ABSTRACT
Protection from harm is generally a good. It is the ubiquitous – and proper – purpose of state regulation. It is a large part of the reason for government. But prevention in the last two decades has taken the wrong fork in the road. A public health approach to prevention would have produced comprehensive and systematic, empirically-based campaigns to understand and change the root causes of violence. Instead, we have adopted counter-empirical, interstitial laws designed to identify and remove risky persons before they can cause harm.
