Tag: fisk

I think they’re trying to lure us into dropping our guard. Check out this piece from today’s NYT:

Shootings Fuel a Drive to Ease Gun Laws

By KATE ZERNIKE

Paul Bucher, the district attorney for the Wisconsin county where a man opened fire in a church service last month, killing seven people and himself, has one answer to the deadly mass shootings around the country in recent weeks: more guns.

“The problems aren’t the guns, it’s the guns in the wrong hands,” said Mr. Bucher, a Republican who recently announced his candidacy for Wisconsin attorney general. “We need to put more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens. Whether having that would have changed what happened is all speculation, but it would level the playing field. If the person you’re fighting has a gun and all you have is your fists, you lose.”

You’ve got to admit, this is a sea-change for public officials to advocate arming the citizenry. Normally they try to avoid the topic completely if they aren’t rabid “ban-em all” anti-gunners.

Across the country, efforts to expand or establish laws allowing concealed handguns have been fueled by the horrifying shootings in the last month – of the family of a federal judge in Chicago, at the church service in Wisconsin, at courthouses in Atlanta and Tyler, Tex., and the nation’s second-deadliest school shooting, on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota.

In Texas and Illinois, the shootings prompted new legislation to allow judges and prosecutors to be armed. Legislators in Nebraska and Wisconsin, which were already considering allowing concealed weapons, say they think the shootings will help their cause.

Is it just common sense finally being beaten into the public psyche? I’d like to think so.

Even supporters of gun control acknowledge that the atmosphere is sharply different than it was in 1999 when the nation’s deadliest school shooting took place at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colo. Those shootings inspired gun-control proposals in Congress and in state legislatures, and forced gun advocates to retreat from legislation they hoped to pass, including a Colorado bill to allow concealed handguns.

Then, the National Rifle Association scaled back its national meeting, held in Denver soon after the Columbine shootings, to one day from three, and with 7,000 protesters shouting outside, used the occasion to declare its support for trigger locks and “absolutely gun-free” schools. By contrast, after the recent shootings in Red Lake, N.R.A. officials proposed arming teachers.

To the outrage of a few. But only a few. Maybe they are starting to grasp how asinine the concept of “gun-free schools,” or for that matter “gun-free” anywhere is.

Supporters of gun control express hope for some of their legislation, particularly in Illinois, where Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich and Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago, both Democrats, are pushing for background checks on all weapons sales at gun shows and a ban on assault weapons.

But they say their best chance now is to try to hold the line against more laws allowing concealed handguns. “We were very much more on the offensive after Columbine,” said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “It’s just the way politics have worked. I hate to be in this position, but we are.”

My suggestion? Get used to it.

Instead of calling for new restrictions on guns after the Minnesota shootings, the coalition, which includes 45 groups, simply asked for “a dialogue on the role of firearms in America.”

We’ve “dialogued” ourselves out. You have your side, we have ours, and there is no middle ground. “Compromise” used to mean “giving up only half of what YOU demanded.” No more.

Opponents of gun control have had victories in Congress, which let the ban on assault weapons expire last fall, and in states, where the push to allow concealed handguns has been gathering momentum for two years. Since 2003, five states, most recently Ohio, have approved laws allowing people to carry concealed weapons.

Thirty-five states now require the authorities to issue permits for concealed handguns to most applicants as long as they do not have criminal records, and two, Alaska and Vermont, allow concealed weapons without a permit. Eleven others allow the local authorities discretion in issuing so-called concealed carry permits. Most states include some restrictions on where guns can be carried.

In Illinois, the bill allowing judges to be armed was filed after Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow’s mother and husband were killed. In Texas, a bill proposed after the shooting outside the Tyler courthouse in late February would allow district attorneys to carry weapons in court.

Yes, we know how rabid and unpredictable district attorneys are. There’ll be blood in the courts! Oh, wait, there’s already been “blood in the courts.”

Never mind.

“The advocacy groups want to take guns away from everyone, and in a perfect world, I’d agree with that,” said State Senator Larry Bomke of Illinois, a Republican who is sponsoring the bill there. “Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. The gangbangers and the criminal element are still going to get guns.”

Now, do you think you could explain that to the government of England?

