[Here is the long awaited rebuttal to Jon Gould's article, American in Denial, published in Teletimes December '93. Enjoy! - Ian]
Writing an article in a forum such as Teletimes about a topic like gun control can be quite difficult. The reason for this difficulty is two-fold: First, many well educated people who are typically open-minded with respect to important social issues have a preconceived notion that guns are bad and that eliminating them from society would prove to be beneficial. Second, the vast majority of the media outlets present a biased view against the private ownership of firearms, thus tending to strengthen these beliefs. It is the author's hope that this brief article will suggest to the reader that further inquiry is required before forming an opinion about a social policy as important to liberty as the right to keep and bear arms (RKBA).
Before delving into the substance of this paper, it is worth noting that this particular issue is decidedly American in nature. The Constitution of the United States, the defining document of the world's first modern democratic republic, is the only national constitution of any modern country that specifically forbids the infringement of the individual citizen's right to keep and bear arms [1]. Many foreigners who observe the US wonder why there is so much controversy over this subject. The only reasonable answer is that Americans enjoy more freedom than citizens of other nations and this freedom was won in a war with England; a war sparked by England's attempt to restrict the colonist's RKBA.
The remainder of this paper will expose a number of myths about gun control including the relationship between guns and crime, statistics used by gun-control propagandists [2], children and guns, and the underlying principle behind the constitutionally guarenteed RKBA.
Throughout the 1980's, violent crime actually decreased in America [3]. However, most Americans, when asked, responded that crime had stayed the same or risen. What is the cause of this dichotomy? The apparent answer is the television media - for the first time, in the 1980's, the supremacy of major networks were challenged. This lead to a ratings war in which each network provided programming for the primary purpose of garnering viewership and not for providing a balanced perspective on major issues. A recent report on NBC showed that a particular television station in Miami devotes more than 25% of its on-air time to crime coverage even though the crime rate in Miami has fallen precipitously since 1980. The networks have successfully implemented the "big lie" technique engineered by Geobbels - that is by frequently repeating the same ideas, people come to believe them despite the lack of corroborating evidence. After a decade of this "brain-washing," most Americans believe that crime is rampant and in desperation are seeking any solution to this problem; a problem that is not as significant as it is portrayed to be [4].
One proposed "solution" to the increase in crime is banning guns. There are many problems with this "solution." The most significant problem is that there exists no evidence to suggest that restricting gun among the general populace reduces crimes. The gun-control propagandists have yet to provide a single example case in which the introduction of gun laws has resulted in the reduction of crime. In fact, those cities with the most stringent gun control laws are the cities with the highest violent crime rates. Many of these propagandists make the specious claim that to be effective, the gun laws must be applied nationwide to be effective because criminals in the cities with stringent laws simply get their guns elsewhere. This raises two questions:
1. If guns cause crime, why don't the cities with lax gun laws, next to cities with stringent gun laws, experience similar crime problems? For example, the crime index for Alexandria, VA is eight times less than the crime index for Washington, DC, and he only thing separating them is a short bridge.
2. How is a nationwide gun ban to be enforced? First is the problem of the current gun stock in the US, a stock in excess of 200 million guns. A large number of owners will (rightfully) refuse to surrender their arms. Second is the problem of interdicting guns being smuggled into the country. For years the government has been trying to halt the flow of illegal drugs into the country and they have completely failed to even make a dent in the supply. Thus, why should anyone believe that a governmental interdiction could stop the flow of illegal weapons. Third is the problem of manufacturing guns within the country. Every machine shop has the capability to produce firearms.
And if these arguments aren't enough to show that gun control is not effective and can not be enforced, the gun-control propagandists must address a more difficult question: Why have those jurisdictions that have adopted non-discretionary concealed carry laws shown a decrease in the violent crime rate that is greater than the national average [5]? It would be improper to suggest that the proliferation of firearms causes a decrease in crime, however, the evidence to support this thesis is far stronger than the evidence that guns cause an increase in crime [6].
