Myth #1 - "You don't need a gun - the police will protect you"

Police can only act once a crime is occurring or has already been committed. They cannot be held liable for failure to arrive in time to save any particular individual from harm, so long as they aren't someone who has a special relationship with the police, like a protected witness. Indeed, it's extremely unlikely that police officers will be able to arrive and save you from harm faster than an attacker can harm you. There aren't, and there ought not to be, sufficient police to act as personal bodyguards for every citizen, 24 hours a day, and any guarantee to that effect would be extremely expensive in terms of both money and liberty.

Recommended reading:

In The Gravest Extreme, by Massad Ayoob
[available from Police Bookshelf, P.O. Box 122, Concord, NH 03301], ISBN 0-936297-00-1, (1980)

The Truth About Self Protection, by Massad Ayoob
Police Bookshelf, ISBN 0553-23664-6, (1983)

Armed and Female: Twelve Million American Women Own Guns, Should You?, by Paxton Quigley
St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-95150-7, (1993)

Not An Easy Target, by Paxton Quigley
Simon and Schuster, ISBN 0-671-89081-6, (1995)

Strong On Defense: Survival Rules to Protect You and Your Family from Crime, by Sanford Strong
Pocket Books, ISBN 0-671-52293-0, (1996)

Firing Back, by Clayton E. Cramer
Krause Publications, ISBN 0-87341-344-X, (1994)

Stopping Power: Why Seventy Million Americans Own Guns, by J. Neil Schulman
Synapse-Centurion Books, ISBN 1-882639-03-0, (1994)

Gun Laws and the Need for Self-Defense (Parts 1 and 2), hearings before The Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, 104th Congress, 1st session, March 31, 1996
SuDoc# Y 4.J89/1:104/43/Pt.1, and 2nd session, April 5, 1995, SuDoc# Y 4.J89/1:104/43/Pt.2
[These hearings, called in response to the fledgling Republican Congress' efforts to repeal the 1994 Clinton/Feinstein gun ban (see 3.3 and Appendix I), featured testimony from a number of scholars cited elsewhere in this FAQ, including James Wright, Joyce Malcolm, David Bordua, Robert Cottrol, and Daniel Polsby, as well as law enforcement officers and crime victims.]

A selection of relevant court cases [most of which are listed and discussed in 'Dial 911 and Die!' by JPFO (Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership) 2872 S. Wentworth Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53207, Ph: (414) 769-0760, FAX: (414) 483-8435 JPFO also has a website: http://www.jpfo.org"]:

[Note: For convenience of the reader, legal citations in this FAQ have been rendered in a more familiar "bibliography" style form, rather than standard legal citation form. Real lawyers would cite the first case below as 59 U.S. (18 How.) 396, 15 L.Ed. 433]

- South v. Maryland, U.S. Reports (18 Howard) v.59 p.396, Lawyer's Edition v.15 p.433 (1856)

- Riss v. City of New York, N.Y. Supplement 2nd series v.293 p.897, N.Y. Reports 2nd series v.22 p.579 (1968)

- Keane v. City of Chicago, Illinois Appellate Court Reports 2nd series v.98 p.460 (1968)

- Hartzler v. City of San Jose, California Appellate Reports 3rd series v.46 p.6, California Reporter v.120 p.5 (1975)

- Reiff v. City of Philadelphia, Federal Supplement v.471 p.1262 Eastern District of Pennsylvania (1979)

- Warren v. District of Columbia, U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit 2nd series v.444 p.1 (1981)

- Bowers v. DeVito, Federal Reporter 2nd series v.686 p.616 U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Cir. (1982)

- Morgan v. District of Columbia, U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit 2nd series v.468 p.1306 (1983)

- Cuffy v. City of New York, N.Y. Reports 2nd series v.69 p.255 (1987)

- Lynch v. N.C. Dept. of Justice, Southeastern Reporter 2nd series v.376 p.247 North Carolina Court of Appeals (1989)

- Kircher v. City of Jamestown, New York Reports 2nd series v.74 p.251, Northeastern Reporter 2nd series v.543 p.443 (1989)

- Marshall v. Winston, Southeastern Reporter 2nd series v.389 p.902 Virginia (1990)

- Berliner v. Thompson, et al., Appellate Division (NY) 2nd series v.174 p.220, New York State 2nd series v.578 p.687 (1992)

Myth #2 - "Guns aren't an effective defense, or, the 43:1 myth."

The 43: 1 Myth claims that "Guns aren't effective defensive weapons, and are '43 to 1 times' more likely to kill their owners or family members than they are useful to defend against criminal attack."

The often-cited "studies that show" having a gun in the home is a far greater risk to you and your loved ones than to criminals, are a favorite topic of discussion among pro-second amendment advocates, in part to demonstrate the extraordinary statistical contortions that "gun control" advocates will go to in an attempt to support their flawed premises. The idea that guns (and handguns in particular) are ineffective as defensive weapons shows a distinct lack of imagination, especially since police carry them for that purpose.

The 1986 Kellerman study, the source of the famous "43 to 1" ratio, is deceptive in several ways. The basis for comparison in this study is the ratio of "firearm-related deaths" of household members vs. deaths of criminals killed in the home (justifiable homicides). The "firearm-related deaths" in the study include suicides and accidents, neither of which are randomly distributed throughout the population, as the 43 to 1 "risk ratio" would imply. Both suicides and accidents are more likely to occur in specific categories of people than they are in the general population. Of the 398 "firearm-related deaths" included in the study, the vast majority (333, or, 84%) were suicides. The number of fatal firearms accidents in the study was 12 (or 3% of the studied deaths). Since sometimes a "gun cleaning accident" is actually a suicide reported under a name less likely to deny payment from a life insurance company, there may in fact have been even fewer accidents than are apparent from the reporting. When only the criminal homicides are considered, rather than including suicides and accidents, the "43 to 1" ratio disappears, and the ratio is far less dramatic, more like "4.5 to 1". There were 41 criminal homicides reported in the Kellerman study, and 9 instances of justifiable or self-defense homicide. People who are violent, unbalanced, or involved in a life of crime are much more likely to use their home gun unwisely, and their chances of using it to harm another (or themselves) are higher than would be expected for the majority of the population.

As criminologists know and can demonstrate, the fallacy underlying the work of researchers who treat "gun violence" as an "epidemic" or as an issue of "public health" is the idea that people are all at equal risk for becoming a perpetrator of crime, and lack only a deadly weapon. If a person is stable, and not suicidal, and not prone to extreme violence, their chances of becoming involved in "firearm-related death" will be far lower than the Kellerman "43 to 1 risk ratio" would suggest. Persons with these risk factors are not only more likely to abuse guns to harm themselves or others, but they probably can't be trusted with knives, either. Aside from such obvious risk factors, the likelihood of being injured accidentally can be decreased further by training in safe gun handling, much as firearms accidents have declined in the U.S. population in recent years due to such safety education, despite an increase in the number of guns available. The Kellerman study, based on data collected in King County, WA from 1978 to 1983, is skewed towards violence associated with an urban setting, and makes little mention of the thousands of gun-owning households where no "firearm-related deaths" occurred at all. If gun ownership was the crucial factor in an "epidemiology of violence," how to explain the fact that almost all gunowners' households weren't affected?

