Violence in America – Effective Solutions

Treating the weapon

In 1662 the Armarium Urguentum advised physicians on the
treatment of gunshot and other wounds:

If the wound is large, the weapon with which the patient has
been wounded should be anointed daily; otherwise, every two
or three days. The weapon should be kept in pure linen and a
warm place but not too hot, nor squalid, lest the patient
suffer harm.[1]

Three centuries later some physicians are still treating the
weapon instead of the wound.

It is increasingly common to hear “guns are a virus”[2] or
discussion of “the bullet as pathogen.”[3] According to
Koch’s Postulates of Pathogenicity, the criteria used to
assess disease-causing potential, any observation of the
peaceful use of firearms is sufficient reason to reject the
hypothesis that guns or ammunition are pathogens. The half
of American homes with guns offer a multitude of such
observations. Further still, review of the literature shows
that guns and ammunition meet none of Koch’s Postulates of
Pathogenicity.[4] As appealing as the claim may be to some,
guns are not pathogens and crime is not a disease. Crime is
a social problem that does not lend itself to analysis or
treatment under the medical model.

Treating crime as a disease – the essence of the “public
health” approach to gun violence – is as illogical and
ineffectual as the converse, treating disease as a crime.
We would mock any criminologist who advocated criminalizing
disease by measures such as fines for obesity or jail time
for tobacco-related emphysema. We would condemn the police if
they invaded bedrooms to ensure the use of condoms in the
crusade against AIDS. The silliness of such proposals are
readily apparent, yet are no more illogical and insupportable
than the proposals by advocates of the “public health” model
of gun violence, banning or severely restricting good
citizens’ access to guns simply because a tiny fraction of
guns are misused by predatory aberrants. It is a distorted
concept, indeed, that the rights of good people, the most
virtuous and productive citizens, should be defined – more
precisely, restrained – by the criminal actions of predators
in our society.

“Do no harm!”

Reducing violence is a laudable goal we share with many of
our colleagues, but the evidence suggests that the gun
control proposals made by many of our colleagues will be
worse than ineffectual. The weight of evidence suggests
that gun bans and draconian restrictions will not reduce
criminals’ access to guns, but will instead
disproportionately disarm good citizens who cannot be
effectively protected by the police – in so doing, gun
control will do more harm than good.

It may seem a harsh claim, indeed, but there is considerable
documentation that zealous advocacy of gun prohibition by
some high-profile researchers and editors has been associated
with a panoply of sins – a spectrum of trangressions ranging
from simple unfamiliarity with the literature, through bias,
incompetence, and even outright mendacity.[4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
The most common transgression, however, is the medical
literature’s refusal to recognize or address the majority of
the literature on guns and violence which is in sociological
and criminological literature. Several acclaimed reviews are
available.[11,12,13,14,15] The second most common flaw is
the “costs only” approach to gun violence, neither
acknowledging nor analyzing the evidence that many more lives
are protected by guns than are taken by guns.

Certain authors’ unfamiliarity with guns and gun safety
jeopardizes not only the quality of their work, but has also
caused them to advance potentially dangerous “solutions.”
For example, it has been proposed that gun manufacturers make
“childproof” triggers – heavy trigger pulls – to enhance
safety.[16] Such a proposal enhances safety neither for
adults nor for children. For adults, a heavy trigger pull is
not conducive to good marksmanship and increases the chance
that an innocent bystander, rather than an assailant, would
be injured. A child frustrated by a stiff trigger pull will
attempt to obtain greater mechanical advantage than available
from the natural shooting grip by inserting a thumb into the
trigger guard and gripping the gun’s handle with four
fingers. This grip points the pistol at the child,
increasing the risk of death or injury. It is education in a
few infallible safe gun handling habits, not a myriad of
fallible devices, that enhance gun safety.

