support an assault weapons ban might be willing to support background checks. So if gun control advocates haven't been able to win background checks, that means they haven't been able persuade these center-right policy makers to vote for gun reform, which means they don't have a big enough coalition to take on a harder issue like an assault weapons ban. 

The game is about how each side chooses to deploy their finite political capital to win victories on gun reform. These policy victories are represented as territories on the map. Below is an illustration of the game board before either side has laid down their pieces, showing that the NRA controls all policy ground in the status quo, where the game begins:


The NRA starts out occupying the territories representing both universal background checks and an assault weapons ban, because under current law neither exist, and therefore to win the NRA must simply defend the status quo.

The three blue battleships approaching from the left side of the map illustrate the gun control advocates preparing to launch a battle over gun reform. Their plan is, first, to deploy their lobbyists to fight for background checks. If they win this battle, then they plan march on to fight for an assault weapons ban next. Therefore, the map is drawn so that gun control advocates must first conquer the background checks debate before they can be victorious in the battle to ban assault weapons. 

We are going to make one more stipulation. Since we're assuming the NRA cares more about preventing an assault weapons ban than stopping universal background checks, let's assign a value of 1 to the background checks territory and a value of 2 to the assault weapons territory. So for the sake of argument, we're saying the NRA cares twice as much about winning on assault weapons than background checks.

To symbolize units of political capital, let's say each side has three "armies of lobbyists." (Note: it's possible that in the real world one side has more political capital than the other. We could account for that, but it's simpler to hold this variable constant so we can examine the broader structural elements of the game.) We will of course use the classic infantry game piece from Risk to represent each side's political capital units.


According to the rules of Risk, the winner of the battle over a territory is determined by rolling a certain number of dice, depending on how many armies each side deployed to attack and defend the territory. If you want to read the complete rules click here. But there's two points that are important to understand for our purposes. First, the more armies you use for a battle the more likely you are to win it. Analogously, the more political capital you spend, the more likely you are to win a given policy victory. Second, if all else is equal, the defender has a slight advantage over the attacker. Analogously, it is easier to block gun control legislation from passing than it is to pass new laws.

We've said that the gun control advocates must first win the battle over universal background checks before they can win the battle over an assault weapons ban. So in round one of the game, gun control advocates deploy all of their available armies of lobbyists to take over the background checks debate. Then, if they win on background checks, in round two they can use whatever political capital they have left to attack the NRA on the assault weapons ban issue.

The NRA, on the other hand, has several options for deploying their side's armies of lobbyists to defend their territories. We will show the outcome of each of the NRA's three possible strategies.

NRA's First Potential Strategy: Be Reasonable

First, the NRA could concede on universal background checks in round one. After all, it's a relatively modest reform, so why not just be reasonable and let this provision pass without a fight? If they didn't waste any political capital holding the line on background checks, which they used to support anyway, they could save all three of their available armies of lobbyists to defend assault weapons sales in round two, which is their bigger priority.

We'll call this first potential NRA strategy "Be Reasonable." Here's what round one of this scenario looks like:


In the game board above, the three gun control lobbyists (blue) take over the background checks debate without a fight while the three NRA lobbyists (red) hang back, saving their resources for the battle over an assault weapons ban. Clearly, in this scenario the probability of gun control advocates passing an assault weapons ban is 100%.

Now in round two, the gun control advocates will move on to fight for an assault weapons ban. The rules of Risk say that to hold a territory you must leave one of your armies occupying that territory. The analogy here is that even if the NRA doesn't put up a fight on background checks, gun control advocates will still have to expend a minimal amount of political capital rallying the votes to push it through Congress. So in round two (below) one of the blue gun control advocates' armies of lobbyists stays behind to pass background checks, and the other two blue armies move on to attack the NRA on assault weapons.


I've already done the grunt work of calculating the probability that according to the rules of Risk, the gun control advocates will win the battle over an assault weapons ban in this scenario, which is 21%. To read about the methodology I'm using to come up with these numbers click here.

