gun control – Page 56 – The Smallest Minority

Running Out of Steam?

November 21, 2004 KevinLeave a comment

“I fear that the Sunday Telegraph’s campaign is running out of steam after only a few editions.” That’s what Lurch at the English blog Gun Culture thinks, and I think he may be right.

Today’s London Sunday Telegraph piece in their campaign to enact a “Make My Day” anti-burglar law is this sad article:

Burglar murders grandmother
By Karyn Miller
(Filed: 21/11/2004)

Police are investigating the murder of an 85-year-old grandmother, found dead after dialling 999 to report a burglar at her home.

Police found her collapsed at the bungalow in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, where she lived alone. Attempts to revive her failed.

Police believe that her killer got in through the back of the bungalow and that her handbag may have been stolen.

Det Chief Insp Nick Baker, the senior investigating officer, issued an urgent appeal for information on behalf of the Staffordshire force and expressed his dismay at the pensioner’s death.

“This woman was a vulnerable lady who has been murdered as a result of her being considered an easy target,” he said. “This is now a murder investigation and we would like to hear from anyone who may have seen anything suspicious around the bungalows on Friday night.”

The victim was a widow and the mother of three adult daughters. Yesterday, frantic attempts were being made to trace them.

A post-mortem examination has been carried out, but the cause of death has yet to be disclosed. The woman had a heart condition, but it is not known if this was a contributing factor.

A team of 20 officers has been assigned to the case and yesterday carried out house-to-house inquiries.

Longton, one of Stoke’s famous “six towns”, is regarded as an up-and-coming area, popular with young families and the elderly.

In recent weeks, The Sunday Telegraph’s Right to Fight Back campaign has highlighted the cases of other men and women who have been viciously attacked in their homes and has called for a change in the law to give householders greater rights to defend themselves against intruders.

Now here’s a question I’d like everyone to sit and think about: How is an 85 year-old woman – with a heart condition – going to effectively defend herself from one or more burglars in a society that does not allow its citizens defensive firearms, nor even pepper spray? What weapon is allowed to her that will keep assailants out of contact distance? Hmmm?

That Telegraph piece also links to one from last week that I missed:

Community wardens are ‘the future of crime fighting’
By David Harrison
(Filed: 14/11/2004)

To her supporters, Liz Lovatt is the future – one of the first of what will eventually be 20,000 crimefighters who will transform our streets and relieve the pressure on over-stretched police forces. To her detractors, she is another example of policing on the cheap, a toothless non-officer who patrols a Kent village by day while the yobs rule the streets by night.

Guess which side I sit on?

Either way, Mrs Lovatt, 33, a community warden, is the only visible agent of law and order in Wye, near Ashford – a village of 2,000 people which, like so many others across Britain, is in the grip of hooligans and vandals after dark.

Mrs Lovatt is in no doubt of her contribution to David Blunkett’s war on anti-social behaviour. Taking a break from her patrol, she recounts her greatest success to date: “I caught a 12-year-old boy ripping flowers from a window box and he ended up so ashamed of what he had done that he re-planted the flowers himself.

Be still, my beating heart. How about the kid gets a good whipping after his gardening is complete?

What the hell happened to punishment?

“I don’t want to blow my own trumpet, but I got a vote of thanks from the parish council for that one.” This style of law enforcement practised by Mrs Lovatt is the Government’s answer to what many perceive as rising lawlessness in rural areas. There are 1,000 community wardens and 4,000 police-funded community support officers in Britain. Last week, the Home Office announced plans to increase those numbers to a total of 20,000 within four years.

On the surface this appears to be a good idea, but why does it remind me of the Soviet stukachi – the people who lived in apartment buildings and reported to the Party on the actions of other residents?

Mr Blunkett, the Home Secretary, describes these green-anoraked crusaders as the “new bobbies on the beat”, heralding the return of Dixon of Dock Green-style policing. His optimism is shared by Kent county council which trained Mrs Lovatt – a management with economics graduate – for eight weeks. But look beyond Mrs Lovatt’s undoubted dedication to her job and to the people of Wye and, critics of the community officer scheme say, you will find a tale of penny-pinching and gestures: Mrs Lovatt is paid £16,000 a year – a new police recruit can expect a salary of £4,000 more than that; she has no greater power of arrest than an ordinary citizen; she never works later than 10pm; and she lives 25 miles away from Wye – “to protect my family” from reprisals.

OH, even better! She’s not even a member of the community she’s “policing”! And the reason? TO PROTECT HER FAMILY FROM THE PEOPLE SHE INTERDICTS. That ought to give you the warm fuzzies!

Mr Blunkett pledged last month to give wardens powers to issue on-the-spot fines for anti-social behaviour including litter-dropping, graffiti and excessive noise at night.

Err… Does she get to collect those on-the-spot fines? Even if not, will this become a major source of revenue for the State? Because I can see the path to major abuses of that power. And she knocks off at 10 PM. What about “excessive noise” after then?

But for now, a typical day for Mrs Lovatt consists of giving villagers tips on crime prevention – anything from warnings about bogus doorstep salesmen to reminders to cancel the milk and papers when going on holiday.

And possible littering fines for those who let newspapers collect on their doorstep if they don’t, for example? New York Mayor Bloomberg tried something like that not too long back.

She does look out for graffiti but merely arranges for it to be erased. As a former firefighter, she checks burglar and smoke alarms. She also gives occasional talks – a recent one was on “stranger-danger” at a primary school – and attends Neighbourhood Watch meetings.

The rest of her time is spent patrolling the village, “keeping an eye on things and just being a visible presence like the old-fashioned bobbies”, she says.

What Mrs Lovatt and all the country’s other wardens do not do, however, is tackle crime. “That’s not my job,” she explains.

“I’m more of a liaison officer. I’m the eyes and ears of the village, the link between the community and the police. A big part of my job is to reduce people’s fear of crime.”

Not actually reduce crime, merely the fear of it.

Many villagers are not impressed.

Understandably so.

There may not be many serious crimes but, they say, there are drugs, burglaries, vandalism and violence – even a rape not so long ago. Mrs Lovatt is very pleasant, they say, but they want “proper” police officers.

Peter Lee, 74, who has lived in the village for 14 years, says: “It’s not the fear of crime that bothers us but actual crime. The yobs rampage through our gardens and allotments, smashing fences, and ripping out flowers and vegetables and scattering them all over the place.

“They ride motorbikes across our gardens, break into sheds, and throw eggs at windows. It goes on day after day, night after night. Many people are afraid to go out after dark.

“If we say anything then we just get abuse. And they give us a warden who knocks off at 10 o’clock – and that when she’s working the late shift. Don’t we have the right to live in peace?”

Apparently not. Those behaviors would be actual crimes. Things outside the job scope of Mrs. Lovatt. The yobs have more rights than you do. And they know it.

The warden “is trying hard”, Mr Lee adds. “But we want real policemen who can stop the yobs ruining our lives.”

Unfortunately, it isn’t the police (even the lack thereof) that is the real problem. If you want a better idea, read an English policeman’s blog. The major problem is in the courts.

Around the corner, 78-year-old Louisa Gray answers the door nervously. Persuaded that we are not about to rob her, she speaks slowly: “I don’t think a warden is the answer. I called her last week about fireworks being thrown at the house and she said that she was on leave until November 1 – and it was November 1 when I rang her.

“I’ve lost count of how many times they have smashed my greenhouse. They use bits of wood, signs they tear down, pellet guns, anything they can get their hands on. It’s terrible round here now. I would move out tomorrow if I could.”

Elsewhere in the village, there is little support for wardens. Gill Moffatt, the manager of The Gift Horse gift shop, which has suffered smash-and-grab raids twice in the past seven weeks, says: “Most of the offenders are teenagers who are at school in the day. The trouble starts at night – when the warden isn’t around.”

Ann Sutherland, the chairman of the Wye business association, says that the warden “gives old people in particular someone to talk to but can’t really deal with crime”. Her husband Peter is more blunt: “Wardens are a sop to people to avoid providing proper policemen.”

Cynic. How dare you insinuate that your government would rather make noises than actually do something useful! Besides, vandalism? Smash-and-grabs? Actual crimes. Outside her job scope.

Heather Hooper, who has a home near Wye and one in London, agrees: “We’ve had a lot of burglaries around us and nothing ever seems to get done about it. Sometimes I feel safer in London.”

Given London’s crime problem, that’s significant. But talk to Mrs. Lovatt. Perhaps she can help you fear crime less.

At the Tickled Trout pub, Richard Bartley, a resident involved in community work, said wardens picked up vital information that people would not give to a police officer. “They can play an important role in preventing crime and binding the community together,” he said.

Can you give an example?

Any example?

(tick tick tick tick….)

Richard Stagg, the landlord, disagreed. “The kids know that she’s got no powers and they are laughing at her,” he said. “We should send a couple of proper policemen in full-time for two months. That would really sort out the yobs.”