Legislation in other states that already permit concealed guns would loosen restrictions on where guns can be carried. Bills in Arizona and Tennessee would allow guns in bars; one in Georgia would allow them in restaurants, after people complained it was dangerous to leave guns in their cars while they dined. Proposals in Texas and New Mexico would lower the age requirement for carrying concealed handguns.

The proposals tend to be initiated by Republicans, but not always; in Illinois, a bill allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons was sponsored by Democrats, and many Democrats joined the majority last month when the Tennessee Senate approved the bill on guns in bars, 29 to 3.

I’d like to believe that this is because these Democrats really understand the topic, but I think it’s more likely that they understand that gun control is a third-rail issue for them, and if they want to get re-elected (the first rule for any politician) they’d better be seen as “pro-choice” when it comes to the right to arms.

The police and prosecutors have tended to oppose allowing concealed handguns.

Not exactly true. The rank and file tend to support it. The elected and appointed (read: “politically connected”) police chiefs and upper administration tend to oppose it.

But Mr. Bucher, the district attorney in Wisconsin, said that was starting to change. As recently as two years ago, he was speaking out against the concealed-handguns law in Wisconsin; in 2000, he testified against it, arguing that the risks to the police during traffic stops would outweigh any potential benefits.

Now, he said, he believes that the legislation can address his concerns, and that the potential benefits are real.

Gun advocates see affirmation in some of the recent cases, in particular, the shooting in Tyler.

On Feb. 24, a man entering the courthouse to dispute a custody decision opened fire with an AK-47, killing his wife and wounding his son. A bystander carrying a concealed weapon began to shoot at him. The bystander was killed, but gun advocates say he distracted the killer and prevented more deaths.

This is the one paragraph in the piece that simply stuns me. This is in the NYT? Amazing.

State Senator Kevin Eltife of Tyler said he received a phone call from a prosecutor that night, asking him to propose the legislation allowing district attorneys to carry weapons in court. “With the things that have gone on lately, it doesn’t make sense that he can carry a weapon in his car but he can’t carry it in his place of work,” Mr. Eltife said.

Welcome to the world of the average prole, Mr. Eltife.

Prosecutors and judges in particular say they can end up as the targets of enormous venom – by criminals or those on the losing end of wrenching civil matters like child custody.

“The state doesn’t have money to provide security,” said Judge Daniel L. Schmidt of the Illinois Appellate Court in the Third District. “Do I want to carry it every day? Probably not. But it would be nice to know I could carry one if something came up.”

And the state isn’t responsible for your protection, anyway, even if you’re a judge or a prosecutor. You’re just far more likely to get it than John and Jane Public. Or Julie and Aeneas Hernlen.

Gun-control advocates take their own lessons from the recent shootings, noting that in Atlanta and Red Lake, the killers seized weapons from law enforcement officers.

Not that they would suggest disarming law enforcement officials, but advocates say the incidents show what can go wrong when more guns are added to the mix.

Though they conveniently ignore the fact that about three million new firearms are “added to the mix” each and every year, and more and more states have passed “shall-issue” concealed-carry laws, yet our violent crime rates have been falling since 1990.

Nope. Don’t confuse ’em with the facts. They know what they know: More guns = more death.

Except when it doesn’t.

“Police officers have the best training; people who get concealed-carry permits don’t have that training,” said Brian Malte, outreach director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, who was the Colorado field director for the campaign when the Columbine shootings happened. “The worst thing that can happen in a church or school is where untrained people can shoot at each other.”

No, the “worst thing that can happen in a church or school” is what has been happening: an armed assailant attacks DEFENSELESS PEOPLE.

You idiot.

Mr. Malte said that once people realize what ratification of concealed weapons laws could mean, they would be less supportive of them. “It’s not only public spaces, it’s crowded sports stadiums, and day care centers and supermarkets.”

Except we have 37 states with CCW and not one dire prediction of the Brady Campaign has proven true. Insanity has been defined as “repeating the same action while expecting a different result.” I think that describes the opponents of concealed-carry quite well. We keep repeating passage of CCW, and they keep expecting CCW permit holders to run amok.

Gun-control groups may well gain victories. In Arizona, generally considered a pro-gun state, chances are good for a bill requiring background checks on all weapons sales at gun shows. And Mr. Malte said the Brady campaign hoped to pass the ban on assault weapons in Illinois and make that the start of a slow trend back toward gun control.