Assessing the effectiveness of gun use against criminals as "number of criminals killed" (as the Kellerman study does) is an extraordinary presumption as well, since law enforcement officers aren't judged by such a restrictive standard. Why isn't "criminals deterred" or "crimes completed" or even "criminals wounded or apprehended" a legitimate means of measuring defensive effectiveness? Certainly in some proportion of gun-owning households where no "firearm-related deaths" occurred, it was because a firearm was used to deter, wound, or otherwise thwart an attacker.

In point of fact, the reason these "studies" are structured as badly as they are, and are published in medical (rather than criminological) journals, is that the numbers don't work out in favor of the "gun control" viewpoint if considered in these other ways. There's no more reason to judge the ability and effectiveness of armed citizens at fighting crime by the numbers of criminals they kill than it is to do so for the police. Surprisingly, however, the numbers are quite similar. Still, it seems absurd for the anti-gun side to imply that gun owners ought to kill as many or more criminals than the number of people that criminals murder (which is the only way for the law-abiding to make a good showing in Kellerman's "kill ratio")! Kellerman implies that a general "cost-benefit" ratio can be developed which can be used to weigh the harm committed with guns against the right of the individual to have a gun for self-defense, and if it happens that more people are being harmed with guns than there are instances of self-defense, we can simply allow those few people whose lives would be saved by having a gun to become victims too.

According to U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics data, having a gun and being able to use it in a defensive situation is the most effective means of avoiding injury (moreso even than offering no resistance) and thwarting completion of a robbery or assault. In general, resisting violent crime is far more likely to help than to hurt, and this is especially true if your attacker attempts to take you hostage, such as sometimes happens in a carjacking situation. Most often in with-gun defenses, criminals can be frightened away or deterred without a shot being fired. Estimates of these types of defensive uses of firearms are wide ranging, from a low of 65,000 to 82,000 annual defensive gun uses (DGUs) reported to the U.S. Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), to a high end of some 2.1-2.5 million annual DGUs, but they seem to occur at least as often (if not far more often) each year as misuses of firearms by violent criminals. Since such defensive uses are rarely reported to the police (in some cases because firearms possession in the locality is illegal), it is difficult to quantify precisely the number of instances in which defensive use of firearms has saved lives.

A variety of factors complicate the measurement of DGU, including the completeness and accuracy of self-reporting by witnesses, the nature and sequence of the questions asked (including the definition of what constitutes a DGU), the willingness of the witness to respond at all to questions about such incidents, and the difficulty in distinguishing between self-defense and assault based on a witness' own report. There is evidence to suggest that a substantial number of homicide victims have at other times been perpetrators, and Kleck suggests that criminals should comprise "a disproportionate share of both DGU and gun crime victimizations." Whether criminals are any more or less willing to report DGU in surveys than non-criminals is another factor to be considered when estimating the frequency of lawful gun use in self-defense.

Even if the number of crimes deterred by lawful armed citizens annually is no greater than the number of violent crimes committed with guns each year, in the absence of these self-protective acts, the incidence of violent crime could be far higher than it is at present, and injuries to innocent victims could also increase. The annual use of firearms for other lawful purposes, unrelated to self-defense, dwarfs both defensive and criminal uses combined.

Recommended Reading:

Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, by Gary Kleck
Aldine de Gruyter, ISBN 0-202-30419-1 (1991)
[Dr. Kleck's book is a valuable resource for all participants in the "gun control" debate. Point Blank received the American Society for Criminology's highest honor, the Hindelang Award, at the ASC's 1993 annual meeting, for the most important contribution to the criminology literature in the preceding three years.]

Criminal Victimization in the United States, 1992, A National Crime Victimization Survey Report,_Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Dept. of Justice
SuDoc# J 29.9/2:992 (1992)

"Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearm-Related Deaths in the Home", Kellerman, Arthur L. and Reay, Donald T.
New England J. Medicine, v.314, n.24, pp.1557-1560 (1986)

"Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun", Kleck, Gary and Gertz, Marc
J. of Criminal Law and Criminology, v.86, n.1, pp.150-187 (1995)

Myth #2a - "Chemical sprays and stun guns are just as effective."

Unfortunately, even shooting an attacker doesn't always stop them immediately, unless the shot is directed at the central nervous system. A fatally wounded assailant can still be dangerous for the few seconds or minutes they have left. Non-lethal methods, while they can be effective in some cases and can provide an additional option for personal defense, are not something you want to bet your life on when confronted with deadly force. The chemical sprays available to civilians (such as CS tear gas, or OC pepper spray) are not always as strong as those used by law enforcement, but even though the police carry chemical agents, they also carry firearms, since even the police sprays (like FREEZE+P) don't stop everybody, and aren't appropriate for every situation. The chemical sprays are most effective when they can reach the mucous membranes, such as when sprayed in the eyes or inhaled. Yet if an attacker is wearing glasses, or holds their breath, or is on drugs, or is just unusually impervious to the pain, the spray may not be effective. (After all, some people can_eat_extraordinarily hot peppers, and some people just have high pain thresholds.)

Chemical sprays are designed for outdoor use, and will persist and can cause problems for the defender if used indoors. Outdoors, they can be affected by the direction of the wind, and blown off target, or back into the defender's face, if not delivered in a stream. Inclement weather can also affect their effectiveness as a defense, and they require a few seconds to fully incapacitate when they work. It should be noted that pepper sprays are more effective against dogs than man, since dogs expose their mouth and tongue when threatening attack, but chemical mace (CS tear gas) is not effective against dogs, since dogs' tear glands are less active, and they have smaller tear ducts, limiting the spray's effects. Use of OC sprays on non-human animals may require the highest concentration of pepper, i.e. 10%-13%, since it is believed that dogs, for example, are less sensitive to the pain. Many sprays contain visible or invisible dyes which are useful in identifying and apprehending a suspect, but if the victim ends up wounded or dead due to the essentially random chance that the spray is ineffective as a defense, that's a fact of interest primarily to the police. Criminals can be equally and more indelibly marked for capture by the use of a firearm, if use of deadly force is justified, since their wounds often require that they seek medical attention. Medical personnel are required to report patients seeking treatment for gunshot wounds to law enforcement authorities.

Most stun "guns" available for civilian use require direct contact with the attacker's body, putting the victim dangerously in harm's way, when the objective is to keep as far away as possible. Many civilian stun guns are also underpowered, and can require several seconds contact with the attacker in order to incapacitate. They may also have difficulty penetrating heavy clothing, like winter coats. Their loud crackle and brilliant blue arc are certainly intimidating, however. Other stun guns (like the police TASER, and its civilian cousin, the Air Taser) can fire electrode darts with trailing wires into the target from a distance. The civilian version of the TASER, approved for sale as a "non-firearm" by the BATF in June 1994, uses compressed nitrogen to expel its electrode barbs, unlike the police version, which uses an explosive propellant and is regulated under the NFA (see National Firearms Act, Appendix I). Most stun guns are now equipped with safety devices designed to prevent them from being used against the defender if taken away. Criminal misuse of contact-type stun "guns" as torture devices has occurred, so this is a significant concern for stun gun users. The civilian TASER includes a weapon registration system which dispenses dozens of serial numbered microdots with each use, so as to deter criminal use of the weapon. However, as with any registration system, theft of the weapon or cartridges from their rightful owner could occur. The civilian TASER also doubles as a contact-type stun "gun" for use if the darts miss their target, or if there is no time to reload the dart cartridge system during an assault by multiple attackers.