To find the NRA's expected value from pursuing this strategy, we multiply the probability they will win on background checks (0%) by the value of winning on background checks (value=1), then add this to the probability the NRA will win on assault weapons (79%) times the value of winning on assault weapons (value=2). The result is that the NRA's expected value from strategy one is 1.588. To double check my math click here.

NRA's Second Potential Strategy: The Lonely Defender

The second strategy the NRA could use is to spend a little bit of its political capital to prevent universal background checks from passing, but save the majority of its political capital to stop an assault weapons ban. On the game board below, we'll represent this as the NRA deploying one (red) army to defend background checks from the gun control advocates' three (blue) attackers, and saving their other two armies of lobbyists to defend assault weapons. Let's nickname this strategy "The Lonely Defender."


As you can see, the NRA defenders are outnumbered on the background checks debate. The probability of gun control advocates winning this first battle is 92%. However, even if gun control advocates win on background checks, there's a chance the NRA's lonely defender could take out one or two of the gun control armies before being defeated (which is analogous for wasting some of the gun control lobby's political capital.)

If gun control advocates win this first battle, then in round two they will leave one blue army to ensure the passage of universal background checks and send whatever armies they have left to attack the two red armies the NRA has assigned to defend assault weapons. The gun control lobby's odds of winning on assault weapons depends on how many armies survived the fight over background checks. If you take all of this into account, the overall probability that gun control advocates will win an assault weapons ban is 26%. To find the NRA's expected value from pursuing this strategy, we multiply the probability they will win on background checks (8%) by the value of winning on background checks (value=1), then add this to the probability the NRA will win on assault weapons (74%) times the value of winning on assault weapons (value=2). The result is that the NRA's expected value from strategy one is 1.563. To double check my math click here.

NRA's Third Potential Strategy: The Turtle Defense

The final strategy the NRA could choose to employ is to spend most of its political capital holding the line on background checks in the hopes that we never even get to the assault weapons fight. On the game board below, we've represented this as two of the NRA's armies of lobbyists defending their control of the background checks debate while only one of their armies occupies the assault weapons territory. Folks who play Risk call this strategy "The Turtle Defense," because you're forming a hard outer shell by deploying most of your defenses to the external territory.


The NRA is still outnumbered three to two on background checks, but they have a better chance of winning this first battle than if they only sent one army of lobbyists to this territory. In this scenario, the probability of background checks passing is 66%. Most importantly, the NRA has a better chance of defeating some of the gun control advocates' armies before they have an opportunity to advance to the assault weapons debate. Taking all of this into consideration, the probability that gun control advocates will win an assault weapons ban is only 36%. To find the NRA's expected value from pursuing this strategy, we multiply the probability they will win on background checks (34%) by the value of winning on background checks (value=1), then add this to the probability the NRA will win on assault weapons (64%) times the value of winning on assault weapons (value=2). The result is that the NRA's expected value from strategy one is 1.621. To double check my math click here.

Out of all three of the NRA's potential strategies, this last one gives them the highest payoff.

Conclusion

We found that the "Turtle Defense" gives the NRA the best chance of defending their legislative priorities (i.e., this strategy yields the highest expected value.) By using most of their resources fighting background checks, they force the gun control advocates to waste their political capital on this issue before they can even begin the fight to ban assault weapons. Now, the precise probabilities of victory we came up with don't directly translate to the real world since we don't really know how to accurately quantify "political capital." In this thought experiment, we just used the rules of Risk as a fun analogy. But I think the ultimate conclusion is the same: the reason the NRA spends so much political capital fighting moderate measures like background checks, even though this issue is a much lower priority for them, is because it provides a strategic buffer zone that prevent their opponents from ever pushing through more stringent gun control measures.

Maybe it's smart strategy for individual conservative interest groups to take extreme positions. But in my next post, I'll show that the GOP's recent hard right turn threatens the survival of the Republican Party Read Next Post Now >>