Like most people in America, I’m of two minds about gun control. To wit: Several years ago, my parents retired to a remote part of a southern state famous for its military traditions. For a long time, I was consumed with lurid fears about their isolation (“If someone were just to come in and cut their telephone wires . . .”). Then it occurred to me how safe they truly were. Although my parents, gentle suburbanites, had nothing in the house more lethal than a Ping-Pong paddle, everyone else within 50 miles slept with a shotgun under the bed. My parents were free-riders on a highly organized, if informal, system of crime deterrence.