Another variety of stun "gun" is under development which squirts a stream of liquid electrolyte at the target, rather than using a wire to deliver its current. Like a TASER, it has limited range, but it could provide for a multi-shot capacity that current wire- launching stun "guns" lack. Still, it seems unlikely that carrying around a liquid electrolyte reservoir will do much to reduce the weapon's size or weight. Unfortunately, there is no "Star Trek" style weapon that can reliably and safely "stun" a person without some risk, however small, of lethality. People vary in their biochemical and physiological responses to various weapons, and the level of force which may be required to "stun" a person whose strength and stamina has been abnormally enhanced by drugs could prove lethal to some ordinary people. Persons who already suffer from significant stresses to their heart or other organs can die from the additional stresses of what would otherwise be a "less than lethal" weapon, particularly if such weapons are misused. But if sufficient force is not used in defending against a life-threatening attack, the defender runs the risk of injury or death.

Even police stun "guns" don't always work, as evidenced by the 1991 Rodney King video. King was TASERed prior to being attacked by baton-wielding officers but was still able to move around and present a potential threat. (Some of the fired darts may have missed, but had he been incapacitated by the TASER, the baton attack would have been even more obviously excessive, and unnecessary.)

Both chemical sprays and stun guns are virtually useless in stopping multiple attackers, while with sufficient practice, firearms (and particularly handguns) are quite effective at stopping violent attack, even by a determined gang of assailants. Unlike these two common non-lethal weapons, a gun, when fired, acts to alert possible aid, and is less likely to be ignored than personal alarms. Also, unlike non-lethal weapons, guns offer an additional intimidation factor due to their lethality which may deter attack in circumstances where the risk of confronting a spray can or stun "gun" would not. Ironically, many of the same localities which have strict "gun control" laws also prohibit ordinary citizens from owning and using chemical defense sprays or stun guns, and the rationale is the same. Law- abiding citizens are disarmed of any possible effective means of self-defense because of the possibility of criminals misusing these weapons.

Some people in high-crime "gun control" zones like Washington, D.C. and other U.S. cities have taken to carrying cans of aerosol spray oven cleaner (potassium or sodium hydroxide, a powerful caustic agent) because the laws in these localities deny them the right to carry a non-toxic pepper spray, or any other effective means of self-defense. This illustrates precisely the type of "weapon substitution" effect that opponents of "gun control" argue will occur if any particular class of weapons, such as "Saturday Nite Specials," is banned. People who are determined to have weapons, whether they are honest citizens defending against crime, or criminals obtaining the tools of their trade, will find a way around any ban, and will often end up having a deadlier weapon that the one that has been banned. (After all, if someone is breaking the law anyway, it matters little whether they break it to carry a "Saturday Nite Special" or a sawed-off shotgun or machine gun.) Oven cleaner can cause permanent damage and/or blindness, and aside from the child-resistant cap (which would make the can difficult to use in emergency situations), oven cleaner cans lack the safety mechanisms which are found on many tear gas or pepper spray containers to prevent accidental discharge. Its permanent and harmful effects may also be used by prosecutors to prejudice a jury, moreso even than if the defender had used a gun! There's very little chance that banning oven cleaner will occur, since the only localities which have this "problem" are the ones which deny their good citizens any other means to protect themselves.

In Canada, use of pepper spray against bears and dogs is legal, but not against human predators. Only the police in Canada are allowed to use OC pepper spray on humans. Anyone else caught using this "prohibited weapon" to protect themselves faces a possible 10-year prison term! In spite of the law, Canadian citizens are "arming for bear" by exploiting this legal loophole, though the government is cracking down on sales. Pepper defense sprays are also legally unavailable to citizens in Germany, since German law requires that any such defensive spray be first tested on animals, and a 1987 German law prohibits the testing of weapons on animals. Pepper sprays are gaining popularity worldwide, however, since they are the most effective personal defense option for people whose governments don't trust their citizens with firearms, or for people who choose not to use firearms in defense of their lives and their families.

There has been some concern expressed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in about 30 cases in which pepper spray has thought to have been associated with deaths of suspects in police custody, but a review of these cases by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, a pro-"gun control" police organization, said that most of the incidents could be attributable to factors such as improper use of restraints like handcuffs in ways which restricted breathing, the suspect's obesity, and/or the suspect's use of alcohol and/or cocaine. That the ACLU could find only 28 such questionable incidents during the three year period of its investigation, and also the fact that ACLU did not claim that pepper spray directly caused the deaths, only underscores the essential safety of the sprays as a non-lethal defensive weapon. (In light of the ACLU's findings, users concerned about the remote possibility of killing an attacker with pepper spray should beware of using the spray against drunken asthmatic fat guys on "crack.")

Recommended Reading:

In The Gravest Extreme, by Massad Ayoob, p. 35-38
[available from Police Bookshelf, P.O. Box 122, Concord, NH 03301], ISBN 0-936297-00-1, (1980)

Jonathan Glater, "Wild Wild Wet,"_Washington Post,_July 25, 1994, p.F3

Air Taser homepage at http://www.taser.com

Myth # 3 - "2.5 million defensive gun uses each year can't be accurate."

In a nation of some 97 million households, about half of which own one or more firearms, is a rate of defensive gun use (DGU) which amounts to about 1.4% per year an unreasonably high figure?

A study undertaken by a group led by criminologist Dr. Gary Kleck of Florida State University found that there are approximately 2.1 to 2.5 million instances annually in which individual Americans use a gun to defend themselves. Considered as households, the figure is 1.3 to 1.5 million annual DGUs (Kleck 1995, Table 2). If this figure is correct, defensive uses of firearms are much more common than crimes committed with guns. Kleck's study defines a DGU as a defensive action against a human (rather than an animal), involving actual contact with the person being defended against, in which the defender could state a specific crime which he or she thought was being committed at the time of the incident, and in which the defender's gun was actually used in some way, even if it was only as part of a verbal threat. A reported DGU incident must meet all of these criteria in order to be counted as a valid DGU for the purposes of the survey. Additionally, DGUs associated with work as a policeman, security guard, or member of the military are excluded.

The data for the Kleck study were collected using an anonymous nationwide random-digit-dialed telephone survey of 4,977 adults conducted from February through April of 1993 by Research Network, a telephone polling company located in Tallahassee, FL. After a few general questions about problems in their community and crime, those polled were asked "Within the past five years, have you yourself or another member of your household used a gun, even if it was not fired, for self-protection or for the protection of property at home, work, or elsewhere? Please do not include military service, police work, or work as a security guard." Those who answered "Yes" were then asked whether their defensive use was against an animal or a person, asked to state how many defensive gun use incidents against persons had happened to members of their household in the last five years, and asked whether any of the incident or incidents had occurred in the last twelve months. Of those surveyed, 222 respondents reported DGUs within the past five years. All respondents reporting DGU, as well as 20% of those not reporting a DGU, were called back to validate their initial survey interviews. These raw data were then corrected for oversampling in the South and West regions, where gun ownership is highest; and oversampling for males, who are not only more likely to own guns, but also more likely to be victims of violent crime.