In Arizona, I don’t think so. In the People’s Republic of Illinois, I don’t know.

After all, he said, it took five years to pass California’s strict laws against assault weapons, and in favor of safety locks. That bill was signed three months after Columbine.

And it’s been so effective, hasn’t it?

So, a quick review: Gun control laws prove, at best, to be useless. However, laws passed that allow people to carry to defend themselves prove, at worst, to be benign.

And it appears that politicians and the majority of the public are finally starting to grasp this.

And so (maybe) is the New York Times.

Isn’t this one of the signs of the Apocalypse?

I Will Not Register. Ever.

South Africa has apparently chosen to create a huge new population of criminals by revising their licensing and registration laws, reports the Cape Times earlier this month.

Gun licence chaos looms, say owners

Fatima Schroeder
January 06 2005 at 06:48AM

Firearms dealers say that there is no way the government can hope to re-register the millions of legal guns in the country in the four years from January 1 that it has given itself.

Adding to the load will be the thousands of new gun licence applications that will be made to the Central Firearms Registry this year.

Well, apparently not, as it appears that the overwhelming majority of new license applications are being denied.

Since Monday, the 2.8-million firearm owners across the country could apply to renew licences for their 4.5-million firearms.

The Firearms Control Act, implemented in July, makes it compulsory for applicants to have a training test to gain a proficiency certificate before applying for a competency certificate. People must have a competency certificate before they may apply for a licence.

More of those “common-sense” rules, right?

According to gun dealers, only one firearm licence has been issued in the past six months.

So much for the “thousands of new licenses.”

Of concern is that gun owners who do not have their licences renewed would be in possession of illegal firearms – a criminal offence.

Otherwise known as a “GOTCHA!” Disarm yourself or be a felon. No need for a door-to-door search. You know who was licensed, if they haven’t turned in their registered firearms, go lock ’em up!

Andrew Soutar, chairman of the South African Firearm Dealers Association, said that many gun dealers had gone into liquidation.

The Central Firearms Registry had processed 69,000 licence applications a year until March last year under the old laws, which entailed less complicated procedures, he said.

At this rate, he calculated that it would take about 65 years to renew licences.

A law that’s impossible to implement? That’s no reason not to do it! While you’re at it, let’s repeal gravity!

Responding to a request by the Cape Times, Pretoria police communications official Mohlabi Tlomatsana released figures that showed more than 10,000 licences had been issued between July and November last year.

Tlomatsana acknowledged that the figure included applications made before the new law came into force.

Asked how many of those licences had been approved under the new act, he responded five hours later, saying that processing the request was “time-consuming”.

Asked how many competency certificates had been issued in the last six months of last year, Tlomatsana said the question was “academic”.

Gun dealers claim the police are reluctant to give the figures sought by the Cape Times as only one licence has been issued under the new act.

Can’t imagine why they’d be closed-mouthed about it, then. Can you?

The South African Firearm Dealers Association completed a countrywide survey shortly before Christmas and 80 dealers responded saying they had not been informed of any licence approvals or issuing of competency certificates since the new law had been implemented.

The owner of Cavendish Guns, Dusty Millar, said applicants had battled to get firearm licences because the government had not put proper systems in place before implementing the law.

He said that because of the dearth of ranges and accredited trainers, applicants had struggled to obtain competency certificates in the six months after the law came into effect.

Millar said this was harming the firearm industry and six dealers in Cape Town had closed down since July 1.

“People are getting illegal firearms because it is more difficult to get a licence.”

Fr. Guido Sarducci’s Five Minute University course in Economics: “Supply and-a Demand. That’s it.” Supply always meets demand.

Osman Shaboodien, an instructor at Buccaneer Guns, shared Millar’s sentiments.

“I don’t think there’s one dealer who hasn’t suffered because of the new act. But it’s not all doom and gloom. It’s starting to look better purely because the training procedures are coming through.”

Right. AFTER a large number of dealers have been put out of business, and the law guarantees that thousands of people currently licensed will be unable to renew.

But “it’s starting to look better.” For a government that wants to disarm its citizens.