Since the promotion of stringent gun regulation and gun bans
is so familiar in the medical literature, it would be
redundant to repeat such advocacy here. Instead, we will
examine what is unfamiliar, a few representative flaws in
common gun law proposals. We will also identify promising
areas of research to reduce violence in our society – a
problem that takes a terrible toll, but a problem that is
often overstated as being an “epidemic.”[4] Our research
and policy proposals focus upon the root causes of violence,
rather than upon the instruments or symbols of violence. We
expect that solutions will be neither simple, quick, nor
cheap.

Cost-without-benefit analysis (Doctors or Guns – Which is the
deadlier menace?)

Amongst the most pervasive flaws in the medical literature on
guns is the discussion of the “costs” of gun violence without
any consideration of the innocent lives saved by guns. These
and other benefits of guns are not so “intangible” as has
been dogmatically claimed.[17] We would be mortified if our
colleagues’ cost-without-benefit analysis[18,19] became the
standard for evaluating the medical profession. The 1990
Harvard Medical Practice Study quantified non-psychiatric
inpatient deaths from physician negligence (excluding
outpatient, extended care, and inpatient psychiatric deaths)
in New York State.[20] “If these rates are typical of the
United States, then 180,000 people die each year partly as a
result of iatrogenic injury, the equivalent of three jumbo-
jet crashes every two days.”[21] – almost five times the
number of Americans killed with guns. One might fairly
conclude from such a “costs only” analysis that doctors are a
deadly public menace. Why do we not reach that conclusion?
Because, in balance, doctors save many more lives than they
take and so it is with guns.

A conservative estimate from the largest scale,
methodologically sound study to date, the study by Kleck and
Gertz, suggests that there are 2.5 million protective uses of
guns by adults annually.[22] As many as 65 lives are
protected by guns for every life lost to a gun. For every
gun tragedy sensationalized, dozens are averted by guns, but
go unreported. Whether or not “newsworthy,” scientific
method begs accounting of the benefits of guns – enumeration
of the lives saved, the injuries prevented, the medical costs
saved, and the property protected. Such an accounting is
absent from the medical literature. The protective benefits
of guns – and the politicized “science” that has been used to
underestimate or totally deny those benefits and to
exaggerate the costs of guns – have been extensively
reviewed.[4-12]

As ten studies have shown, in any year, about 1 to 2.5
million Americans use guns to protect themselves and their
families. and about 400,000 of those defenders believe that
they would almost certainly have lost their lives if they had
not had a gun for defense.[11,22] Even if only one-tenth of
those defenders are correct, the lives saved by guns would
still be more numerous than the lives lost to guns. The
flaws in the only study to suggest otherwise, the outlier
data of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), have
been discussed elsewhere.[22,23] Briefly, the NCVS is a
study of victimization, not defense, and, by its design,
undercounts the most numerous types of defensive gun use
(e.g. women protecting against domestic attacks). As
additional sources of undercount error, the NCVS is the only
such survey conducted by law enforcement and the only study
in which the respondents are denied anonymity. When any
statistic, such as the NCVS count of defensive gun use, is at
odds with every other measurement, it is discarded.[22]

Nonetheless, even those US Bureau of Justice Statistics
samples show that defense with a gun results in fewer
injuries to the defender (17.4%) than resisting with less
powerful means (knives, 40.3%; other weapon, 22%; physical
force, 50.8%; evasion, 34.9%; etc.) and in fewer injuries
than not resisting at all (24.7%).[11] Guns are the safest
and most effective means of self defense. This is
particularly important to women, the elderly, the physically
challenged, those who are most vulnerable to vicious and
bigger male predators.

These benefits can be weighed against the human costs of guns
- recently about 38,000 gun deaths from all causes and about
65,000 additional serious injuries annually (the remainder of
gun injuries were so minor as to require no hospital
treatment at all). Totaling all gun deaths, injuries, and
criminal mischief with guns leads to a generous estimate of
about 1 million criminal misuses of guns annually (involving
less than one-half of 1% of America’s more than 200-million
guns)[7,11] So, all things considered, the human benefits of
guns at least equal and likely exceed the costs of guns to
society by a factor of 2.5.