Or, how about you do it yourself?

When did Sir Robert Peel’s seventh Principle of Modern Policing become completely forgotten:

Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

Every single word in that article said “The job of policing the community is the job of the STATE, not the people living in the community.”

You want to know why England has the crime problem it does? That’s it, in a nutshell.

It’s UNANIMOUS!

November 19, 2004 KevinLeave a comment

The Illinois Supreme Court announced two interrelated decisions today, both on gun manufacturer and distributor liability when the product they manufacture and sell is used criminally. Both decisions were unanimous. Both decisions threw out the lawsuits against the manufacturers and distributors. Both decisions have some interesting points. The first, City of Chicago v. Beretta contains the following:

Plaintiffs’ specific allegation against the named dealer defendants is that they “sell firearms even when they know or should know that the firearms will be used or possessed illegally in Chicago.” This allegation is supported by assertions that dealers know some of their customers are residents of Chicago and that it is illegal for those customers to use or possess these weapons in the city; that dealers make sales even when the words or behavior of the buyers indicate an intention to use the weapon illegally; that dealers sell handguns designed to be carried as concealed weapons, even though state law prohibits the carrying of concealed weapons; and that dealers make multiple sales to individuals whom they know or should know intend to resell the guns in the city. The second amended complaint identifies the dealer defendants as part of a “core group of irresponsible dealers” who attract the business of gunrunners and other criminals, as reflected by ATF trace data. The complaint also includes factual assertions regarding numerous undercover “sting” operations carried out by police officers at the various dealer defendants’ stores. Plaintiffs further assert that the dealers’ practices “have caused a large underground market for illegal firearms to flourish in the City of Chicago,” and that they “know that many of the firearms they sell are used or possessed illegally, and put into the underground market.” Finally, the complaint states that the dealers’ “actions and omissions in selling firearms to Chicago residents that are illegal in the City of Chicago unreasonably facilitate violations of City ordinances, and contribute to physical harm, fear and inconvenience to Chicago residents, and are injurious to the public health and safety of Chicago residents.”

—
We have found no Illinois case recognizing a public right to be free from the threat that members of the public may commit crimes against individuals.

And you won’t, because that would raise the specter of making the State liable for not protecting individual citizens – and that won’t happen.

Leaving aside for a moment the costs incurred by plaintiffs, which we determine, below, are not recoverable as damages, we query whether the public right asserted by plaintiffs is merely an assertion, on behalf of the entire community, of the individual right not to be assaulted.

Understand the difference here: You have a right not to be assaulted. From that right comes the power of the State to arrest and punish such an assailant. It’s not a carte blanc to allow the State to do whatever it feels necessary to prevent you from being assaulted, it’s a recognition that actually assaulting someone is a criminal act. The plaintiffs here are trying to stretch the law, and the court recognizes the enormous problem inherent in that Pandora’s Box, and they illustrate it here:

By posing this question, we do not intend to minimize the very real problem of violent crime and the difficult tasks facing law enforcement and other public officials. Nor do we intend to dismiss the concerns of citizens who live in areas where gun crimes are particularly frequent. Rather, we are reluctant to state that there is a public right to be free from the threat that some individuals may use an otherwise legal product (be it a gun, liquor, a car, a cell phone, or some other instrumentality) in a manner that may create a risk of harm to another.

For example, the purchase and consumption of alcohol by adults is legal, while driving under the influence is a crime. If there is public right to be free from the threat that others may use a lawful product to break the law, that right would include the right to drive upon the highways, free from the risk of injury posed by drunk drivers. This public right to safe passage on the highways would provide the basis for public nuisance claims against brewers and distillers, distributing companies, and proprietors of bars, taverns, liquor stores, and restaurants with liquor licenses, all of whom could be said to contribute to an interference with the public right.

But they shut that line of reasoning down, hard and emphatically

We conclude that there is no authority for the unprecedented expansion of the concept of public rights to encompass the right asserted by plaintiffs. Further, because we conclude, below, that plaintiffs’ claim does not meet all of the required elements of a public nuisance action, we need not decide whether to break new ground by creating such precedent.

—
Plaintiffs concede that their public nuisance claim, based on the alleged effects of defendants’ lawful manufacture and sale of firearms outside the city and the county, would extend public nuisance liability further than it has been applied in the past. Nevertheless, they, and the amici in support of their position, argue that extending the doctrine of public nuisance in this manner is a proper exercise of this court’s inherent authority to develop the common law.

And they cite previous case law that argues against this line of reasoning:

Cases from other jurisdictions in which reviewing courts have rejected public nuisance claims against the gun industry offer more analysis of this question. In Spitzer v. Sturm, Ruger & Co., a New York appellate court observed:

“[G]iving a green light to a common-law public nuisance cause of action today will, in our judgment, likely open the courthouse doors to a flood of limitless, similar theories of public nuisance, not only against these defendants, but also against a wide and varied array of other commercial and manufacturing enterprises and activities.

“All a creative mind would need to do is construct a scenario describing a known or perceived harm of a sort that can somehow be said to relate back to the way a company or an industry makes, markets, and/or sells its non-defective, lawful product or service, and a public nuisance claim would be conceived and a lawsuit born.” Spitzer, 309 A.D.2d at 96, 761 N.Y.S.2d at 196.

Citing an earlier case rejecting a theory of negligent marketing against a gun manufacturer, the Spitzer court observed that ” ‘judicial resistance to the expansion of duty grows out of practical concerns both about potentially limitless liability and about the unfairness of imposing liability for the acts of another.’ ” This concern, the court, noted, “is common to both negligent marketing and public nuisance claims.”

Similarly, a federal court of appeals, applying New Jersey law, concluded that:

“Whatever the precise scope of public nuisance law in New Jersey may be, no New Jersey court has ever allowed a public nuisance claim to proceed against manufacturers for lawful products that are lawfully placed in the stream of commerce. On the contrary, the courts have enforced the boundary between the well-developed body of product liability law and public nuisance law. Otherwise, if public nuisance law were permitted to encompass product liability, nuisance law ‘would become a monster that would devour in one gulp the entire law of tort,’ [citation]. If defective products are not a public nuisance as a matter of law, then the non-defective, lawful products at issue in this case cannot be a nuisance without straining the law to absurdity.”

In addition, a Florida appellate court affirmed the trial court’s dismissal of Miami-Dade County’s action against firearms manufacturers, trade associations, and retailers, saying:

“The County’s request that the trial court use its injunctive powers to mandate the redesign of firearms and declare that the appellees’ business methods create a public nuisance, is an attempt to regulate firearms and ammunition through the medium of the judiciary.”

A Florida statute expressly reserves the field of regulation of firearms and ammunition to the state legislature (Fla. Stat. §790.33 (1999)). In Illinois, cities and counties are free to impose gun regulations within certain limits (see 720 ILCS 5/47-5 (West 2002)). Nevertheless, we agree with defendants that the Florida court’s observation is worthy of consideration.

Defendants’ position is that the legislative and executive branches of state and federal government are better suited than this court to address the societal costs that flow from the illegal use of handguns, particularly given that the commercial activity at issue is already highly regulated. Further, defendants argue that plaintiffs’ “frustration” at their inability to effectively regulate gun possession in the city cannot be “alleviated through litigation as the judiciary is not empowered to ‘enact’ regulatory measures in the guise of injunctive relief. The power to legislate belongs not to the judicial branch of government, but to the legislative branch.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a resounding legal slapdown.

In the present case, the question is whether dealer defendants, given the nature of the product they sell, their awareness of Chicago ordinances regarding firearms, and their knowledge that some of their customers are Chicago residents, could reasonably foresee that the guns they lawfully sell would be illegally taken into the city in such numbers and used in such a manner that they create a public nuisance.

We conclude not. We agree with the conclusion of the appellate division of the supreme court of New York in Spitzer: “defendants’ lawful commercial activity, having been followed by harm to person and property caused directly and principally by the criminal activity of intervening third parties, may not be considered a proximate cause of such harm.”

This result is consistent with other Illinois cases in which a defendant’s conduct was found to be so remote from the resulting injury that legal cause was not established.