If, however, the handling of applications for new licences did not improve, many firearm dealers would have to close down, Shaboodien said.

In a letter to the Cape Times, the Democratic Alliance’s spokesperson on safety and security, Roy Jankielsohn, said the act could hit firearm owners and dealers as well as the tourism, film and private security industries.

Tlomatsana denied that only one approval had been issued under the new act, and said the procedures had been put in place.

The renewal deadlines are:

Those born between January1 and March 31 can apply during 2005;

Those born between April 1 and June 30 can apply during 2006;

Those born between July 1 and September 30 can apply during 2007; and

Those born between October 1 and December 31 can apply during 2008.

Meanwhile gun owners were responding positively to the 90-day firearms amnesty and had been handing guns in at police stations around the country, officials said.

While the police are not yet able to say what types of illegally held guns were being surrendered, they said people were taking advantage of the amnesty.

People with unlicensed firearms or ammunition can hand them in at any police station without fear of prosecution.

I’d LOVE to see a list of what gets turned in. The last time England tried it they got an anti-aircraft machinegun and some hand grenades.

Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula said the amnesty would run from January 1 to March 31, during which time the police would accept items brought in by people who no longer wished to be illegally in possession of them.

This particularly relates to people who have inherited or have been given firearms for which they do not have licences, people who may have kept ammunition after getting rid of a gun, or even security companies or other businesses that may have outdated equipment in their possession.

I will not license. I will not register. Period.

When we last left our fisking of the Harvard Magazine article Death by the Barrel, I promised I’d take on the “guns cause suicide” meme. Again. Let’s see where we were…

Oh, yes. We left off at the paragraph that stated,

In general, guns don’t induce people to commit crimes. “What guns do is make crimes lethal,” says Hemenway. They also make suicide attempts lethal: about 60 percent of suicides in America involve guns. “If you try to kill yourself with drugs, there’s a 2 to 3 percent chance of dying,” he explains. “With guns, the chance is 90 percent.”

This is another incidence of “just enough fact” I mentioned in the first piece of this fisk. It is true that suicide attempts with firearms are far more likely to be “successful,” thus ending in death, but the implication is that people who don’t really intend to commit suicide choose a firearm simply because they’re available, and thus an attempt that would have been a “cry for help” actually ends in death.

I’m sorry, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Let’s continue with the next couple of paragraphs as author Craig Lambert lays it out for you:

Gun deaths fall into three categories: homicides, suicides, and accidental killings. In 2001, about 30,000 people died from gunfire in the United States. Set this against the 43,000 annual deaths from motor-vehicle accidents to recognize what startling carnage comes out of a barrel. The comparison is especially telling because cars “are a way of life,” as Hemenway explains. “People use cars all day, every day—and ‘motor vehicles’ include trucks. How many of us use guns?”

Suicides accounted for about 58 percent of gun fatalities, or 17,000 to 18,000 deaths, in 2001; another 11,000 deaths, or 37 percent, were homicides, and the remaining 800 to 900 gun deaths were accidental. For rural areas, the big problem is suicide; in cities, it’s homicide. (“In Wyoming it’s hard to have big gang fights,” Hemenway observes dryly. “Do you call up the other gang and drive 30 miles to meet up?”) Homicides follow a curve similar to that of motor-vehicle fatalities: rising steeply between ages 15 and 21, staying fairly level from there until age 65, then rising again with advanced age. Men between 25 and 55 commit the bulk of suicides, and younger males account for an inflated share of both homicides and unintentional shootings. (Males suffer all injuries, including gunshots, at much higher rates than females.)

First, let’s take a look at the study done for the (not gun friendly) Journal of the American Medical Association done by (not gun-friendly) Jens Ludwig of Georgetown University and (not gun friendly) Phillip J. Cook of Duke University. That study is entitled Homicide and Suicide Rates after the Brady Act (PDF file). The study was to determine what, if any, effect the five-day waiting period required by the Brady Act had on suicide and homicide when compared to areas that previously had such waiting periods in place. The conclusion drawn when it came to suicide was:

(W)e did not detect an association of the Brady Act with overall suicide rates.