Gun-control propagandists will some times point to certain foreign countries and claim that said foreign country, with significantly fewer firearms has significantly less violent crime; thus reducing guns in this country will reduce violent crime. The flaws with this argument are numerous: There is no discernible relationship between the rate of private gun ownership and violent crime rates. For example, Norway, the European country with the highest per capita private firearm ownership rate has the third lowest murder rate of all European countries. Northern Ireland, on the other hand, has the highest murder rate of any European country, but the third lowest private firearm ownership rate [7]. Another problems with this argument is that the comparisons are static, that is they compare the violent crime rates (typically murder) for one recent year only. A study of the difference in the murder rates for Canada and the US shows that in 1919, when there were no gun laws in either country, the US murder rate was 13.8 times the Canadian rate. In 1971, after decades of increasingly stringent gun control laws in Canada, the US murder rate is 4.3 times the Canadian rate. Finally, this argument completely fails to recognize the vast differences socio-political differences between the countries compared [8]. In summation, cross-national studies intended to show the positive impact of gun control, completely fail to do so.
Another issue conveniently ignored by gun control propagandists are the number of times that guns are used by private citizens to stop crimes. Rather, these propagandists parrot simple, but completely erroneous statistics, such as "... a gun in the home was 43 times more likely to be used to kill its owner, spouse, a friend or child than to kill an intruder" [9] [10]. First, this statistic will be examined, then some more meaningful ones will be derived. The primary flaw with this statistic is the underlying assumption that to be useful, a home owner must kill the intruder. Were this the accepted measure of the effectiveness of criminal deterrence, the police would be asked to provide dead bodies instead of live prisoners! Other flaws with this statistic include the following:
-- 37 of the 43 deaths are suicides. No study has ever shown a correlation between the availability of guns and suicide. Consider Japan - a country with few guns and a suicide rate twice that of the US. Also consider Canada - after enacting stringent guns laws, the gun suicide rate dropped, but the overall suicide rate remained constant.
-- The statistic includes all murders that resulted in criminal charges and all unsolved homicides. In many cases, justifiable homicides initially result in criminal charges which are later thrown out.
-- The statistic included firearm accidents (see below).
-- The study was restricted to one community and is not representative of the country as a whole.
-- The original study did not use the phrase "owner, spouse, a friend or child," the phrase that has been used repeatedly by gun-control propagandists, but rather the word "acquaintance." From the original data, 48% of the homicides were classified as acquaintance, a relationship that can mean anything from friend to the neighborhood drug dealer. Furthermore, those relationship listed as familial can include abusive spouses.
Thus, the NEJM article can be seen for what it is -- a propaganda article intended to incite an emotional response in its reader rather than a scholarly article written to inform.
More meaningful statistics than those offered by the NEJM can be developed. Consider for example, "A privately owned firearm is more than 30 times more likely to be used to stop a crime than to kill anyone." Several surveys, including Kleck [6], have found that private citizens use their firearms to stop in excess of 1 000 000 crimes annually. There are approximately, in total, 32 000 firearms deaths annually (homicide, suicide, police intervention, self-defense and accidental). Another useful statistic is that less than 0.3% of all guns are ever used in the commision of a crime. This statistic is found by assuming that each crime with a firearm (550,000 such incidents annually) involves a different weapon (a very conservative estimate) and dividing by the number of privately owned firearms (in excess of 200 000 000 and growing by more than 1 000 000 annually). Lastly, a person is 34 times more likely to die in a car accident than to be killed in a firearms related accident. There are approximately 48 000 annual motor vehicle deaths and 1400 annual firearm related accidental deaths.
Some gun-control propagandists believe that firearms should be outlawed because of the "numerous" children who die each year year due from firearms. These deaths can be broadly categorized into three groups: intentional homicide, accidental deaths and suicides. A tactic frequently used by gun-control propagandists is to categorize as children all persons under the age of 19, and in some cases, persons as old as 24 [11]. For the purposes of this paper, the word "children" refers to all persons up to 14 years of age.
The death of a child, for any reason, is a tragedy. However, outlawing firearms because some children are killed by them is illogical. In the year 1990, 890 children were killed, either by criminals or law enforcement officials. Of these 890 children, 283 were killed with firearms [12]. Another 236 died as a result of firearm accidents for a total of 519 firearms related deaths. (For this age group, there were no reported firearms suicides.) In the same year, a total of 15 367 children died, so the percentage of children who died from firearms is 3.3% of the total. To put this percentage in perspective, of those children who died in 1990, 20.7% (3182 children) died in motor vehicle accidents, 7.5% (1148 children) drowned and 6.3% (972 children) died in fires; however, no one would be irresponsible enough to suggest that cars, pools and matches should be outlawed because they kill children. Furthermore, the rate of firearm related accidental deaths, for all age groups, has been declining at an average of 2.6% annually averaged over the last 50 years.