And here’s an example case:

Although we have found no reported cases in which a nuisance claim has been dismissed at this stage for lack of legal cause, the case of Watson v. Enterprise Leasing Co., 325 Ill. App. 3d 914 (2001), in which the theory of liability was negligent entrustment, offers some interesting parallels to the present case. The defendant was a merchant who furnished a condition by which the injury was made possible. Specifically, Enterprise leased a vehicle to one party with the knowledge that it was likely to be driven by one or more third parties. The lessee entrusted the vehicle to a friend, from whom it was taken by yet another person. Eventually, an intoxicated minor took the keys from that person and caused an accident resulting in the death of his passenger. Affirming the trial court’s grant of summary judgment for the defendant, the appellate court noted that the element of cause in fact had been satisfied. Absent the leasing of a car to the first individual, the death would not have occurred-at least not in an accident involving this particular vehicle. The intoxicated driver would either not have driven at all and there would have been no accident, or he would have obtained the keys to another vehicle and the accident would have occurred, but would not have involved the defendant’s vehicle. Thus, the appellate court concluded, the “crux of the issue” was “legal cause, which revolves around foreseeability.” The driver who caused the fatal injury, the court noted, was at least two steps removed from the person to whom Enterprise directly entrusted the car. In addition, the accident was caused by the criminal act of a third party. These events were not reasonably foreseeable. Although the defendant furnished a condition that made the resulting injury possible, the creation of this condition was not the legal cause of the fatal accident because the defendant’s conduct was too remote to constitute legal cause. As the appellate court observed, to “impose foresight on defendant under the particular circumstances present in this case would render it liable for anyone who drove the car, thus making it strictly liable.”

The parallels to the present case are obvious. Dealer defendants, like the car rental company in Watson, are in the business of providing a lawful product that may be used in unlawful ways, causing injury or death. Both the possession and use of firearms and the driving of motor vehicles are highly regulated by state law. In the present case, the existence of the alleged nuisance in the city of Chicago is several times removed from the initial sale of individual weapons by these defendants, just as the intoxicated driver was at least twice-removed from the defendant in Watson.

The appellate court in Watson found it unreasonable to expect the car rental company to foresee a single accident caused by an intoxicated teenage driver who took the keys to the car without the permission of the person who had rented the car. In the present case, the claim of negligent entrustment has been dismissed and its dismissal has not been appealed. Thus, we are not faced with the question of whether a gun dealer might be held liable for negligently entrusting a weapon to an individual buyer when it is foreseeable that the buyer might allow a third party to possess or use the gun illegally. Instead, plaintiffs argue that it is foreseeable to these defendants that the aggregate effect of numerous sales transactions occurring over time and in multiple different locations operated by businesses with no ties to each other will result in the creation of a public nuisance in another city.

Here’s the part I like, because they spell out their thinking explicitly:

Finally, although these dealers’ sales of weapons create a condition that makes the eventual harm possible by putting these weapons in private hands, it is not at all clear that the condition would cease to exist even if these particular defendants entirely ceased selling firearms. Just as in Watson, in which the intoxicated teenager managed to gain access to a set of car keys, those who intend to illegally possess and use firearms in the city of Chicago would still be able to obtain them. The manufacture and sale of firearms is legal. There is a market for these products that is served by thousands of dealers all across the country. The sales that would otherwise have been made by these dealers would be made by others. Ultimately, there would be a shift in market share between these dealers and others and, perhaps, an increase in the price of illegal weapons “on the street” as those intent on illegal gun ownership had to go further afield in search of weapons to buy.

—

Plaintiffs and the amici supporting their position advocate expansion of the common law of public nuisance to encompass their novel claim. They anticipate our reluctance to expand nuisance liability in an area highly regulated by both state and federal law and urge that it is not only within our inherent authority, but it is also our duty, to construe the common law to aid a local government’s effort to protect its citizens from gun violence.

To do so, we would have had to decide each of the issues raised in this appeal in plaintiffs’ favor. In effect, we would have had to resolve every “close call” in favor of creating an entirely new species of public nuisance liability. Instead, after careful consideration, we conclude that plaintiffs have not stated a claim for public nuisance. Even granting, arguendo, that a public right has been infringed, we conclude that their assertions of negligent conduct are not supported by any recognized duty on the part of the manufacturer and distributor defendants and that, under the Gilmore rule (Gilmore, 261 Ill. App. 3d at 661), their allegations of intentional conduct are insufficient for public nuisance liability as a matter of law. In addition, we hold that proximate cause cannot be established as to the dealer defendants because the claimed harm is the aggregate result of numerous unforeseeable intervening criminal acts by third parties not under defendants’ control.

And here’s the kicker:

Any change of this magnitude in the law affecting a highly regulated industry must be the work of the legislature, brought about by the political process, not the work of the courts. In response to the suggestion of amici that we are abdicating our responsibility to declare the common law, we point to the virtue of judicial restraint.

We, therefore, reverse the judgment of the appellate court and affirm the judgment of the circuit court, which properly granted defendants’ motion to dismiss.

Pretty good decision. (I’ve excised some of the legal references and selectively edited for better readability. If you’re legally inclined, go to the link and read the decision in whole.)

The second decision released today was Young v. Bryco Arms, and it leaned on today’s City of Chicago decision pretty heavily, since the arguments were essentially identical. I won’t quote from it (however much I’d like to,) since this piece is long enough as it is, but I want you to consider something: Yes, the gun-rights side “won” and most people would expect that the gun-ban forces would be seething to have lost in their favorite forum, the courts. To, in fact, have been slapped down – and hard – in that forum, for trying to legislate through the judiciary.

But that’s not the aim. Consider how much it has cost Beretta et al. to fight this all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court. While the gun-ban forces have been using TAX DOLLARS. The Brady Bunch didn’t file this suit – the CITY OF CHICAGO did. In Young I’m certain that the lawyers were probably acting pro bono with their expenses picked up by Brady, at most.

The purpose of these lawsuits isn’t actually to get the court to make new law – they’d love it if that happened, but I don’t think even they are that delusional. No, what they’re trying to do is bleed the gun manufacturers and especially their distributors to death. They love the appeals process. That means it’s going to be more expensive!

This is why the gun-rights forces tried so hard to get the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act passed in the last session of Congress. That’s the bill that got killed after Feinstain attached a renewal of the “Assault Weapons Ban” to it. As UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh explained last year, and the Illinois Supreme Court echoed in City of Chicago:

“Why does the gun industry deserve special protection?” asked Dennis Henigan, legal director of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, about the bill that would limit gun manufacturer tort liability, which it seems, might be enacted by Congress. Because the gun industry is under special attack.

If when someone drunk on Coors crashes his Mustang into me, I were able to successfully sue Coors and Ford for selling their products knowing that they cause death, or for recklessly and wantonly refusing to (for instance) install breathalyzer ignition overrides that would (maybe) help prevent drunk driving, then I’d see the bill as being about “special protection” (though then I’d just want it broadened to cars and alcohol, too). But right now, the bill is simply aimed at making sure that the tort liability system treats guns like other lawful but dangerous products.

We need to get that bill passed. Overlawyered reports that its chances of getting through the Senate this time are considerably better:

Gun pre-emption looking good

Last time up, Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s poison-pill amendment passed 52-47, dooming the urgently needed bill although it enjoyed the support on paper of a wide majority of Senators. Now five Democrats among those 52 votes are going to be gone. “Conservative Republicans, all of whom were endorsed by the NRA, will replace all five Democrats.” (Jim Snyder, “Gun lobby, GOP have lawsuits in their crosshairs”, The Hill, Nov. 17).

Unfortunately, Sen. Feinstien was not one of the replaced.

This time we’ll need to push and push hard to kill whatever “poison pill” the gun-grabbers can come up with in their attempt to derail this legislation. Because if we don’t, depend on it – the lawsuits will just keep coming.

Dr. Hemenway Responds. And So Do I.

October 3, 2004 KevinLeave a comment

On Sunday, Sept. 26, reader sent Dr. David Hemenway a link to this blog with the following comment:

The subtitle of your book is “A Dramatic New Plan for Ending America’s Epidemic of Gun Violence.”

The definition of epidemic is 1 widespread occurrence of a disease at a particular time. 2 such a disease.(The Oxford Desk Dictionary, 1997).
Why do you say “gun violence” is an epidemic when it is not? It is not a disease one can catch by being in the presence of a gun.

Have you read a critique of your book by Kevin Smith(sic) at “The Smallest Minority.” web site?

I, and a lot of people, would be very interested in your response to him.

Dr. Hemenway responded, and here it is, in its entirety, with some comments interspersed, and a longer response following:

September 27, 2004

I was asked to respond to what is claimed to be a critique of my book appearing on the website, the Smallest Minority. I have neither the time nor inclination to have a detailed response to the many assertions and arguments there, many of which are wrong or misleading.

It turns out that the Smallest Minority isn’t really discussing my book “Private Guns Public Health”, but a magazine article about it. Unfortunately it seems that the Smallest Minority may not have read my book (or the hundreds of journal articles that the book summarizes). It does seem silly for him to accuse the journalist who tried to reduce a 300+ page book and 3 hours of interviews into 3 interesting pages of text, as engaging in “bait-and-switch” tactics or not sufficiently discussing what the Smallest Minority would have liked discussed.

Just for the record, I didn’t claim that my three pieces were a critique of Dr. Hemenway’s book. I was quite explicit that I was asked to fisk a Harvard Magazine review of the book, and I did, at least the first page or so of it. It was the reader who emailed Dr. Hemenway who characterized my pieces as a critique of his book (and got my name wrong, too.)