The weighted results (corrected for oversampling built into the survey) were these: 1.125% to 1.326% of respondents reported having personally been involved in a DGU incident within the past year, with 1.366% to 1.587% of households reporting a household member being involved in a DGU incident within the past year (which would include those DGUs mentioned above involving the respondent). Calculations based on the estimated adult population of the U.S. and the estimated number of households in the U.S. show that at this rate there would be 2,163,519 to 2,549,862 DGUs in 1993 if considered on an individual basis, or some 1,325,918 to 1,540,405 DGU-involved households. For comparison, the estimated number of violent crimes committed with guns in 1993 was 588,140, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports.

Kleck discusses the flaws inherent in previous surveys, including the Justice Department's National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which gives the lowest estimate of all methods used to calculate the number of DGU incidents. The NCVS, Kleck argues, though based upon a much larger sample than his own survey, severely undercounts the number of DGUs because respondents are being asked by a government official to volunteer information about incidents in which they may possibly have done something that was illegal (such as committing assault with a deadly weapon by pointing a gun at someone), or which involved an illegal act (such as carrying a gun without a permit). Further, the NCVS never asks directly whether the respondents used a gun to protect themselves, and only asks its general question about self-protection after respondents have already reported the location of their victimization incident, which in most cases is reported as being away from the victim's home. Since carrying a gun without a permit is often illegal, there would be a strong motivation for respondents not to report DGU outside the home. But how accurate is the Kleck survey's estimate? What are some possible alternative explanations that could influence these results?

First, consider some factors which could produce an overestimate. The sample size, or number of persons surveyed, while smaller than the NCVS, is several times larger than that usually used in most public opinion polls. Extrapolating from too small of a sample is one way to get an overestimate, but this is not a problem for Kleck's survey, since the Gallup Poll and the Roper Center routinely use samples smaller than this for their national surveys. (The results of such national polls are often promoted as newsworthy.) As Kleck notes, the random sampling error of his survey is less than 1%. The phenomenon known as "telescoping," in which past events are remembered as being much more recent than they actually are, could account for some increase in reported DGUs, but Kleck's survey, which uses two time periods, asking about events in the past five years, and within the last twelve months, takes this into account. Kleck's definition of a DGU to include defense of property could serve to increase the number of reported DGUs, since use of deadly force to protect property is not legally recognized in many states. Kleck notes however, that it was not the purpose of the survey to discern the legality or morality of the respondent's actions.

One possible source of overestimation that has been seized upon by critics wanting to explain away Kleck's results is what Kleck terms the "dishonest respondent" hypothesis, or in other words, that the respondents made up a story about a DGU. Only 24% of respondents reporting a DGU claimed to have fired their gun, and even if one were to discard these reported DGUs entirely (and arbitrarily) as overly dramatic, this leaves well over a million and a half estimated DGUs, a rate twenty times that of the estimate derived from the NCVS. To assume that even 24% of respondents are actively trying to create a dramatic story which is internally consistent enough to deceive the experienced team of interviewers Kleck used, much less a sufficient number to account for the vast difference in estimates between the Kleck survey and the NCVS, is in itself hard to believe. For the NCVS to miss a DGU requires only that the respondent not volunteer the information, but as Kleck observes "[t]here is no precedent in criminological research" for the "enormous level of intentional and sustained falsification" on the part of respondents which would be required in order to account for the 30-fold difference in estimated annual DGUs between Kleck's survey and the NCVS.

Indeed, Kleck argues, there is reason to believe that the estimate of 2.5 million annual DGUs is too low. There is the problem of self-censorship in reporting, since there is evidence that some respondents to the Kleck survey were wary of reporting such incidents to anonymous strangers, much less to government officials as in the NCVS. Several respondents expressed suspicion of the interviewer prior to answering "no" to the DGU question, perhaps because they view their actions as legally questionable. There may also be instances in which respondents regarded their own DGU incidents as too minor to report, or households in which DGU incidents of other household members were not known to the respondent, or where it was not considered appropriate to discuss the DGU incidents of other household members. The limitations of a telephone survey preclude sampling among the 5% of American households without telephones, most of which are poor and/or rural. As poor people are more likely to be victims of crime, and there is a higher rate of gun ownership in rural areas, this could also contribute to an underestimation of the number of DGUs.

Recommended Reading:

"Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun", Kleck, Gary and Gertz, Marc
J. of Criminal Law and Criminology, v.86, n.1, pp.150-187 (1995)

Gun Laws and the Need for Self-Defense (Parts 1 and 2), hearings before The Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, 104th Congress, 1st session, March 31, 1996
SuDoc# Y 4.J89/1:104/43/Pt.1, and 2nd session, April 5, 1995, SuDoc# Y 4.J89/1:104/43/Pt.2 [These hearings, called in response to the fledgling Republican Congress' efforts to repeal the 1994 Clinton/Feinstein gun ban (see 3.3 and Appendix I), featured testimony from a number of scholars cited elsewhere in this FAQ, including James Wright, Joyce Malcolm, David Bordua, Robert Cottrol, and Daniel Polsby, as well as law enforcement officers and crime victims.]
See testimony of David Bordua and Garen Wintemute.

Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1994, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Dept. of Justice
SuDoc# J 29.9/6:994 (1994)

Myth # 3a - "Is there independent evidence to supports Kleck and Gertz?"

A recent study funded by the National Institute of Justice, and conducted by criminologists Phillip J. Cook of Duke University and Jens Ludwig of Georgetown University, on behalf of the pro-"gun control" Police Foundation (a non-profit Washington D.C.-based research group spun off from the Ford Foundation in 1970), found a reported 1.5 million annual DGUs in 1994, using the Kleck/Gertz criteria. The data for the Cook/Ludwig study were obtained from a nationwide random-digit-dialed telephone survey of 2,568 adults conducted during November and December of 1994 by Chilton Research Services of Drexel Hill, PA. While the authors of the Police Foundation study consider their survey to be "a reliable reference" for other purposes (such as estimating the percentage of gun-owning households), the DGU estimates, they say, are greatly exaggerated and not informative as to whether private gun ownership has a net positive or negative effect on crime. In attempting to explain away this particular finding, Cook and Ludwig argue by comparison to the NCVS data that for example, the number of DGUs reported to their survey as being associated with rapes or attempted rapes is greater than the total number of rapes or attempted rapes estimated by the NCVS. It has been argued by some criminologists, however, as Kleck and Gertz note in their survey results, that the NCVS severely undercounts rapes, and would miss "nearly all DGUs associated with" them (p.155). Cook and Ludwig describe other comparisons between their DGU counts and the NCVS data as "almost as absurd," and note that their survey also suggests that "130,000 criminals are wounded or killed by civilian gun defenders," which they say is "completely out of line with other, more reliable statistics on the number of gunshot cases." The Kleck/Gertz survey likewise found that DGU-involved respondents who reported firing their gun at the offender (which was in only 15.6% of the cases) were likely to "remember with favor" their marksmanship and report that they had wounded the offender (8.3% of respondents). Kleck and Gertz discount these wounding reports, writing that "If 8.3% really hit their adversaries, and a total of 15.6% fired at their adversaries, this would imply... a level of combat marksmanship far exceeding that typically observed even among police officers" (p.173).