Of the 38,000 gun deaths, a majority are suicides. This has
caused advocates of gun prohibition to note that gun bans
result in lower gun suicide rates, but they fail to note a
compensatory increase in suicide from other accessible and
lethal means of suicide (hanging, leaping, auto exhaust,
etc.). The net result of gun bans? No reduction in total
suicide rates.[11] People who are intent in killing
themselves find the means to do so. Are other means of
suicide so much more socially acceptable that we should cede
resources to measures that only shift the means of suicide,
but do nothing to reduce total suicide deaths?

“Friends and Family”

It is common for the “public health” advocates of gun bans to
claim that most murders are of “friends and family.” The
medical literature includes many such false claims, that
“most [murderers] would be considered law abiding citizens
prior to their pulling the trigger”[24] and “most shootings
are not committed by felons or mentally ill people, but are
acts of passion that are committed using a handgun that is
owned for protection.”[25]

Not only do the data show that acquaintance and domestic
homicide are a minority of homicides,[26] but the FBI’s
definition of acquaintance and domestic homicide requires
only that the murderer knew or was related to the decedent.
That dueling drug dealers are acquainted does not make them
“friends.” Over three-quarters of murderers have long
histories of violence against not only their enemies and
other “acquaintances,” but also against their
relatives.[27,28,29,30] Oddly, medical authors have no
difficulty recognizing the violent histories of murderers
when the topic is not gun control – “A history of violence is
the best predictor of violence.”[31] The overwhelming
majority of the perpetrators of acquaintance and domestic
homicide are vicious aberrants with long histories of
violence inflicted upon those close to them. This reality
belies the deceptive imagery of “friends and family”
murdering each other in fits of passion simply because a gun,
an evil talisman, was present “in the home.”

Economic analysis

The actual economic cost of medical care for gun violence is
approximately $1.5-billion per year[32] – about 0.16% of
America’s $900-billion annual health care costs. To
exaggerate the costs of gun violence, the advocates of gun
prohibition routinely include estimates of lost lifetime
earnings – assuming that gangsters, drug dealers, and rapists
would be as socially productive as teachers, factory workers,
and other good Americans – to generate inflated claims of
$20-billion or more in “costs.”[32] One recent study went so
far as to claim the “costs” of work time lost while workers
gossip about gun violence.[33]

What evidence is there that the average homicide decedent can
be fairly compared to the average worker, that average wages
should be attributed to homicide victims? What fraction of
homicide victims are actually “innocent children” who strayed
into gunfire? Far from being pillars of society, more than
two-thirds of gun homicide “victims” are involved with drug
trafficking or have evidence of ante-mortem illicit drug
use.[34,35] In one study, 67% of 1990 homicide “victims”
had a criminal record, averaging 4 arrests for 11
offenses.[35] Such active criminals cost society not only
untold human suffering, but also an average economic toll of
$400,000 per criminal per year before apprehension and
$25,000 per criminal per year while in prison.”[36] It is
not a slander on the few truly innocent – and highly
sensationalized – victims to note that the overwhelming
predominance of homicide “victims” are as predatory and
socially aberrant as the perpetrators of homicide. Cost-
benefit analysis is necessarily a bit hardhearted, and,
though repugnant for physicians to consider monetary savings
alone, the advocates of gun prohibition routinely force us to
address the “costs” of gun violence. So, we are forced to
notice that, in cutting their violent “careers” short, the
gun deaths of those predators and criminals may actually
represent an economic savings to society on the order of $4.5
billion annually – three times the declared “costs” of guns.

Those annual cost savings are only a small fraction of the
total economic savings from guns, because the $4.5 billion
does not include the additional financial savings from the
innocent lives saved, injuries prevented, medical costs
averted, and property protected by guns. If we applied the
prohibitionists’ methods[33] to compute the savings by guns,
we would find that the annual savings approach $1/2 trillion,
about 10% of the US Gross Domestic Product. We perform this
exercise only to demonstrate that all such “virtual reality”
estimates of “indirect” costs and savings are inflated and to
condemn them all as meaningless.