We find some signs of an offsetting increase in nongun suicides to those aged 55 years or older, which makes the reduction in the total suicide rate smaller than the reduction in gun suicides. Neither the increase in nongun suicides nor the decrease in suicides from all causes are statistically significant at the conventional 95% level, though the overall pattern of findings is consistent with theories of “weapon substitution.”

Note that. The only effect a waiting period apparently had – and the evidence is tenuous – is that those people 55 and older choosing suicide had a tendency to choose another method. It’s called “weapon substitution.”

Let’s look at another example of such substitution, in another country. The rate of suicide for young men in Australia began climbing in the mid 1960’s. It reached a peak in the early 1990’s where it remains essentially unchanged, according to this site. What has changed, however, is the method of suicide, and for no apparent reason. According to this site

In 1972, the leading method of suicide for young men was using firearms or explosives (44%). However, by 1992, suicide by hanging, strangulation or suffocation had become their leading method of suicide (33%). The shift in method occurred in the mid to late 1980s. During this period the death rate for young male suicide by firearms and explosives decreased marginally, from 9 to 8 per 100,000, while the rate for suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation increased substantially, from 3 to 8 per 100,000. These data contradict much of the recent literature which has focused on the greater use of firearms as the cause of the increase in young male suicides.

In contrast, the most prevalent method used by young women was poisoning by solid or liquid substances, accounting for 29% of cases in 1988-92. Although the incidence of suicide from hanging, strangulation and suffocation also increased among young women during the mid to late 1980s the corresponding rate was much lower than that of young men (less than 2 per 100,000). Firearms were used in 13% of cases and hanging, strangulation and suffocation in 24%.

It would appear that if you really want to die, the method is immaterial. There were no notable gun-control measures passed in the period where youth suicide in Australia tripled, but the leading method changed from firearm to suffocation anyway.

Further, the implication is that the United States has an astronomical suicide rate because of our astronomical number of guns. Remember, 58% of death from firearms is suicide here, 15,000 to 17,000 annually, right? Well, the U.S. is, in actuality, right in the middle of the pack internationally, as suicide rates go. Let me quote myself from an earlier piece:

Yes indeed, according to CDC statistics 16,599 Americans did kill themselves with firearms in 1999. Another 12,764 killed themselves by other means. The total number of suicides was 29,350, and the rate per 100,000 population was 10.66.

That puts the United States, with its 200,000,000+ firearms, over 65 MILLION of which are handguns, firmly in the MIDDLE OF THE PACK for suicide internationally. If firearms actually cause suicide, then our population should have offed itself a few generations ago.

Let’s look at some comparitives, shall we? Japan, a nation with a population of about 126,600,000 in 1999, a little less than half our own, suffered 31,385 suicides – a rate of 24.8 per hundred thousand population. And there are essentially NO privately owned firearms in Japan. Even Japanese police officers leave their firearms at work when they go home. The Japanese kill themselves by asphyxiation (either by hanging or car exhaust) or by jumping off of buildings or in front of moving trains. To be fair, Japan’s suicide rates have skyrocketed with their recent economic downturn (it would appear that a bad economy represents a much higher risk of suicide than individual ownership of a firearm.) On average, the suicide rate in Japan has run at about 17 per 100,000. Considerably higher than the U.S. but not more than double.

But most people are aware of the high rate of suicide in Japan, and dismiss it as being “cultural.” Are they also aware, however, of the suicide rates in France? According to this CDC report from 1998, France had a suicide rate of 21 per 100,000. Leading method? Suffocation. France is followed closely by Denmark with a suicide rate of 18 per 100,000. Leading method? Pretty much evenly split between suffocation and poisoning.

According to this table, in 1997 of the eleven countries with the top per capita Gross National Products (the US ranks in the middle), the US has the second lowest suicide rate. Only the Netherlands was lower. See the chart:

Now, the author of the Harvard Magazine article states “If you try to kill yourself with drugs, there’s a 2 to 3 percent chance of dying,” he explains. “With guns, the chance is 90 percent.” You are to assume from this that because guns are available they become the choice of people wanting to attempt suicide, and therefore more people actually die in the attempt than would otherwise. However, looking at international comparisons, especially in countries like France and Denmark where suicide rates are far higher than in the U.S., and suffocation and poisoning are the leading causes, the likelihood of “successful” suicide seems unaffected by “gun availability.”

