How are we to make sense of this apparent contradiction of the react-
ance principle? By looking a bit more closely at those who were buying
Kennesaw’s guns. Interviews with Kennesaw store owners revealed
that the gun buyers were not town residents at all, but visitors, many
of them lured by publicity to purchase their initial gun in Kennesaw.
Donna Green, proprietor of a shop described in one newspaper article
as a virtual “grocery store of firearms,” summed it up: “Business is
great. But they’re almost all being bought by people from out of town.
We’ve only had two or three local people buy a gun to comply with the
law.” After passage of the law, then, gun buying had become a frequent
activity in Kennesaw, but not among those it was intended to cover;
they were massively noncompliant. Only those individuals whose
freedom in the matter had not been restricted by the law had the inclin-
ation to live by it.
A similar situation arose a decade earlier and several hundred miles
to the south of Kennesaw, when Dade County (containing Miami),
Florida, imposed an antiphosphate ordinance prohibiting the use—and
possession!—of laundry or cleaning products containing phosphates.
A study done to determine the social impact of the law discovered two
parallel reactions on the part of Miami residents. First, in what seems
a Florida tradition, many Miamians turned to smuggling. Sometimes
with neighbors and friends in large “soap caravans,” they drove to
nearby counties to load up on phosphate detergents. Hoarding quickly
developed; and in the rush of obsession that frequently characterizes
hoarders, families were reported to boast of twenty-year supplies of
phosphate cleaners.
The second reaction to the law was more subtle and more general
than the deliberate defiance of the smugglers and hoarders. Spurred
by the tendency to want what they could no longer have, the majority
of Miami consumers came to see phosphate cleaners as better products
than before. Compared to Tampa residents, who were not affected by
the Dade County ordinance, the citizens of Miami rated phosphate de-
tergents as gentler, more effective in cold water, better whiteners and
fresheners, more powerful on stains. After passage of the law, they had
even come to believe that phosphate detergents poured more easily
than did the Tampa consumers.^8
This sort of response is typical of individuals who have lost an estab-
lished freedom and is crucial to an understanding of how psychological
reactance and scarcity work on us. When our freedom to have something
is limited, the item becomes less available, and we experience an in-
creased desire for it. However, we rarely recognize that psychological
reactance has caused us to want the item more; all we know is that we
want it. Still, we need to make sense of our desire for the item, so we
188 / Influence