However, my accusations of “bait and switch” are, IMHO, not “silly.” You’ll note that Dr. Hemenway didn’t rebut, but simply dismissed. For someone who doesn’t have time for a “detailed response,”a two-page reply with a chart certainly seems to be one.

I will talk about one issue, to illustrate the type of problem found in the Smallest Minority’s discussion.

A dozen case-control studies all find that, in the U.S., a gun in the home is a risk factor for “violent death” (i.e., homicide, suicide or unintentional gun death). Some of the other risk factors accounted for in one or more of these studies include age, gender, community, living alone, education, alcohol illicit drug use, depression medication, and psychiatric diagnosis. Ecological studies also find that, across U.S. states and regions, higher levels of household gun ownership are associated with higher rates of homicide (due to higher gun homicide rates), higher rates of suicide (due to higher gun suicide rates) and more unintentional gun deaths. Some of the other risk factors accounted for in one or more of these studies include poverty, alcohol consumption, unemployment, urbanization, divorce, education, violent crime, major depression, and suicidal thoughts.

Massachusetts, where I live, is a state with (relatively) low levels of household gun ownership, strict gun control laws, and low rates of violent death. I remarked to the journalist, who lives in Massachusetts, that I was glad I lived in Massachusetts and that “It’s nice to have raised my son in Massachusetts, where he is so much safer” than most other states. The Smallest Minority took this quote, asserted that I live in Boston, which I do not, and made comparisons to violent death in parts of Arizona, a state that has more permissive gun laws than Massachusetts.

I apologize here. I did indeed assert that Dr. Hemenway lived in Boston, and that is not the case. My most abject apologies. I made an incorrect assumption based on the belief that since he worked at Harvard University, he therefore lived in the Boston metropolitan area. My error. I do hereby withdraw that assertion.

That does not, however, change the comparison data between Boston, Tucson, and Phoenix.

So, let’s compare Massachusetts and Arizona. Here are data from 1999-2001, the most recent time period available, easily obtained from the CDC WISQARS website.

*Number of Deaths and Mortality Rate Ratio, 1999-2001*
	Arizona pop: 5.154 million	Massachusetts pop: 6.356 million	Mortality Rate Ratio, Arizona v. Massachusetts
Homicides	1,374	501	3.4
Gun	909	218	5.2
Non-gun	465	283	2.0
Suicides	2,317	1,244	2.3
Gun	1,433	330	5.4
Non-Gun	884	914	1.2
Unintentional Gun	47	6	10.0
Total Gun Deaths	2,460	565	5.4

In other words, a resident of Arizona is over 5 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, commit suicide with a gun, and be unintentionally killed with a gun than a resident of Massachusetts. Arizona may be nicer than Massachusetts in many ways (e.g. climate) but it’s difficult to understand how the Smallest Minority can suggest that Arizona is a safer state in terms of gun deaths, or violent deaths.

I didn’t. I asserted that Tucson and Phoenix were safer in terms of homicide than Boston during the time period I referenced, gun laws notwithstanding. I also noted that Arizona was a border state with a high level of drug trafficking. Apparently there’s a lot of homicide and suicide going on outside those metropolitan areas here that don’t occur in Massachussetts. Given the fact that a lot of drugs do move through this state, I’m not surprised. This does not, however, refute the data for Boston, Phoenix, and Tucson. Massachussett’s gun laws have apparently not made Boston significantly safer.

Dr. Hemeway writes that “Massachusetts, where I live, is a state with (relatively) low levels of household gun ownership, strict gun control laws, and low rates of violent death.” Yes, indeed it has. It also has a tremendously lower level of drug trafficking. According to the U.S. Dept. of Justice in Massachusetts, in 2003, the following drug seizures occurred:

Cocaine: 374.7 kgs.
Heroin: 29.7 kgs.
Methamphetamine: 1.2 kgs.
Marijuana: 177.4 kgs.
Ecstasy: 5,717
Methamphetamine Laboratories: 1

Via the same source, in Arizona in 2003 the following was seized:

Cocaine: 2,373 kgs.
Heroin: 3.2 kgs.
Methamphetamine: 538 kgs.
Marijuana: 322,374 kgs.
Ecstasy: 107 tablets
Methamphetamine Laboratories: 119
Heroin and Ecstasy seem to be more popular in Massachusetts, but nothing else. Arizona appears to be the central pipeline for Marijuana, and a major thoroughfare for cocaine – and drug trafficking is a major risk factor for violent death. Add to that the traffic in illegal aliens. The people involved in both of these are members of a culture that survives by personal violence. Guns are a byproduct of this culture, not a cause of it, and gun control laws will not disarm them.

In general, the Smallest Minority seems to believe if he can find an anomaly, then the general associations scientists find between guns and death is disproved. It is analogous to his finding that Abel smokes but Cain doesn’t, and Cain has heart disease but Abel doesn’t, and believing that this proves that smoking does not really cause heart disease. Or believing that the fact that Japanese smoke more than Americans and have less cancer shows not only that cigarettes don’t cause cancer, but may well be protective. But such anecdotal evidence shows only what everyone knows, that there are many factors affecting the likelihood of heart disease or cancer, and smoking is only one of those factors. It is not the only factor. Nor is gun availability the only factor affecting homicide or suicide—but the evidence is quite strong that it is one important factor.

I will not argue that gun availability is one important factor affecting criminal homicide, but I will argue that I believe no such causality has been proven when it comes to suicide. I will argue that guns are not the cause of homicide or suicide or even accidental death by gunshot. Culture is. This is the critical difference between my position on “gun control” and that of the gun control movement.

What makes the Smallest Minority’s arguments even more questionable is that his claimed anomalies are often specious. One can find states with more guns and a lower homicide rate than Massachusetts (HINT: look for very rural states, since virtually all crime, including homicide, is much higher in urban areas), but Arizona is not one of them. There are many other examples. The Smallest Minority also says that about half the households in Finland contain guns. While a UN report did say that, the information appears to be incorrect. Probably the best source for comparative gun ownership is the International Crime Surveys that found that in 1989 23% of Finnish households contained a gun, in 1992 it was 25%, and in 1996 it was about 26%.

I’ve used International Crime Survey data before, and been burned by it. The ICS claimed that Scotland in 2000 had a homicide rate of 13.3/100,000. Scotland’s government reports the level is 2.0. Sweden’s homicide rate was given as 10.01. Sweden reports 1.2. (Apparently sometime since I did the research for that piece, the “International Crime Statistics” pages of Interpol have been made accessible only to “authorized police users.”) Pardon me if I don’t feel the ICS data is all that reliable, and used a different, assumably accurate source. (If you can’t trust the UN, who can you trust?)

Which brings us to,

Discussions of firearms in the Smallest Minority, and many other internet sites, seem primarily to be debates, where each party tries to find evidence to support his already held point of view. These are interesting exercises, but they add little to science, and I am not very interested in them. There seems to be a surprisingly lack of curiosity as to what really is happening in the lives of 300 million American, or the 5-6 billion people on the planet. We can’t rely on news to tell us much. We should rely, not on anecdotes, but on good scientific studies, where the goal is to find the truth rather than support for what one already believes.

David Hemenway

Thank you, Dr. Hemenway, for your reply. (You could have cc’d me a copy, but the original respondent was kind enough to forward it.)

I agree with you on your characterization of my site and others on the internet. In general we are, and I unashamedly proclaim to be, advocates of our personal positions. I concur that we do not “add to science.” I concur that we “can’t rely on the news to tell us much,” and much of what they do tell us is wrong, either out of ignorance or bias. I agree that we should rely on good scientific studies, but I have seen that in much of the study of firearms that “good science” isn’t used a great deal.

You state that “A dozen case-control studies all find that, in the U.S., a gun in the home is a risk factor for “violent death” (i.e., homicide, suicide or unintentional gun death).” I have no doubt that firearms were present, but were they the risk factor, or were they merely an indicator of the real risk factor? You state, “Some of the other risk factors accounted for in one or more of these studies include age, gender, community, living alone, education, alcohol illicit drug use, depression medication, and psychiatric diagnosis.” I have to wonder why no one who does these studies considers that people who die violently overwhelmingly belong to a culture that practices personal violence, and that guns and other weapons are the accoutrements of this culture, not its cause. Millions of people own firearms who won’t die by gunshot because they are not part of that culture, yet your efforts seem aimed at treating the United States as if it were homogeneous where it comes to firearms possession.

The research that you and your colleagues do, all the data that you collect, are all directed in the belief that “the number of guns” in our society is responsible for the level of violence, and that if we could somehow get rid of them our problems would abate. I disagree. The problem is that a small minority of the country embraces an extreme culture of violence, and the people who do so will be the very last to be disarmed. I therefore believe that attempting to solve our gun-violence problem by attacking guns is a path to disaster.