In explaining away their large number of estimated DGUs, Cook and Ludwig invoke a variation on the "dishonest respondent" hypothesis, namely that most such reports are "false positives," a result of the probability bias that some of the large number of non-DGU involved respondents will make up a story, while the smaller number of actual DGU-involved respondents will make less of a difference to the total estimate, no matter how they respond. Other factors, including "telescoping," or that respondents "may be geniunely confused due to substance abuse, mental illness, or simply less-than-accurate memories" could produce these "false positives," the authors argue. While "telescoping" may affect DGU estimates, the latter factors should also affect the overall reliability of other questions in the survey (indeed of any survey). Cook and Ludwig describe their results as "the most complete data available on the private stock of firearms in the United States." But considering the public stigma which has been placed on gun owners by much of the mass media, Cook and Ludwig's confidence in their finding that just 35% of respondents households own guns (by comparison to the approximately 50% of households found in previous surveys) may be misplaced. If Cook and Ludwig can't believe those respondents who claim to have used a gun defensively, how can they trust their respondents to report accurately about their "arsenals" of "cop-killer assault weapons," "junk guns," and "high powered sniper rifles" to anonymous strangers on the telephone?

Recommended Reading:

"Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun", Kleck, Gary and Gertz, Marc
J. of Criminal Law and Criminology, v.86, n.1, pp.150-187 (1995)

"Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms", National Institute of Justice Research in Brief, May 1997
SuDoc# J 28.24:G 95/3 (1997)

Myth #4 - "Bad guys will just take your gun away and shoot you."

The techniques required for "weapon retention" are not all that difficult to master, but the greatest risk for being disarmed by an attacker appears to be from open carry in a holster as police officers do. Some ten to fourteen percent of law enforcement officers who are killed are shot with their own guns. By contrast, an average of 1% or fewer of armed citizens end up disarmed by their attacker, no doubt in part because criminals expect police to be armed, but are mostly unpleasantly surprised to find their intended victims are. Police are also more frequently in contact with desperate and dangerous people, who they must attempt to personally apprehend, increasing their risk of being in close enough proximity to be disarmed. Private citizens with guns need not take such risks, and can carry concealed, confronting their attackers at a distance in many situations, rather than permitting attackers to get close enough where a knife or brute strength can come into play. In a home defense situation this is particularly true, if the armed homeowner is alerted by the sound of forced entry, or by an alarm. For the physically weaker members of our society, for the elderly, or the disabled, no other means of self-defense negates the advantages of youth, agility and strength as effectively as a firearm, and none but firearms can defeat strength in numbers. In most cases, the credible brandishing of a gun convinces criminals to look for an easier target, but if life-threatening danger is imminent, and the situation permits, having a gun gives the defender an additional option of resistance, which can reduce the risk of being injured or killed.

Recommended Reading:

"Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun," Kleck, Gary and Gertz, Marc
J. of Criminal Law and Criminology, v.86, n.1, pp.122 (1995)

Uniform Crime Reports: Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted 19xx, United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation
SuDoc#s J 1.14/7-6:9xx-993

Myth #4a - "Women shouldn't have guns because men will only take them away to use against them."

Another variation of the "your attacker will just take it away" scenario is sometimes used by those in favor of victim disarmament when the subject is women and guns. "The man will just take the gun away from you" is a very interesting statement which cries out to be deconstructed. All too often, this statement goes entirely unchallenged, not merely on factual grounds, but at a deeper philosophical level. Repeated requests for civilian examples of this phenomenon have gone unanswered.

All acknowledge that a firearm is a dangerous implement capable of inflicting serious injury or death. That being the case, it would seem a simple matter for the woman in question to merely shoot the assailant attempting to disarm her. And in this scenario, the male assailant is assisting the female defender by presenting her with a larger, closer target, difficult even for an inexperienced shooter to miss. If the weapon in question is a handgun, wresting control of it is much more difficult than it would be for the attacker to grasp a longer-barreled weapon, such as a shotgun or rifle. The simplest of logic dictates that dead men don't snatch guns away, and that relatively smart men who don't want to become dead men, shouldn't try.

Given the odds against the male in purely physical terms, we must look for another reason why "gun control" advocates might claim that the attacker can so easily disarm a woman. The only obvious explanation would be that the woman voluntarily gives the gun away. The entire foundation of the victim disarmer's argument is that when faced with a violent male attacker, a woman armed with a lethal weapon, instead of using that weapon to defend life and limb, will instead give that weapon to the man intent upon robbing, raping or murdering her.

This "explanation" has numerous implications, which are quite understandably not commented upon by "gun control" advocates when they advance this scenario. If indeed women have an uncontrollable urge to arm those who would harm them, does this not call into question the very concept of armed policewomen? After all, what point is there in training, uniforming and arming women at great public expense, when all they'll do is just give away their weapons to any criminal who confronts them?

And what of women in the armed forces? Why give a woman a Beretta or an M16A2 when she'll just go looking for an Iraqi soldier to hand it to? Certainly, if the victim disarmers' argument is to be accepted, no women should be allowed to serve in Artillery or Air Defense units, since the enemy will quickly amass a stockpile of 8" guns and Patriot missiles, willingly turned over to them by female soldiers.

Can the nation really afford the risk that female pilots will go off in search of enemy airfields at which they might land their multi-million dollar fighter planes? If some in the "gun control" movement are to be believed, we might just as well ship F14s directly to Libya rather than allow women to fly them unbidden to Quadaffi's airfields. Only a few defections of female captains of aircraft carriers would be sufficient to completely neutralize the United States Navy. Dare we take the risk?

What madman would think to put nuclear weapons into a woman's hands if indeed women are one tenth as easily cowed as the "gun control" lobby makes them out to be? It would be sheer national suicide to elect a female President when only a raised eyebrow or harsh word on the part of a Rafsanjani or Karadzic would reduce her to abject surrender...

Of course it could be that women aren't the sniveling cowards that the victim disarmers make them out to be. Perhaps rather than the immobilized victims of a thousand slasher films, women are rather more like Buddhist nun Ng Mui, the philosphical antecedent of Bruce Lee. Perhaps rather than burst into tears, they're more likely to serve a cannon like the women who fought in the Revolutionary War. Perhaps rather than arm their assailants, they'll take a more proactive approach like the soldaderas of the Mexican revolution, or Soviet combat pilots like Lilya Litvak and the "Night Witches". Perhaps like Israeli women soldiers and female PLO guerrillas, they're quite capable of taking care of themselves.

The simple truth is that the "He'll just take her gun away" scenario is wallowing in all of the worst condescending stereotypes inflicted on women. It proudly proclaims that women are weak, cowardly, and_want_to be attacked. If there's any good reason for "gun control," misogyny isn't it.

Recommended Reading:

"Arms and the Woman: A Feminist Reappraisal", Stange, Mary Zeiss in Guns: Who Should Have Them?, David Kopel, ed.
Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-958-5 (1995), a book which is an excellent introduction to the political issues surrounding gun ownership.

Myth #5 - "Guns are too dangerous to own if you've got children."