In the specific case of Finland, where I noted before that 50% of households contain a firearm as opposed to 35% of households here, 95% of deaths by firearm are suicides. That sounds horrible, and it sounds like it supports the proposition that “guns cause suicide” – but it doesn’t. The fact is that criminal homicide in Finland is very, very low, so suicide represents a far greater proportion of deaths by firearm. (It also shoots in the *ss the idea that “guns cause homicide,” but that’s beside the point.) Suicide by firearm here represents 56% of the total number of suicides. In Finland, the majority of suicides are committed by suffocation – specifically, by hanging oneself.

Canada, our neighbor to the North, has a slightly higher rate of suicide that the U.S. The most common method there is suffocation, followed by poisoning. Firearms are used in only about 22% of Canada’s suicides.

Like criminal homicide, the level of suicide is a cultural thing. The availability of method appears to be immaterial. If someone wants to die, they will accomplish that end. If guns are not available, other methods will be substituted and they will be effective. If a “cry for help” is intended, then the person will choose a less-lethal option, because everybody knows that if you put a loaded gun to your head and pull the trigger, chances are you won’t survive the experience.

GUNS DON’T CAUSE SUICIDE, no matter how much the gun controllers want you to believe it. The availability of method is unimportant to someone intent on killing themselves, “gun control” won’t affect the numbers no matter how they want to twist it, and Craig Lambert and David Hemenway are twisting pretty hard.

Reader David Smith sent me a link to a Harvard Magazine article by Craig Lambert entitled Death by the Barrel with the suggestion:

Being a scientist myself, I take particular offense to the editor’s claim of using the scientific method. Anyway, I thought you might enjoy fisking a Harvard PhD for all he’s worth.

I guess I should be flattered for a reader to suggest that I’m qualified to fisk a Harvard PhD, so I read the article. It’s a review of David Hemenway’s book Private Guns, Public Health: A Dramatic New Plan for Ending America’s Epidemic of Gun Violence. Very skillfully done with virtuoso talent at misdirection, spin, suggestion and exaggeration mixed with just enough accuracy to make it all seem perfectly reasonable. In all, very fiskworthy, so I shall, David. So I shall.

Let us begin:

This particular gun story took place, ironically enough, at the 1997 convention of the American Public Health Association in Indianapolis. There, among a group of white-collar professionals and academics, a seemingly minor incident quickly led to mayhem. While eating dinner at the Planet Hollywood restaurant, a patron bent to pick something up from the floor. A small pistol fell from his pocket, hit the floor, and went off. The bullet struck and injured two convention delegates waiting to be seated; both women went to the hospital.

“Why manufacture guns that go off when you drop them?” asks professor of health policy David Hemenway ’66, Ph.D. ’74. “Kids play with guns. We put childproof safety caps on aspirin bottles because if kids take too many aspirin, they get sick. You could blame the parents for gun accidents but, as with aspirin, manufacturers could help. It’s very easy to make childproof guns.”

Logic like this pervades Hemenway’s new book, Private Guns, Public Health (University of Michigan Press), which takes an original approach to an old problem by applying a scientific perspective to firearms. Hemenway, who directs the Harvard Injury Control Research Center at the School of Public Health (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc ), summarizes and interprets findings from hundreds of surveys and from epidemiological and field studies to deliver on the book’s subtitle: A Dramatic New Plan for Ending America’s Epidemic of Gun Violence. The empirical groundwork enables Hemenway, whose doctorate is in economics, to sidestep decades of political arm-wrestling over gun control. “The gun-control debate often makes it look like there are only two options: either take away people’s guns, or not,” he says. “That’s not it at all. This is more like a harm-reduction strategy. Recognize that there are a lot of guns out there, and that reasonable gun policies can minimize the harm that comes from them.”

Let’s start with the first obvious misdirection. Hemenway goes from the question “why manufacture guns that go off when you drop them” – a reasonable question, by the way – to the contention “It’s very easy to make childproof guns.”