You (the gun control advocates) have identified a violent crime problem. You think you’ve identified the disease vector, and that gun violence can be solved by eliminating or at least reducing that vector, but you ignore the example of England that indicates that path is a failure. Worse, you gloss over the fact that our homicide rates are horribly distorted by a small, identifiable minority that is destroying itself by violence. Instead of attempting to address that glaring and tragic problem, your colleagues would rather look away and instead attempt to attack that “iron pipeline” as though efforts to control the illegal flow of any material has ever been effective. You ignore the first rule of economics: that supply will always meet demand by dismissal.

Hemenway scoffs at the rote objection, “A determined criminal will always get a gun,” responding, “Yes, but a lot of people aren’t that determined. I’m sure there are some determined yacht buyers out there, but when you raise the price high enough, a lot of them stop buying yachts.”

However, there are nearly 300 million guns already inside our borders. Guns are not nearly as difficult or expensive to produce as a yacht. Sixty-five million handguns. At most two million violent felons. The current supply will easily keep the price down to a low level for any foreseeable future.

And you claim that my arguments are specious?

Gun control advocates ignore the fact that all gun control attempted so far here has been, at best, inconclusive in its effect (For those interested, read Under the Gun: Weapons, Crime, and Violence in America for more on this). You ignore the fact that there has been over a decade of decreasing violent crime here that cannot be linked to any gun control law. You ignore the fact that during that same period between two and three million new guns have been added to the private market each year, but insist that there need to be more gun control laws passed in order to reduce gun crime.

There is no evidence that “gun control” has been beneficial, but the response to this has been, as I have repeatedly noted, that the philosophy cannot be wrong! We must do it again, only HARDER! Dr. Hemenway, the GUNS aren’t causing the problem, a culture of violence is. But it’s easier to attack a steel and lead vector than a behavior. Yet the behavior has been affected, and because of this, not gun control laws, gun violence has been reduced.

You see that the U.S. has a high level of suicide by firearm, but ignore or at least downplay the fact that our suicide rates are pretty average for the world, regardless of gun availability. You want “safer guns” so that accidental gunshot is less likely, but ignore the fact that accidental gunshot – absolute numbers, not just the rates – have been declining ever since we’ve been keeping record – and that “gun control” doesn’t affect that except where it keeps people from actually possessing guns. Gun control advocates hype the problem of accidental gunshot among children, but fail to note that such shootings are relatively rare given the huge number of firearms in private hands. You distort this by making claims that ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen children a day die by gunshot, but fail to note that the overwhelming majority of these “children” are young men between the ages of 17 and 20 who are involved in criminal activities. This leads to erroneous conclusions – never dispelled by the gun controllers – such as Jean Hanff Korelitz’s claim that “more than 4,000 children… die in gun-related accidents each year.”

Is that good science?

You suggest methods by which guns can be made “safer” to reduce the possibility of such shootings, but don’t seem to want to study how such changes will actually effect a reduction, since there are already 60-70 million handguns and possibly over 200 million long arms already in circulation that such changes cannot affect. You recommend additional gun laws, but when such laws are passed and no benefit is seen the cry is, again, that we need MORE gun control because the previous effort wasn’t implemented properly.

In short, your solution (and I’m still using the general “you” here), your path to “create a society in which it is harder to make fatal blunders” is to severely restrict public access to the means with which those “fatal blunders” can be made, and you want the U.S. to implement more and stricter gun control laws to accomplish this end.

And this is the part I object to most strongly: You have identified the problem as one of “too many guns,” yet you, the gun control advocates, generally claim to not want to confiscate anything. Change designs to make them safer, yes (while not addressing nearly 300 million guns already out there). Confiscate, no. Register, yes (though the only people who would register are the ones you don’t need to worry about) but never confiscate (though that’s the only function a registration system actually has.) License, yes (ditto.) Confiscate, never.

However, the only way to affect what you yourself have identified as the problem – the number of guns – is to take those guns, and not let the public have any more.

We’re capable of logic. We can see where “gun control” is inevitably headed.

The goal of reducing death by gunshot is noble. The path to it is wrong, and I’ll fight that path as strongly as I possibly can because it’s wrong. It’s wrong because it doesn’t address the actual underlying causes. It’s wrong because it’s been proven a failure. And most importantly, it’s wrong because it violates the fundamental law of the United States.

And I will use this and other forums to fight it just as you use your forum to advocate it. You may be a lab-coated PhD, and I may be just a pajama-clad ankle-biter, but there are a lot more people like me than people like you, and our numbers are growing. In a democratic form of government, that means something.

Now, Where Was I?

September 29, 2004 KevinLeave a comment

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.

Another Request

September 24, 2004 KevinLeave a comment

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.

Oh, Now THIS is Interesting…

July 26, 2004 KevinLeave a comment

Down here the AWB looks like it’s going to sunset with a whimper, and now Canada is considering decriminalizing it’s registration law?

It’s not a repeal, but…

If you’re curious, here’s a short history of Canada’s C-68 Firearms Act. Note the 5,000% cost overrun. Actually, if the Feb. 13th update is accurate, it’s a 10,000% cost overrun. That’s two billion dollars, not one. There has been a lot of comment on the fact that it’s nearly impossible to determine just how high the costs have actually been, and a lot of anger over how the government has been hiding it.

Edited to add: And I strongly recommend this op-ed, The gun registry: A billion dollar bag of perfect uselessness. Couldn’t say it better myself.

July 20, 2004 KevinLeave a comment

~~Idiocy~~ Fantasy as Policy

The LA Times has a piece up about Brazil’s doomed-to-failure attempt to curb its astronomical homicide rate by – wait for it…

GUN CONTROL!

The LA Times has a registration requirement, but the Tucson Citizen carried the piece. It’s also available in abbreviated form on the Seattle Times site, so I’ve linked to that, but I will include the whole text (as I fisk it) from the Tucson Citizen, including the Citizen’s headlines:

Law’s goal is to disarm gun-heavy Brazilians

By Henry Chu
Los Angeles Times

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — To live in this city and other urban areas of Brazil is to hear the frequent rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire. As many as 20 million firearms are in circulation in this nation of 180 million people, who suffer from one of the highest rates of gun deaths in the world.

Yet according to the UN Small Arms Survey 2003 there are an estimated 238 to 276 million firearms in the United States – nearly a 1:1 parity – and our homicide rate, while quite high, is absolutely eclipsed by Brazil’s. If the number of guns is the problem, the U.S. should have wiped itself out by now, should it not?

Now, under a new law hailed by supporters as the most sweeping gun-control measure in South America, only Brazilians with valid reasons — police and security guards, for example — are allowed to carry firearms in public.

And this will stop the criminals…how?

Ordinary citizens who own guns either must register their weapons, turn them in or face jail time.

And this will affect the criminals…how? I mean, it’s worked so well in England, hasn’t it? Washington D.C., Chicago…

Proponents of the law, which went into effect this month, see it as a badly needed step toward ridding this country of weapons too easily acquired and too often used to kill.

They always do. It never works. But it cannot be an error in the philosophy, only an incorrect implementation of it. They must do it again, only harder!

Critics call it a misguided attempt that will do little to take guns out of the hands of drug dealers and other violent criminals who build their private arsenals through a flourishing illegal arms trade.

Replace “critics” with “realists” and you’d be bang-on. (No pun intended.)

No one, however, disputes the statistics that have made shooting deaths commonplace in Brazil, where officials say someone is killed by a bullet every 12 minutes — more than 40,000 each year.

Pardon the nit-picking, but killed with a bullet. Killed by a PERSON.

By contrast, the United States, which has 100 million more people, recorded about 30,000 gun deaths in 2001, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And here we have our very first “GOTCHA!”

What you have here is a classic example of mixing statistics for maximum shock effect. What Brazil is experiencing is a massive increase in homicide – specifically homicide by firearm, but homicide nonetheless. Yet what the author just did was compare Brazilian homicide to all American deaths by firearm.

According to the CDC, in 2001 (latest data available) there were 29,573 deaths by firearm in the U.S. Of those 29,573, there were 16,869 suicides, leaving 12,704 homicides and legal interventions. Also according to the CDC, in 2002 Brazil suffered 49,570 homicides, of which 34,085 were committed with firearms and 6,728 were committed with sharp objects.

Brazil has a population of about 175 million compared to our population of about 300 million. Their “sharp-object” homicide rate is about equal to our firearm homicide rate. Think on that as we continue.

“In six years, the U.S. lost 56,000 men in Vietnam. We have almost a Vietnam each year in Brazil,” said Antonio Rangel Bandeira of Viva Rio. “I show the figures to people in other places and they say, ‘Which country is Brazil at war against?’ “

If you want to get right down to it, it’s a civil war due to America’s demand for illicit drugs. But by all means, beat that “VIETNAM!” meme for everything it’s worth.