The death of children, whether by abuse, neglect, homicide, suicide, or accident, is a particular tragedy, because for most children their safety is dependent on adults to protect them from harm. This responsibility for protecting children is primarily that of their parents, as it is for so much of their physical, emotional, and intellectual sustenance. As with any potentially dangerous item in the home, it is the responsibility of parents to do their best to secure their firearms from misuse by children who are unaware of that potential danger, as much as responsible parents try to protect their children from the hazards of electricity, household chemicals, poisons, and physical injury from falls, sharp objects, fire, choking, or drowning. Part of that protection, when they are old enough to understand, is education. Safes are available which allow quick access to defensive firearms when needed, while preventing unauthorized access; and modern firearms (particularly semi-automatics) are designed with safety features to prevent accidental discharges.

In an attempt to further reduce gun accidents in the home, fifteen major firearms manufacturers representing the American Sports Shooting Council (ASSC) voluntarily agreed October 9, 1997 to package locking devices (such as trigger locks) with each new handgun they produce. Six other companies are now considering joining the agreement. But "childproofing" a home is no substitute for "accident-proofing" or "gun-proofing" a child so that they can understand the dangers and actively avoid them, whether at home, at school, or at a friend's house.

Irrationally, the same people who use accidental shootings of children to advance the cause of "gun control" are often opposed to educational efforts to teach children how to avoid gun accidents and injuries, though they may favor education as a means to make children aware of the risks of venereal disease and pregnancy. The U.S. National Rifle Association, for its part, has championed the cause of gun safety and training for over a century, and since 1988 has promoted a safety program for children in grades K-6 which tells those youngsters to "Stop! Don't Touch! Leave The Area! Tell An Adult!" if they find a gun. The NRA's "Eddie Eagle" program (originated by Florida grandmother and current NRA president, Marion Hammer) has been used in schools across the nation, and was awarded the National Safety Council's Outstanding Community Service Award in October 1993.

The rate of firearms accidents generally has been declining since the 1970s, largely due to public education about the basic rules of firearm safety, even as the number of firearms in the U.S. population has increased. Firearm-related accidental deaths involving children 14 and under in the U.S. totaled 227 in 1991, trailing many more commonplace causes of accidental death among children, including car accidents (3,087 deaths), fire (1,104 deaths), and drowning (1,104 deaths).

Recommended Reading:

Guns, Crime, and Freedom, Wayne LaPierre
Regnery BooksISBN 0-89526-477-3, (1994)
LaPierre devotes an entire chapter (Chapter 9) to this. Guns, Crime and Freedom is also out in "trade paperback" (an oversize paperback) from HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-097674-8 (1995).
[Wayne LaPierre is the chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association, and one of its spokesmen.

Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, Gary Kleck, pp.276-280
Aldine de Gruyter, ISBN 0-202-30419-1 (1991)
[Dr. Kleck's book is a valuable resource for all participants in the "gun control" debate. Point Blank received the American Society for Criminology's highest honor, the Hindelang Award, at the ASC's 1993 annual meeting, for the most important contribution to the criminology literature in the preceding three years.]

Accident Facts,1994, National Safety Council Staff
ISBN 0-87912-183-1, (1994)

American Sports Shooting Council website

Myth #6 - "Concealed carry reform will take us back to the Wild West!"

Persons who go to the effort and expense of obtaining a permit to carry a concealed weapon (which, to use Florida's 1987 law as an example, requires 6 months or longer residency, being over 21 years of age, able bodied, not a drug abuser or alcoholic, completion of a firearms safety course, no felonies or violent misdemeanors or record of being committed for mental illness, sworn application on file listing name, address, place and date of birth, race, and occupation, and including a statement that the applicant meets the above criteria, a $125 application fee [renewable after three years for $100], a full set of fingerprints, and a color photo), and who submit to a full background check to verify the application and check fingerprints, are not the sorts of people who abuse firearms. The permit process acts quite effectively to select for law-abiding citizens rather than trigger-happy criminals, and the records of those states which have liberalized their concealed carry laws show this. Of the 204,108 licenses issued in the Florida law's first 6 1/2 years of operation, seventeen (17, or .008%) were revoked for unlawful conduct while the firearm was present, and many of these violations were either technical (such as carrying into a restricted area, like an airport or bar) or non-gun related (such as revoking a permit due to a drunken driving arrest). In Oregon, over 60,000 concealed carry permits have been issued, and none has been revoked.

In light of these successes, many other states, Tennessee, Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, Utah, Arkansas, Virginia, Texas, Oklahoma, Kentucky South Carolina, and most recently, Michigan, have joined the ranks of states protecting the individual right to self defense through reformed concealed carry laws. One state, Vermont, even allows concealed carry without a permit, and has little crime. (The complete list of 33 states having non-discretionary, or so-called "shall issue" concealed carry laws: AL, AK, AZ, AR, CT, FL, GA, ID, IN, KY, LA, ME, MI, MS, MT, NV, NH, NC, ND, OK, OR, PA, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VT*, VA, WA, WV, WY. *VT requires no permit.) The impact of such laws on fighting crime is debatable at a purely statistical level, but states which issue concealed carry permits to their law-abiding population show less violent crime in general than those which do not, and rates of some crimes (such as homicide and robbery) which are 50% lower than states in which concealed carry is not permitted. These states, it could be argued, may have had less crime than restrictive states to begin with, but the dire predictions by "gun control" advocates that violent crime would increase in these states following liberalization of concealed carry have not proven to be valid.

At an individual level, many carry permit holders have already saved their own lives and the lives of others in the face of criminal violence. Armed citizens, permit or not, kill almost as many criminals each year as do law enforcement officers (some 348 out of 763, or 46% of justifiable homicides in 1992), and armed citizens are less likely to have "bad shoots" than the police, since, unlike the police, they aren't usually arriving late at the scene and then having to figure out who the bad guys are. Armed citizens may in fact kill far more criminals in justifiable shootings than the police, since statistics which are available reflect only the initial determinations about a shooting incident, and not the verdict in the case after it has actually been tried. Police are more often given the benefit of the doubt in shooting incidents than are private citizens. But, as is pointed out elsewhere, the true measure of the ability of firearms to fight crime isn't found in the body count, but in criminals wounded, deterred from violence by fear that a potential victim may be armed, or driven away without even firing a shot.

The fact that laws against carrying weapons were ineffective against crime was no secret to Thomas Jefferson, who hand-copied this quotation from the 18th century Italian criminologist Cesare Beccaria's 1764 book On Crimes and Punishments into his own notebook on law and government, a quote which sums up well the arguments of those who defend the right to keep and bear arms:

"False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty --so dear to men, so dear to the enlightened legislator-- and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree."

Recommended Reading:

Guns, Crime, and Freedom, Wayne LaPierre
Regnery Books, ISBN 0-89526-477-3, (1994)
LaPierre devotes an entire chapter (Chapter 4) to this. Guns, Crime and Freedom is also out in "trade paperback" (an oversize paperback) from HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-097674-8 (1995).
[Wayne LaPierre is the chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association, and one of its spokesmen.

Commonplace Book, Thomas Jefferson
(G. Chinard ed., 1926), p.314

Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, ISBN 0-202-30419-1 (1991), pp.411-414
[Dr. Kleck's book is a valuable resource for all participants in the "gun control" debate. Point Blank received the American Society for Criminology's highest honor, the Hindelang Award, at the ASC's 1993 annual meeting, for the most important contribution to the criminology literature in the preceding three years.]

Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation (1992)

Florida Statutes, title 46, sec. 790.06, pp.590-597 (amended 1992)

Myth #6a - "What about the University of Maryland study?"

