A game theoretic analysis of interactions between law abiding citizens and criminals with respect to ownership of guns

In this paper, it is recognized that there are criminals and law abiding citizens in any society, and that their decisions to own guns are based on rather different, through interdependent, motives. These ideas are used as a conceptual basis for a game theoretic model which is used to analyze one isolated interaction and two forms of repeated interactions. The Nash equilibrium is the main results in the static form of the game. It is concluded from the analysis of the dynamic forms that this equilibrium in globally stable. The presentation proceeds to the study of possible consequences of direct and indirect policy interventions regulating the proportion of law abiding citizens and of criminals that own guns. The paper concludes with some observations on the model's limitations and some suggestions for its improvement.