Debate over stricter gun controls echoes that in U.S.

The debate over stricter gun controls in Brazil echoes that in the U.S. Gun-control advocates here find themselves up against a similarly established culture of gun possession, partly born of a romanticized rough-and-tumble frontier past in which cowboys, rebels and vigilantes helped expand the country’s settlements and borders.

Cue “Duelling Banjos” and Clint Eastwood.

The newly tightened rules are the fruits of years of lobbying by gun-control activists, who had been stymied in the past by a powerful domestic firearms industry aided, at times, by the National Rifle Association in the United States. Gun-control advocates credit a new, left-leaning government and growing public anger over crime with shifing the political winds in their favor.

Yes, the NRA, in the pocket of the gun industry, is responsible for all of this murder. You read it here in the LA Times, so it must be true.

Passed by the legislature in December, the law requires background checks for prospective buyers, raises the legal age for gun ownership from 21 to 25, demands that all guns be registered and imposes prison sentences of up to four years for violators.

Again, this will affect the criminals… how? This has worked… where?

This will disarm… whom?

It will disarm the law-abiding – and that is all it will do. It will create a more dependent and less protected population. Nothing else.

Anyone with a criminal record will be denied, but critics note that drug traffickers and organized-crime rings get their stockpiles illegally anyway and thus will not be affected.

Again, replace “critics” with “realists” and you’ll be absolutely correct.

Ask the British.

To encourage owners to hand in their weapons instead of simply registering them

(for future confiscation)

the government has set aside $3.3 million for a buy-back program that offers as much as $100 per firearm – more than a month’s wage and a considerable sum for poor Brazilians.

Or, conversely, a drop in the pot to drug smugglers. And how many poor Brazilians have a firearm to sell? I mean, most firearms sell used for more than $100, and when the black market really gets started, what’ll they be worth? Want to bet we’ll see police and military armories getting jacked?

Perhaps most significant, the law calls for a national referendum next year asking voters whether gun sales should be banned.

And, again, this will affect the criminals… how?

Polls show strong public support for such a move.

Well, considering how many poor Brazilians there apparently are, perhaps they believe “If I can’t buy one, you can’t either.”

That dismays Renato Conill, vice president of Forjas Taurus. The company is one of Brazil’s largest gun manufacturers, with annual revenue exceeding $40 million through domestic sales and exports to more than 80 countries.

That would be the “evil bloodsucking” company. Guess the editors clipped that part though.

“We don’t believe that by restricting honest citizens’ access to legal firearms the crime rate will lessen,” Conill said. “Legal weapons aren’t a cause of crime. …The disarmament law will simply stimulate the black market.”

Said the man who actually grasps the lessons of history.

Before, buying a gun in Brazil was an easy affair. A customer had only to show identification and produce proof of employment to be eligible. Now, potential buyers are subject to more rigorous background checks.

Yes, I’m sure that puts a severe crimp on how drug lords arm their armies.

I can’t wait to see them try to explain why the homicide rates don’t go down.

But here’s an easy explanation: The guns aren’t the problem. The drug trade is. Throwing $3.3 million at the gun problem is a complete waste of $3.3 million.

The government’s corrupted by drug money.

Law enforcement is corrupted by drug money.

And now the honest people are going to be disarmed and handed on a platter to the predators.

Way to go, Brazil!

I See Mark Moron Morford Still Has a Job

July 1, 2004 KevinLeave a comment

Seen his latest ~~screed~~ ~~phillippic~~ ~~rant~~ ~~primal scream~~ column?

An Uzi Up Your Liberal Nose
Who cares if the assault-weapons ban is
about to expire? The gun lobby can’t wait
to blow stuff away

Assault weapons. Aren’t they just the cutest things?

And isn’t it just so sweet and fall-down uproarious how the NRA and all its knuckle-draggin’ right-wing pals in the U.S. Senate are all cheering right this minute, as the much-loathed 10-year-old ban on assault weapons, the one outlawing Uzis and TEC-9 semiautomatics and AK-47s and all other way-cool manly guns that have no other purpose in this world than to annihilate crap at 200 rounds per minute, is about to expire?

Let’s see, that’s one insult, one lie, and one exaggeration in the mere first paragraph! (I’ll ignore the opening sentence and title.)

Because, get this: The ban will not be renewed. It’s true. Even if that commie liberal Feinstein somehow gets it passed in the Senate, the NRA lobby has promised to keep it from ever coming up for a vote in the House, and the law will just expire and they will all cheer and slather each other in gun-barrel polish and go off and shoot stuff, because that’s the only thing that seems to give life any meaning.

He seems perturbed, doesn’t he?

Isn’t that great? To hell with logic and to hell with your kids’ safety and to hell with even trying to prevent moron gangbangers and terrorist wanna-bes and imbecilic white supremacists from easily getting their hands on a nice AK-47 that can mow down a schoolyard full of tots in 10 seconds flat. Instead: Down with liberal scum who would take away our God-given right to bear nasty ultraviolent weaponry that no one anywhere can justify the existence of. Go, NRA!

Except even gun control groups like the VPC have admitted that the “Assault Weapon Ban” didn’t do any of the things Mr. ~~Moron~~ Morford attributes to it. Doesn’t he realize that you can buy an American-built AK-47 clone (without, of course, a folding stock or a bayonet lug) right now?

Of course he does. He’s just doing his job, trying to scare the poor idiot populace into doing what he wants, like all good Leftists do.

What, too sarcastic? Well, hold onto your sides, because it gets even funnier. Even little gun-lovin’ Bushie himself declared during the 2000 campaign that he actually supported an extension of the ban (pretty hard, even for Shrub, to defend Uzis in the wake of Columbine and 101 California, et al.), a law that outlaws 19 types of insidiously lethal weaponry, the very guns most highly prized by jittery meth-lab owners and killing-spree advocates and homophobic militia members deep in the Montana woods. Oh, and also by upstanding, white-bread NRA members. Oh my yes. They need assault weapons. Must have them. Or so they claim.

Well, thank you Mr. ~~Moron~~ Morford. You’ve done such a marvelous job of associating people like me (I own an AR-15) with homophobic meth-lab owning spree killers. But I live in Arizona. Such awesome literary skills floor me.

But Bush, he is just so happy. He won’t have to see that bill at all. He won’t have to sign a thing before the election and risk annoying the Bible-quotin’ gun lovers of America. The NRA lobby will kill it before he even has to try to pronounce the phrase “high school gun rampage.” Oh man is he ever relieved.

I bet he is. There’s a lot of us gun lovers. (I don’t happen to be a bible-toter, but if Bush signed an AWB renewal, I don’t believe he would be receiving my vote come November.) It is good that my NRA dues go, at least in part, towards goals that I support. That’s what representative government means! My lobby is stronger than your lobby!

Because to the NRA, the rule is absolute: No gun law is a good gun law, and any ban of any kind is a slippery slope (always, always a slippery slope) until the government stomps in and takes away all your rights to do anything fun at all, and so screw the painfully obvious, skull-crushingly sad fact that allowing assault weapons back into the culture is the equivalent of allowing, say, convicted rapists loose in a sorority house.

Once again, Mr. ~~Moron~~ Morford asserts that which is undeniably false – that the “Assault Weapon Ban” removed anything from “the culture” in the first place. This is most obviously not so. But since it doesn’t fit in his worldview, it simply is ignored. If he actually recognized reality, his head might explode.

What, too extreme? Bull. Even “normal,” responsible gun owners — and, yes, they do exist, in huge numbers — know there is zero justification for allowing Uzis and AK-47s and their ilk back onto the market, just as there is no validation for suddenly legalizing, say, bazookas and flamethrowers and a swell grenade launcher for the Hummer. Dude! Wouldn’t that be so cool! Imagine a flame-throwing grenade-launching badass H2 with roof-mounted machine guns, barreling down I-5 and shooting up those goddamn wimpy Priuses and Mini Coopers! Ha! High five! Goddamn liberals!

Hmm…Bazookas are actually legal – like machine-guns they’re Class III devices, and so are the individual rocket rounds. Flamethrowers, to my knowledge, are unrestricted. No thanks to the goddamn liberals. I think, if Mr. ~~Moron~~ Morford looked around, he would find that “Uzis and AK-47s and their ilk” are still available all over the country. (Hey, if he can repeat his lie, I can repeat the truth.)

But huge numbers of responsible gun owners happen to own “assault weapons” too. There have literally been millions sold in this country, and the overwhelming majority, like the overwhelming majority of all guns, have ended up in the hands of us (check the scare quotes) “normal” responsible gun owners. So we disagree with the assertion that there is “zero justification,” don’t we?

Whoops, sorry. Getting carried away again. Hard not to, really. Because you simply have to love that NRA logic. It is pure genius, their insidious small-minded one-note hunk of reasoning that says banning assault weapons is just one step away from the government breaking down the door and taking away their shotguns and their Cheez Puffs and their Guns & Ammo subscription and their secret stash of gay porn.