A recently published study by the University of Maryland's Violence Research Group, claimed that average monthly homicides by gun increased in four of five urban areas studied, after the adoption of liberalized concealed carry reform laws. This statistical "factoid" was first offered up March 13, 1995 by the Associated "Black Rhino" Press, and was widely reported (and misreported) elsewhere. However, the researchers do not attempt to argue that any of these gun-related homicides were committed by concealed carry permit holders, nor do they consider the relative proportion of concealed carry permit holders in each of the studied localities, which if one were to assume that less restrictive concealed carry is associated with increased homicide, would be a particularly important factor to consider. Information that is available from other sources, such as the state government in Florida, suggests that criminality by concealed carry permit holders is virtually unknown. If increased carry by citizens with CCW permits is responsible for any increased homicide, the researchers do not establish a plausible explanation for the change in rate, if such a change actually exists. Also the researchers selected the cities they did on the basis of their status as "large urban areas," rather than looking at the homicide rates for each state as a whole, when the concealed-carry laws were enacted statewide.

Three of the five localities studied were in Florida (where a statewide CCW reform law was enacted in 1987, and where "gun control" advocates predicted increased violent crime would make it into the "Gunshine State"). Both in Jacksonville, where the study claims that the monthly average number of gun-related homicides increased by 74 percent, and in Tampa, where the study claims the monthly average number of gun-related homicides jumped 22 percent, the study notes that the rates of homicide without firearms also increased. In Miami, a city of intermediate size relative to Tampa and Jacksonville, the study claims gun-related homicides per month increased 3 percent, but this analysis is based upon a different time span than that for Tampa and Jacksonville. The researchers claim that using a different baseline was necessary "because of an unusually sharp increase in homicide rates [in Miami] in May 1980 after an influx of Cuban refugees." Results of time series analyses such as this, and the similar study of the effects of Washington D.C.'s gun registration law by the same researchers, are highly dependent upon the time spans chosen for study. In those Florida cities for which the most dramatic results were obtained, the baseline used stretched all the way back to 1973, but for Miami, the baseline began in 1983. Presumably, given the higher initial Miami homicide rates that the researchers attribute to the Cuban refugees, starting off with same baseline year for Miami as for the other Florida cities would have produced a resulting increase less than the 3 percent observed.

Complicating any analysis of Florida's crime rates is the fact that almost immediately following the passage of Florida's 1987 CCW reforms, the state changed the manner in which it collects crime statistics, so comparisons before and after the implementation of the law can be invalid on that basis. However, the number of homicides ought not to be affected by that, since to have a homicide, you need to have a body. Statistical changes ought not to affect the ability to count bodies, which is essentially what the Maryland study does (albeit very crudely, and without distinguishing between justifiable homicides and murders). The researchers cite FBI's Uniform Crime Reports data in asserting that justifiable homicides are uncommon, but the FBI numbers actually undercount the number of justifiable homicides by civilians, since FBI statistics rely upon the initial determination made about an incident. A statewide analysis of the Florida data, reveals that the U. Maryland researchers missed the overall downward trend in murder/manslaughter rates since the Florida concealed-carry law was enacted.

The question of the direction of causality's arrow is critically important to consider. Does increased homicide lead to more people obtaining permits to carry, or does increasing the availability of permits to carry increase the homicide rate? The Maryland study's researchers seem to want to argue the latter, but they have thus far offered no evidence that CCW permit holders are doing the killing! The sampling of these particular localities, since nonrandom, can also be used to introduce bias into such a study, and sociological differences between localities also need to be controlled for.

The wide disparities in the with-gun homicide rates given in the study seem very unusual at first glance, and this is the result of the fact that the study is calculating its percent increases in absolute terms (4 going up to 7) rather than per 100,000 population, as is necessary for any realistic assessment. The attempt by the researchers to control for population changes by lumping together data from all five studied cities is a less than adequate solution if they intend to consider the homicide rates seperately for each city elsewhere in their report (and in their quotes to the press). The researchers themselves admit that "[t]he population of all five areas grew over the study period, especially in the Florida cities. Homicide counts thus may have changed after the laws in part because of increases in the populations at risk."

The two other localities examined were Jackson, Mississippi, where the average monthly gun-related homicide rate increased by 43 percent; and Portland, Oregon, where the average monthly gun-related homicide rate_fell_by 12 percent. The Portland data, the researchers note, did not provide enough homicides, so data from two adjoining counties were included as well. (Again, one presumes that if this had not been done, the Portland rate would have been seen to decline even more than the 12 percent reported.) Calculating average numbers of homicides per month serves to make the numbers smaller, and if there are few homicides in a locality to begin with, as was apparently the case in Portland, the degree of "noise" in the data can produce some "startling" percentage changes, if considered in absolute terms. (If one average has 6 homicides, and the next, 3, that's a "50% DROP!") It's also widely known in criminology that more violent crime occurs in summer months than in winter months, so averaging over the year, as a "moving average" technique does, can also serve to produce smaller numbers, more suceptible to "startling" percentage changes. This study design (and the similar study of Washington D.C.'s gun registration law) seems geared towards maximizing "noise," rather than discerning a longer-term trend.

The researchers' conclusion is tentative: "While advocates of these relaxed [carry] laws argue that they will prevent crime, and suggest that they have reduced homicides in areas that adopted them, we strongly suggest caution. When states weaken limits on concealed weapons, they may be giving up a simple and effective method of preventing firearm deaths." This quotation also points up another aspect of bias in the study. What exactly is significant about gun related homicides, versus total homicides? Does the fact that a homicide is committed with a firearm make the slain any more dead than if the homicide was committed with a knife, or with hands and feet? The researchers claim that homicides by other means remained mostly steady, yet in the two Florida cities showing the greatest increases, both gun and non-gun related homicides went up. If the increased presence of firearms in the hands of the law-abiding serves to deter murders with other weapons, this effect would be discounted when only homicides involving firearms are considered. In the case of Florida, since the murder rates have decreased when considered on a statewide basis, these supposed increases in urban areas must have been offset by drastic drops elsewhere.

The researchers do not consider Florida data later than 1991, since they say other laws, such as the 1991 passage of waiting periods and background checks on new gun purchases in Florida, would make it difficult to disentangle the results of the new laws from the concealed carry law. Yet presuming that the declines in murder rates since 1991 are attributable to background checks and waiting periods runs counter to the assumption that gun availability is a crucial factor driving murder rates. Neither background checks nor waiting periods would have any appreciable effect on the existing supply of guns available, while concealed carry opponents claim that CCW laws make guns more available in the heat of an argument. To compare the potential effects of these laws on the availability of guns is to compare apples and oranges. Concealed carry can be the ultimate test of the "gun availability" hypothesis. So far, the awful consequences that are habitually predicted by those opposed to concealed carry reform laws haven't been shown to occur. If anything, the available data is consistent with the view that concealed carry has a deterrent effect, or at the least has no direct negative effect.