This is called “bait and switch.” They’re entirely separate and unrelated questions, and the second one is largely bogus, but because it involves “the Children™” it immediately draws a sympathetic reaction from the average reader. Could “manufacturers help” make guns “childproof”? Probably, but the comparison isn’t a reasonable one. The “childproof cap” law was first passed in 1972 as the Poison Prevention Packaging Act. It mandated that not only drugs, but any poisonous substance be provided in a package

…that is designed or constructed to be significantly difficult for children under five years of age to open or obtain a toxic or harmful amount of the substance contained therein within a reasonable time and not difficult for normal adults to use properly, but does not mean packaging which all such children cannot open or obtain a toxic or harmful amount within a reasonable time.”

First problem? Well, according to this article reviewing the 1995 revision of the act,

While the old caps kept children out, many older people had so much trouble opening them that they either left the caps off or put their medication in non-childproof containers, posing even more of a danger to children, says Jo Reed, senior coordinator of consumer issues for AARP.

That’s known as “The Law of Unintended Consequences.” If I recall correctly, after passage of that law, the number of child poisonings went up for a while. People reasoned “it’s not dangerous, it’s childproof. I don’t have to keep it in the medicine cabinet or store it on a high shelf.”

With guns, the same “unintended consequence” might very well occur. Because the gun is “childproof,” might the owner/parent leave it more accessible? And in a defense gun, what if the gun cannot be made fireable at time of need? Smith & Wesson, for instance, now manufactures their revolvers with an internal lock that requires a key. When locked, the hammer cannot be moved and the cylinder cannot be rotated. That makes the gun “child safe,” (if you actually do lock it) but what if you cannot find the key in the dark when an intruder is attempting to break down your bedroom door? That’s a situation not encountered when discussing the normal use of household poisons.

The next question becomes, “how long would it take for design changes to affect child safety?” Chemicals are consumeables and their containers are disposable. It didn’t take very long after child-protective caps were mandated for them to supplant non-safety caps in circulation. Yet there are over 60 million handguns in private hands today, and they aren’t going to end up in landfills as soon as the owner empties the magazine or fires all the shots in the cylinder. Any law requiring new handguns to be equipped with “child safety” features would be essentially ineffective for decades because of those 60+ million handguns already out there.

And finally, “how big is the problem of children being accidentally shot, anyway?” From this March 19, 2000 Whitehouse press release,

In 1962, almost 450 children died of poisoning after swallowing medicines or household chemicals. By 1996, that tragic statistic had been reduced to 47.

Well, the Centers for Disease Control’s WISQARS tool says the total in 1996 was 60 for children 5 years old and younger, but let’s not quibble. What was the injury mortality for children in that same age bracket by accidental gunshot? According to WISQARS, 19.

Obviously poisoning was a significant problem for very young children that was addressed with some effectiveness by the Poison Prevention Packaging Act, but could we expect a similar reduction in accidental deaths by a “Childproof Gun Act”? There is no reason to believe so. As noted, older guns would still be in circulation, and since an an there are only an additional one million or so new handguns added each year it would take quite a while for them to represent a significant percentage of available guns. Second, people irresponsible enough to leave loaded firearms around where children can access them cannot be expected to be responsible enough to engage the “child safety” feature, can they? Third, “child safety” caps were designed to protect toddlers. Remember, the law was directed to make it “significantly difficult for children under five years of age” to access poisonous substances. Older children were recognized to have the necessary skills to defeat them, but were expected to have the necessary knowledge of the dangers of doing so. The same would be true of firearms. (Anybody remember the joke that “Only kids can open the damned Childproof caps”?)

So Dr. Hemenway has attempted to deceive you by suggesting that “childproof caps” and “childproof guns” would be equivalents, and would prevent many unfortunate accidental deaths. What he doesn’t expect you to understand is that “childproof caps” were only designed to address the accidental poisoning of very young children, and that “childproof guns,” under the same criteria, still wouldn’t “solve” what is, in fact, a statistically very small problem. What Dr. Hemenway also does not tell you is that without “childproof” features, the number of accidental deaths by gunshot has been decreasing ever since we’ve kept track. The WISQARS tool only goes back as far as 1981, but that year there were 51 accidental gunshot deaths of children 0-4 years old. In 1985 there were 43. In 1990, 34. In 1995, 20. In 2001, 17.

Author Craig Lambert tells us that “logic like this pervades Hemenway’s new book”. Of that I have no doubt.

This is long enough as an opening piece. I’ll continue the deconstruction later, if I get enough interested feedback.