I’m not sure, but I think the “gay porn” comment is supposed to be insulting. Now, I don’t know the man personally, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Jeff of Alphecca had a bit of that laying around, and I don’t see it as an insult unless the person writing it has a problem with gays. (Isn’t ~~Moron~~ Morford outspokenly gay? Does this mean he hates himself?) Now, the “insidious small-minded” comment is another thing, as that’s precisely how I see the gun-control supporters. And since they’ve been using the “slippery slope” method to achieve gun bans (as the English did) pardon the hell out of us for seeing the “Assault Weapon Ban” as precisely what it is: one great big step down the Slippery Slope that Mr. ~~Moron~~ Morford doesn’t want to admit exists, but would obviously be more than happy to shove us knuckle-dragging, insidious, small-minded, CheezPuff-eating, G&A reading gun nuts down.

Fuck you very much, Mr. ~~Moron~~ Morford.

This is the thinking. And it applies to all aspects of the frightening NRA mind-set. What, damn libs make me wear a seat belt in the car? Won’t let me breed African killer bees in my backyard? Make homemade bombs out of weed killer and turpentine? Buy cop-killer bullets at Wal-Mart? What’s next, invading my home and making my kids read feminist lit and stealing my kidneys while I sleep? I knew it! Damn liberals!

Ah, yes. The infamous “cop killer” bullets. Can’t have a good anti-gun rant without that old bromide. And you make homemade bombs out of fertilizer and diesel fuel. Don’t you know anything?

It gets better. It gets funnier. It gets sadder. Let us note how the current, about-to-expire legislation is already full of loopholes and flaws of sufficient breadth that gun manufacturers can mostly skirt the ban by making simple cosmetic changes to their guns and then selling them as something else, completely legal, even though the gun is essentially the same, ha ha suckers.

So, even though ~~Moron~~ Morford has been claiming that the law “banned” some weapons and removed them from “the culture,” and that sunset will cause these banned and removed weapons to be available for consumption by meth-dealers, spree-killers, NRA members and the like, NOW he admits that the law was useless and did nothing that he claimed? Yet it is cruicial to him that this useless, ineffective law be renewed! So that the next incremental step down the slippery slope….

Don’t pay too close attention to his writing, folks. You might get whiplash.

And if you are at all sentient and aware and feel even the slightest twinge of humanitarian concern for the spiritual progress of the human animal, a bitter, uncontrolled, fall-down fit of pained hilarity would seem to be the only real reaction you can possibly have.

Here, let me translate that for you fellow NRA members: Anyone who supports the sunset of this stupid law is:

A) Not sentient (that means “thinking” and “self-aware” for you knuckle-draggers) – so Mr. ~~Moron~~ Morford was being redundant (that means “repetitive.”)

B) Uncaring about “spiritual progress of the human animal” – i.e. “we hate everybody!

I get the impression that he doesn’t like us very much.

Seems only fair as the feeling is mutual.

Because if you don’t laugh it off, right now, at the bloody cosmic circus of it all, you will tear out your hair and start popping Vicodin like candy and pound a large nail into your own skull to deflect the pain, and then move to Canada, where they look down at America’s bizarre right-wing macho inbred obsession with guns and just go, oh my freaking God what the hell is wrong with you people.

Please, Mr. ~~Moron~~ Morford, take option “B”!! Canada needs more self-inflicted lobotomy patients. You could run for a seat in Parliament!

And the kicker? The cutest aspect of all? There is no effort to hide it. The NRA is making not the slightest stab at concealing how their snide little lobby controls the right-wing side of the senate, nor are those same senators denying how they happily and with full enthusiastic intent suck at the bitter macho metallic tit of the gun lobby.

As opposed to the gun control movement that hides each and every new attempt to slide us down the slippery slope? We’re proud and unrepentant because we really believe that the Second Amendment means something, Mr. ~~Moron~~ Morford, and not what you think it means. We’re quite happy to live here with our guns. I recall once in a flamewar on the talk.politics.guns group a commenter who said something on the order of “Why don’t all of you gun-freaks go form your own country!” To which one quite bright respondent replied, “We did. Who the hell let YOU in?”

So? Who did let you in?

Simply put, they just do not care whether you know. Why? Because the Right, they still have majority control. They still make the rules, and, no matter how many Dems or progressives or commonsense Americans still think the assault-weapons ban is a good idea overall, they just don’t give a crap. The NRA is in charge. The sheer force of the gun lobby will make Uzis available again, just because they can. Don’t like it? Suck my shotgun barrel, commie liberal tree hugger. God bless America.

I believe Mr. ~~Moron~~ Morford just outed himself as being against democracy when it doesn’t happen to agree with his personal politics. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!

Yes, Mr. ~~Moron~~ Morford, we have majority control. More than that, though, we live in a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC and not a democracy, so there are certain fundamental rules that no mere majority can overturn. And that galls you, doesn’t it? The Left is constantly thwarted by the great unwashed (but numerically superior) masses that just won’t do what you want. We who are so stupid and easily lead, but who you cannot seem to lead to anything. And you are further thwarted by that useless old peice of paper with words written by evil slave-owning rich white men that just can’t still mean what it says in this modern age.

And we will continue to thwart you.

Suck on that.

And, finally, here is NRA prez and noted ball of rancid cottage cheese Wayne LaPierre, talking up the sheer orgiastic joy of watching the ban expire: “I’m here to promise you that’s the end of [the ban]. It’s over. On Sept. 14, the sun will rise and it will never see the light of day again as long as we stay strong.” Yes, he’s actually comparing buying Uzis and AK-47s to a sunrise. And lo, the Earth shuddered, children everywhere felt suddenly soiled and defiled and lightning, sadly, did not strike LaPierre dead on the spot.

It’s gotta be tough when even ~~God~~ Gaia isn’t on your side, Mark.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to type this column.

It’s that nail in your skull, isn’t it?

Please?

I am now laughing so hard at the warped hypocritical savagery of it all, at so many Republicans wailing about, you know, the necessity of war on terror and war on drugs and war on gays and war on women’s rights and war on just about everything they don’t understand, and then how they turn right around and fall prostrate in front of Mr. NRA Lobbyist and say yes yes, what this country really needs goddammit is to get those Uzis back into the hands of angry Americans.

Those would be the Uzis that you admitted above that the law didn’t really remove or stop the manufacture of? Those Uzis? And what about that war on gays? I thought we knuckle-draggin’ NRA members had secret stashes of gay porn? Like it’s a bad thing?

I was going to suggest that you be consistent, but you’re a Leftist, and the two seem mutually exclusive.

Laughing. Laughing so very hard. Oh you poor, sad senators, lobbyists, NRA chiefs, stroking your Uzis and cheering your right to own multiple TEC-9s and not caring a whit for how anyone thinks. Or feels. Or intuits. Or loves.

Sure they do, Markie-boy! Sure they do! Say, that nail in your brain really is affecting you. Don’t you remember noting that the Right Wing is in the majority? Why else do politicians support anything? It’s the only way they get re-elected! And they know it.

Democracy. Ain’t it wonderful?

Do you really not see? Do you really not understand the sad dose of malevolence your agenda pumps into the cultural bloodstream? Do you not, finally, when you go to bed at night, get hit with a white-hot realization of what comical, bleak little clowns you are? No, I suppose you don’t.

And to that I have but this to say:

Pot? Meet Kettle.

I Also Do Requests, Part III – More Deliberate Mendacity

June 30, 2004 KevinLeave a comment

Continuing with the dissection of the Brady Campaign’s CCW FAQ page, we come to the next question:

Q: Has any peer-reviewed academic research been done on the effects of weakening CCW laws in Florida?

Pretty simple question, no? And here’s their pretty simple answer:

A: Yes. In March of 1995, a study was released by criminologists at the University of Maryland who examined the effects of the weakening of CCW laws in three states, including Florida. They found that gun homicides increased by an average of 26%, while homicides by other means did not increase. The study concluded that weakening CCW laws did not reduce homicides and could actually increase the frequency of homicide. The researchers noted that by weakening limits on concealed weapons, states may be giving up a simple and effective method of preventing firearms deaths.

This is the internet, ladies and gentlemen. ONE peer reviewed study? No link to said study or a third-party synopsis of it? No, we’re just supposed to take the Brady Center’s unimpeachable word that agendaless researchers at the unbiased University of Maryland did a detached scientific study of CCW and found that gun homicides increased after CCW laws – in three states – went up (by the scary number of 26%!) while other homicides “did not increase.”