The researchers attempt to speculate that increased availability of legal concealed weapons is leading to an "arms race" between criminals and their potential victims, and more criminals are using firearms than previously. They write "[g]reater tolerance for legal carrying may increase levels of illegal carrying as well. For example, criminals have more reason to carry firearms --and to use them-- when their victims might be armed." As Daniel Polsby points out in the same journal, this "arms race" hypothesis would presumably also operate when greater numbers of armed police officers are introduced into a locality. But the legitimacy of availability of concealed carry permits to the law abiding is not predicated on the frequency of misbehavior of criminals-- except in the minds of "gun control" advocates who wish to prohibit any item that could potentially be misused by criminals (chemical defense sprays and stun guns included), regardless of its effectiveness in protecting the weak from the predations of the strong. Theirs is a policy which demands that victims "lie back and enjoy it," rather than_fight_back, and reduce their risk of injury or death.

Recommended Reading:

"Easing Concealed Firearms Laws: Effects on Homicide in Three States", McDowall, David; Wiersema, Brian; and Loftin, Colin
J. of Criminal Law and Criminology v.86, n.1, pp.195-204 (1995)

"Firearms Costs, Firearms Benefits, and the Limits of Knowledge", Polsby, Daniel
J. of Criminal Law and Criminology v.86, n.1, pp.207-220 (1995)

Myth #6b - "Lott and Mustard's study is just gun industry propaganda!"

In the most comprehensive study yet conducted on the effects of the recent concealed carry reform laws in the U.S., two economists at the University of Chicago examined county level and statewide data for the entire United States from 1977 to 1992, obtained from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report (UCR) program. Their conclusions that concealed carry reform laws have had a measurable effect in reducing violent crime rates, have prompted a barrage of criticism in the press by anti-gun activists, but the response of their academic colleagues has been much more cautious.

Lott and Mustard found that county-level violent crime rates declined by 4.90% in states where concealed-carry laws went into effect, and that for specific categories of violent crime, the benefits associated with concealed-carry laws were even greater. County-level murder rates declined 7.65% in concealed-carry states, rapes declined 5.27%, and aggravated assaults declined by 7.01%. Based upon the numbers of violent crimes reported in 1992 in counties without concealed-carry reform laws, Lott and Mustard conclude that "at least 1,414 murders and over 4,177 rapes would have been avoided" in 1992 if states which lacked these laws instead had them in effect. The rate of robbery, while it was observed to decline in those counties where statewide concealed-carry laws went into effect, did not register such a dramatic change, dropping only 2.21%. Considering this decline in absolute terms, as above, concealed-carry reform would have meant 11,898 fewer robberies in 1992. Aggravated assaults in 1992 would have declined by 60,363 incidents, according to the same analysis.

Property crimes, however, increased 2.69% in counties where statewide concealed-carry went into effect, with the largest jump occurring in auto theft, which increased 7.14%. Lott and Mustard argue that this finding supports "the notion that criminals respond to incentives" and "criminals respond substantially to the threat of being shot by instead substituting into less risky crimes" where contact with a potentially armed victim is less likely. Even with this increase in property crime, Lott and Mustard estimate a net economic gain from allowing concealed handguns of over $5.74 billion in 1992 dollars, using methods similar to those of a 1996 National Institute of Justice study which attempted to estimate economic losses due to crime.

The changes in crime rates associated with concealed-carry reform laws were not evenly distributed geographically or demographically, according to the authors. Counties with larger populations showed larger effects, both greater declines in violent crime, and greater increases in property crime. When county-level data are aggregated, such as when considering state-level crime rates, low-crime rural counties and high-crime urban areas are lumped together, tending to average out their differences. Indeed, state-level analysis of the data set used by Lott and Mustard reflects decreases in property crime associated with concealed-carry laws across the country instead of increases! In the state-level analysis, violent crime rates declined 10.11% (rather than 4.9% as seen the county-level analysis), murder rates declined 8.62%, rape rates declined 6.07%, aggravated assault declined 10.9%, and robbery declined 14.21%. Property crime rates, which are observed to increase in the county-level analysis show a decline of 4.19% when analysis is done with state-level data aggregation. Auto theft, rather than showing an increase, declines very slightly in the state-level analysis, down 0.88%.

Counties with larger populations are more likely to have had restrictive carry laws than low population counties, and so it is in these counties where the presumed benefits of liberalizing concealed-carry will be seen most strongly. "The implication for existing studies is that simply using state level data rather than county data will bias the results against finding any impact from passing right-to-carry provisions," the authors note. In order to better understand the changes brought by the concealed-carry reform laws, differences between the counties in arrest and conviction rates for various crimes, sentence lengths, and rates of issuance of carry permits before and after the laws also need to be controlled for, though such complete data were only available for a small subset of counties in the Lott/Mustard study. Data for counties in Arizona, Oregon and Pennsylvania showed that counties with higher arrest rates had lower crime rates, and the Pennsylvania data show a strong correlation between issuance of concealed handgun permits and decreased violent crime. The Oregon data did show decreases in violent crime correlated with concealed carry permits, but the effects were not nearly so dramatic. The Arizona law had changed too recently for any such correlation to be noticed. The authors suggest that the differences observed between Oregon and Pennsylvania may be attributable to Oregon having passed a 15-day "waiting period" law at the same time.

Despite the fact that comparatively few women have acquired carry permits, the county-level data for states issuing CCW permits show correlations with reductions in rape rates which are comparable to the reductions observed in other categories of violent crime. This suggests, Lott and Mustard argue, "that rapists are particularly susceptible to this form of deterrence," and that "providing a woman with a gun has a much bigger effect on her ability to defend herself" than does providing a gun to a man. The benefits to other women ("positive externalities," in the terms used by economists), from a woman carrying a handgun are apparently "large relative to the gain produced by an additional man carrying a concealed handgun."

Lott and Mustard also considered the question of whether increased concealed carry might result in a greater number of gun accidents. Adopting concealed carry was not found to have a statistically significant effect on gun accidents.

At the time of the release of the Lott/Mustard study, a smear originating with Josh Sugarmann's Washington-based anti-gun group, the Violence Policy Center, was picked up uncritically by several news organizations, including the Associated Press. In a press release/editorial letter signed by VPC's Kristen Rand, the claim was made that Dr. Lott's research had been "in essence, funded by the firearms industry." The tortured logic used to reach this conclusion was this: since Dr. Lott is the John M. Olin Visiting Law and Economics Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School, and because the endowment for that position was provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, established by the estate of the late John M. Olin (who died in 1982), and who while he was alive was part of the family that owns Olin Corporation, one of whose subsidiary businesses makes Winchester ammunition, therefore...argumentum ad hominem. While Dr. Lott is the current occupant of that faculty position, he was not at the University of Chicago when it was created, nor is he the first professor to be the Olin fellow, nor does the Olin Foundation have any control over who gets appointed to the position (which is decided by a faculty committee), nor does the Olin Foundation (or anybody else) have input into the research topics chosen. Neither is such a fellowship unique to the University of Chicago, since the Olin Foundation has endowed chairs at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, the University of Virginia, and others. Dr. Lott's salary is paid by the University of Chicago Law School. After further investigation, the Associated Press printed a retraction of the smear, and other news organizations soon followed suit (so to speak).

The data set used in the study, which Lott and Mustard have freely released, is currently being analyzed by other researchers, and academic criticism will hopefully soon take the place of political mudslinging.

Recommended Reading:

"Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns", Lott, John R., and Mustard, David B.
J. of Legal Studies, vol.26, n.1, pp.1-68 (Jan. 1997)