The last topic to be addressed is the raison d'être of the second amendment to the US constitution, the RKBA for protection against foreign invaders and domestic governments. The typical gun-control propagandists response to this comment is, "You've got to be kidding! Do you really expect to hold off an army with personal firearms alone? This may have been true in when the Constitution was written, but is no longer valid." The simple answer is yes. In recent history, there are two clear examples of a lightly armed, resident populace holding off the armed might of the super-powers: Vietnam and Afghanistan. An even more recent example shows the inability of an unarmed populace to defend itself from its own government: Bosnia. These simple examples should make apparent a simple point: A well armed populace is sufficiently capable of defending itself both from internal and external attempts to restricts the peoples' freedom. And this simple truth is as valid today, as it was 203 years ago when the Bill of Rights was adopted.
As a final note, we should all remember those two individuals who succeeded in passing the most stringent gun control laws of this century: Adolf Hitler [13] and Joseph Stalin. Let us keep this historical perspective clearly in mind and not repeat the mistakes of the past.
- Gerry Roston, Pittsburgh, USA
gerry@cmu.edu
Endnotes
[1] See Halbrook, Stephen P. That Every Man be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right. The Independent Institute; Oakland, CA. 1984. Halbrook, attorney and Ph.D., traces the evolution of the individual's right to keep and bear arms from ancient Greece to modern times. He carefully examines the four cases in which the US Supreme Court (SC) has referenced the 2nd amendment and shows how in each of these cases, the SC has clearly demonstrated that the right is an individual right, and not a collective right, as some gun-control proponents claim. In addition to this book, any study of the writings of the founders of this country, both federalist and anti-federalist, will show that the founding fathers unanimously agreed that liberty and freedom can only be achieved if the general populace is well armed.
[2] Although some readers will take offense to the term "gun-control propagandist," the term was chosen to indicate that those opposed to the private ownership of firearms have yet to produce any scientifically verifiable evidence to support their contentions. Rather, they utilize propagandists techniques: emotional appeal, scare statistics, the big lie, etc.
[3] Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. US Department of Justice, 1993.
[4] Another reason that Americans believe that violent crime is increasing is due to the wide coverage of the "war on drugs," a policy that has dramatically increased the number of people arrested for non-violent crimes. One result of the increased number of arrests is an increase in prison over-crowding, which gives the impression of an increase in crime.
[5] Since Florida passed a law that requires the issuing of a concealed carry permit to any qualified applicant (no criminal record or mental illness), the violent crime rate in Florida has decreased at a rate faster than the national average. Florida will also grant a carry permit to any qualified American visitor, a policy that may explain the recent increase in attacks of foreign tourists - the only group in Florida known with certainty to be unarmed.
[6] The best book for further study of the relationship between firearms and violence is Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, Gary Kleck, 1991. Dr. Kleck was recently award the 1993 Hindelang Award from the American Society of Criminology for "the book published in the past two years that makes the most outstanding contribution to criminology."
[7] International Crime Index, Interpol.
[8] To strengthen the argument that the vast socio-political differences between the countries are the key factor to the differences in crime and not the ownership of guns, consider that the non-firearm homicide rate in the US is higher than that of all European countries except Northern Ireland. Simply stated, for some reason, Americans are far more violent than their European neighbors.
[9] Erik Larsen, "Armed Force" in the Wall Street Journal (2/4/93), from Arthur Kellerman and Donald Reay, "Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearms-Related Deaths in the Home" in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), 1986.
[10] Gun control propagandists like to use the phrase, "If it only saves one life, then it's worth it." This author is aware of at least three cases in the last year in which innocent lives were saved, that would have been lost, had the Brady Bill been in effect. For the same period of time, the author is aware of six innocent lives lost because a gun could not be purchased when it was required. As Benjamin Franklin once said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty no safety."
[11] A recent report by the Children's Defense Fund claimed that 50 000 children have been killed by firearms in the last decade. This statement is true if and only if one considers persons up to 24 years of age to be children. The sad truth is that the US is experiencing a staggering increase in violent crime among inner-city teens. The murder rate for black males, ages 15-24, has increased by a factor of three in the last six years. Since there has not been an significant increase in firearms during this period, the cause of this increase in violence must be sought elsewhere.
[12] Crime in the United States, Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureaus of Investigation, US Department of Justice, 1991. Other data is from the preliminary release of Vital Statistics and from Accident Facts, 1990.
[13] It must be remembered that Adolf Hitler was elected to office and that the gun control laws passed in Germany were enacted in a constitutionally approved manner.
