An article by Duke law professor Darrell A.H. Miller and Wesleyan history professor Jennifer Tucker argues that gun control laws should vary based on the dangerousness of the firearm. They claim that danger is easy to assess by using the Theoretical Lethality Index (TLI), a metric developed in the early 1960s by military history analyst Trevor Dupuy. In this post, I explain why the TLI is useless as a guideline for the risks posed by different types of firearms in a nonmilitary context.
On the other hand, if TLI is valid in the civilian context, then the TLIs of modern firearms are not much different from those of a good rifle from the early 20th century. Thus, the level of gun control necessary from modern arms would not appear to be greater than the level of gun control in the early 20th century.
This post proceeds as follows:
