It's tempting to assume Steven Levitt, the co-author of bestselling novel Freakonomics, is a gun owner, or perhaps has been influenced by lobbyists at the National Rifle Association (NRA).
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When asked about the issue of gun violence in America, and whether, in the wake of October's Las Vegas shooting - the deadliest in US history - it's time to get rid of guns once and for all, the American economist says it is "virtually impossible" to control the flow of guns.
"Most of what gun control does is it puts restrictions on law-abiding citizens to enjoy guns for recreation or hobbies or sports," he tells Fairfax Media in a phone interview from his home in Chicago on Thanksgiving Day.
"And I'm sure from what I'm saying, it sounds like I'm a pro-gun person - I'm really not. I don't own guns. I'm just a realist."
His statements are not coming from a "position of advocacy, but an honest assessment of a situation where the cat got out of the bag 100 years ago, and there's just no putting that cat back in".
Levitt is well-known for his work in the field of crime, in particular for his work proposing that legalised abortion reduces crime.
In a podcast How to Think About Guns, he and economist and Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner explain, with their usual style of easy-to-digest facts and figures, why state-based gun bans are ineffective for reducing gun crime.
Their thesis is this: buying back or regulating guns when there is an active black market and a huge stock of existing guns, won't work.
Punishment to fit the crime?
"When you start from the situation we're in - there's over 200 million guns in the US - it becomes very hard to find meaningful solutions, whatever policy you put forward," Levitt says.
There are more than 200 million guns in the United States. Photo: AP
"Even we if legislated that everyone should turn in guns ... most people wouldn't."
The only policy that may be effective against gun violence is "really serious penalties for illegal uses of guns".
In the United States, states with tougher punishments for crimes committed with guns have lower gun crime, he says.
But even those laws are not "going to stop insane people from trying to do mass killings".
About 600,000 guns get stolen in the US every year.
"For the people really who want to use them illegally, there will always be a way," Levitt says.
Assuming you accept Levitt's thesis that getting rid of guns won't work, he says a more interesting question is why there is more use of guns for mass killings.
He speculates there may be "some bizarre copycat phenomenon going on".
Trump and the trickle-down theory
Levitt is speaking to Fairfax Media ahead of a planned visit to Australia on December 4, where he will appear alongside English-born Canadian author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell at a seminar presented by The Growth Faculty.
On December 4, Steven Levitt will appear alongside English-born Canadian author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell, pictured, at a seminar presented by The Growth Faculty.
While Levitt doesn't typically take conventional approaches to economics - he's more focused on what drives human behaviour - when it comes to tax policy, he does.
Levitt has long been a strong advocate of tax reform.
"I think that tax simplification - something that moves towards a flat tax - is a good idea," he says.
But he says the Trump tax plan does not meet most economists' criteria of tax simplification.
Donald Trump has proposed cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 per cent to 20 per cent. He also wants to give a multitrillion-dollar tax cut for multinational corporations and tax cuts for the wealthy.
Companies such as Apple and Microsoft will get a one-time "tax holiday" to to return overseas funds to the US.
Many commentators dismiss the Trump administration's notion that big tax cuts for companies will trickle down through the economy and pay for themselves. Some suggest the plan, if implemented, could go so far as resulting in a recession.
Levitt says most of the literature on trickle-down economics over the past few decades "has not generally supported the idea that tax cuts like this will actually simulate enough economic activity to, in any shape or form, begin to pay for themselves".
Furthermore, "the [Trump] administration's estimates of how much economic activity will be spurred are probably wildly, overly optimistic".
Levitt says the plan will result in changes to the way people classify themselves for tax purposes, so that they avoid paying high personal tax.
"There will be enormous migration by everyone who has the ability to turn their personal income into corporate income," he says.
Preying on people's fears
That's not the only Trump policy Levitt is critical of.
US President Donald Trump has come under fire for his tax and immigration policies. Photo: Alex Brandon
He says channelling billions of dollars of resources into fighting terrorism, and thinking that closing borders is likely to be successful in fighting terrorists, "are not great ideas".
"Statistics disprove the idea that terrorism is among the threats we should fear most," he says.
"Everything from automobile crashes to resistant bacteria to obesity pose a greater threat to our existence.
"But the nature of terrorist attacks is that they are very public, they're very startling, and so they get far more [policy] attention than the more silent killers like suicides or car crashes or heart attacks."
There's also the reality that political leaders "prey on the fear and overreaction of people", he says.
Perhaps fear and overreaction is another reason why getting rid of guns in America is so hard?
Levitt comes back to the stats: "In a country where we have 200 million guns and a number of insane people who decide that gun violence is the right way to express their insanity or carry out terrorist attacks ... there's not much we can do.
"I've been thinking about this problem for 20 years. And I've never heard a suggestion in relation to gun violence which I thought was realistic."