That study, I am forced to assume, is one by the title “Easing Concealed Firearm Laws: Effects on Homicide in Three States” produced by David McDowall, Colin Loftin, and Brian Wiersema of the University of Maryland’s Violence Research Group. Problem is, the researchers didn’t study three STATES, they studied five metropolitan areas in three states, and they did so over a period in which national homicide rates were trending UP (see the Bureau of Justice Statistics graphs from Part 1 of this series.) Here’s what the paper says they studied:

We studied patterns in Florida, Mississippi, and Oregon. In addition, we analyzed monthly homicide counts and examined only large urban areas within the three states. To find if the laws influenced gun deaths differently, firearm homicides were separated from homicides by other means.

We conducted analyses for Dade (Miami), Duval (Jacksonville), and Hillsborough (Tampa) counties in Florida, and for Hinds (Jackson) county in Mississippi. Because there were relatively few homicides in Multnomah county (Portland), we combined Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington counties in Oregon. For each area, we used death certificate data compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) to count monthly homicides through December 1990. Health departments in Florida, Mississippi, and Oregon provided additional cases from January 1991, to December 1992.

For all areas except Miami, we studied the period between January 1973 and December 1992 (240 months). We confined our Miami analysis to January 1983 through December 1992 (120 months) because of an unusually sharp increase in homicide rates in May 1980 after an influx of Cuban refugees. In late 1982 the rates appeared to stabilize.

Well, gee, national firearms violence trends were UP during this period, and CCW laws were in effect in these three areas at the same time. OBVIOUSLY CCW made the homicide rates go up, right?

Right?

I’m not a statistician, but to me the answer appears to be “Not quite.”

Look at table 1 of the research paper. It’s a doozy all right:

Notice anything interesting? Notice the wide variations within the three cities studied. Miami – with a very high homicide rate, very little change (+3%), yet Jacksonville’s rate went up 75% (another scary number!) But Florida’s homicide rate overall after passage of their CCW law did what? That’s right – it went DOWN, except for that first year after passage while the permitting process was under way. Remember, the law went into effect OCTOBER 1 of 1987. By the end of 1988 the initial rush of everyone who wanted a CCW permit had been taken care of, and from 1988 onward, Florida’s homicide rates overall went DOWN. But by cherry-picking urban areas, our intrepid researchers made it appear that Florida’s homicide rates went up, did they not? Is that not what the Brady Center just said?

In March of 1995, a study was released by criminologists at the University of Maryland who examined the effects of the weakening of CCW laws in three states, including Florida. They found that gun homicides increased by an average of 26%, while homicides by other means did not increase. The study concluded that weakening CCW laws did not reduce homicides and could actually increase the frequency of homicide.

(Note the use of the weasle-word “could.”) This is known as deliberate mendacity. Because the report clearly states:

Despite this evidence, we do not firmly conclude that shall issue licensing leads to more firearms murders. This is so because the effects varied over the study areas. Firearms homicides significantly increased in only three areas, and one area witnessed an insignificant decrease. In combination, the increase in gun homicides was large and statistically significant. Yet we have only five replications, and two of these do not clearly fit the pattern.

The statistical significance of the combined results aside, the analysis implies that shall issue policies do not always raise levels of gun murder. Sometimes, at least, local conditions operate to blunt any effects. The areas without significant increases, Portland and Miami, may be unusual, but we lack the data to examine whether this is true.

Stated in another way, we cannot completely dismiss historical events as an explanation of the increases in firearms murders. One would need a complex theory to explain how history could mask a decrease in homicides after the laws. Historical accounts of the apparent increase might be much simpler. One would then be left with the hypothesis that the effects of the laws are nil.

In other words, “shall-issue” CCW laws don’t seem to affect homicide rates in any provable way.

Which means the Brady Center CCW FAQ page is lying. Boldly, blatantly, and with deliberate intent to mislead. They tell their readers that a research paper they didn’t name and gave no link to proved that “liberalized concealed carry” increases homicides, while the actual paper makes no such claim.

But “shall issue” CCW protects many people who jump through the hoops and actually carry. People like Barbara Holland. Ask her if CCW is a good idea.

How do you like being lied to? It’s a standard tactic in the gun control debate – both sides do it. They lie with statistics and expect you to just accept that their researchers are the unbiased ones. But if you bother to actually look it’s blindingly obvious which side is more deliberate, blatant, and outrageous at it. The gun-rights side tells you that CCW reduces crimes by some small but significant number, the gun-ban side tells you that CCW makes crime go UP by some scary number. But the facts show that CCW doesn’t seem to have much effect on crime rates overall. However, as each new state has considered and then passed “liberalized” concealed carry, the gun control groups have always predicted increases in firearm crime, “blood in the streets,” “Dodge City shootouts,” and so on. And they never happen.

But that’s how it works in this conflict. Supposedly neutral researchers do some “research” and come to some conclusion, generally vague and tentative, and above all deniable. Then advocates take those vague and tentative conclusions and blow them out of proportion – often without attribution – and the two sides start throwing bogus “facts” at each other, pissing off the vast middle ground who decide (and often rightly so) that both sides are lying again, and tune them out.

Now some questions: As a control, why didn’t our intrepid researchers look into homicides over the same period in urban areas in which CCW was prohibited or still highly restricted? Why did they not study the entire state rather than just the urban areas. Why was there no data on the number of CCW permits issued over the study period? Some estimate of how many, and where such permit holders lived? Were they mostly urban? Rural? Did it not matter, and if not, why? What was suggested to the reader when the report showed a 75% increase in firearm homicides in Jacksonville after CCW passage? Was there any effort to find evidence of CCW permit holders being involved in homicide?

This is the kind of thing that made me an advocate. I studied both sides. I concluded that one side was lying in order to deny me a Constitutionally protected fundamental right, and one side was lying to me in order to protect that right. Lying isn’t justified by the intent, in my opinion, but when it comes to my rights I’ll cut them a bit of slack. (John Lott excepted.) I will not forgive the other side.

And I don’t think Barbara Holland would either.

UPDATE: If you want a beautiful example of unattributed assertions of statistical “fact” that are complete and utter horseshit – by, of course, the Brady Bunch – please go read Phelps’s fisking of this op-ed.

Remember, it’s for the children!

They Still Haven’t Quite Figured it Out

June 29, 2004 KevinLeave a comment

Ravenwood finds another one.

It seems that the mothers of England have figured out that marching for gun control didn’t work. After they got all the gun control they seemed to want, things just didn’t get any better:

MUMS ON MARCH AGAINST GUNMEN

BY ALISON BELLAMY – Leeds Today

HUNDREDS of mothers are to march through Leeds to protest at gun crime.

The Mothers Against Violence group is being headed by Pat Regan, whose son Danny, 26, was blasted to death by three bullets.

Er, no. He was shot to death by someone who shot him three times thus ending his life. I thought the “marching against gunmen” part made that clear?

The march is part of a national campaign which aims to rid the streets of violence and gun-related crime.

I thought all that gun control was supposed to do that?

Mum-of-five Pat, 49, of Hyde Park, Leeds, a trainee community development worker, said: “So many lives are lost due to guns and violence. By carrying a gun many young people think they have some sort of standing or will gain respect but I can say that it will eventually result in death or injury.

I thought that young people were supposed to think that carrying a gun was going to get them five years in prison? I thought that the gun ban was supposed to remove access to the guns they carry?

Guess not.

She added: “My son was no angel and became involved in drugs. I would not want anyone to go through what I have been through.

“We want to put a stop to the wave of gun crime and street violence and will demonstrate this by marching through Leeds. We want people to join us.”

And this will affect the drug-culture criminals… how, exactly?

Danny was killed on December 12, 2002. He had moved to Merseyside to escape the West Yorkshire underworld but was shot dead in a house in St Helens.
Police have never caught his killer: “Danny knew the dangers he was facing. I was always waiting for a knock at the door.

“He came home in a coffin and his designer gear came home in big brown envelopes.”
Pat said she was also keen for any families of people who had committed gun crime to also become involved. The group is also applying for funding and hopes to establish offices in Leeds and a support network.

Crimes involving firearms have doubled in West Yorkshire in five years, from 1,062 to 2,044 for the year 2002/3. In 18 months between 2000 and 2002, 11 people were killed and 24 injured in shootings.

Wow. Gun control has been so effective in West Yorkshire, hasn’t it? Licensing, registering, confiscating, heavy sentences. They’ve managed to take a pretty tiny problem and make a significant one.

I have an idea! Let’s do it here! We can take a significant problem and make it an overwhelming one!

West Yorkshire police has received national recognition for its work with drugs and gun crime. The force’s Operation Stirrup has led to 425 arrests, 36 guns and £1.6m of drugs seized.

And a doubling of “crimes involving firearms.” Dont’ forget to “recognize” that. Congratulations!

The march is on August 7 from noon from Potternewton Park, Chapeltown, through Little London and Woodhouse to Hyde Park. Hundreds of mothers from across the UK are expected to attend.

Hundreds. Can they call it the “Hundred Mom March”?

Sorry about the snarkiness, but I’m just in that mood.