Whether by human or economic measure, we conclude that guns
offer a substantial net benefit to our society. Some
“quality of life” benefits, such as the feeling of security
and self-determination that accompany protective gun
ownership, are not easily quantified. There is no competent
research that suggests making good citizens’ access to guns
more difficult (whether by bureaucratic paperwork, exorbitant
taxation, zoning laws, contrived application of environmental
or consumer product safety statutes, reframing the debate as
a “public health” issue, or outright bans – the current
tactics of the anti-self-defense lobby[37]) will reduce
violence. No matter what tactics are used by the anti-self-
defense lobby to incrementally achieve citizen disarmament,
it is only good citizens who comply with gun laws, so it is
only good citizens who are disarmed by gun laws. As
evidenced by jurisdictions with the most draconian gun laws
(e.g. New York City, Washington, DC, etc.), disarming these
good citizens before violence is reduced causes more harm
than good. Disarming these good citizens costs more – not
fewer – lives.

Imagery and fact collide

Mountains of scholarly data on guns and gun laws[11]
including the work of Presidential Commissions and the
National Institute of Justice,[12,13] are available, yet the
medical literature frequently cites instead editorials and
articles by avowed gun control advocates. Besides failing to
perform a true risk-benefit assessment, our colleagues
commonly make errors of fact easily preventable by a
literature search. Consider false assertions about “assault
weapons.” Over two dozen studies overlooked by those who
advocate the prohibition of such guns show that these false
icons of violence are rarely used in crime.[10,38]
Pejoratively and inaccurately named, “assault weapons” are,
in fact, civilian firearms that fire one shot per trigger
pull, but share cosmetic similarities with true military
weapons (e.g. black plastic stocks, bayonet lugs, corrosion
resistant finishes, and similar features that do nothing to
enhance the criminal use of such guns). Claims of “sheer
destructive power”[18] are only unscientific and inflammatory
imagery refuted by peer-reviewed research in the medical
literature.[10,39,40,41] Discredited theories of wounding,
“watermelon wound ballistics,”[42] should have no place in
the medical literature. Unfortunately, particularly when
coming from physicians, the political effectiveness of such
embarrassingly unscientific hyperbole cannot be denied.

Unlike hunting weapons which, by definition, are designed to
kill, military weapons are designed to wound,[39] our
colleagues’ claim of “designed to kill human beings at close
range”[18] notwithstanding. In military doctrine, wounding
is more useful than killing because it removes not only the
injured enemy, but also removes personnel and resources
necessary to transport and care for the injured. “Assault
weapons” using typical military ammunition actually have
reduced lethality when compared to sporting weapons, reduced
lethality that is comparable to handguns using non-expanding
ammunition.[39]

Our colleagues briefly noted that “these weapons account for
only a small percentage of firearm deaths.”[18] More
pointedly, ten times more Americans die annually from attacks
using hands and feet than die from military-style rifles.[43]
Let us emphasize that, in the worst areas of gang and drug
crime, over two dozen studies show that military-style,
semiautomatic guns account for generally 0% to 3% of crime
guns.[10,38] Unfortunately, our colleagues completely
overlooked the legitimate and constitutionally protected uses
of these guns.[10,38]

Police protection

Criminals do not announce their intentions and police
resources are stretched, so it is unsurprising that the
police rarely arrive in time to prevent death or injury from
much violent crime. Many are surprised, however, to discover
that the police do not have any legal obligation – not even a
theoretical obligation – to provide protection to
individuals, even if in immediate danger. The police are
only obligated to provide some unspecified level of general
protection to the community at large.[44,45,46,47,48] It
is a bitter irony indeed that, at the same time the police
are relieved of responsibility for our protection, we are
forced to depend upon their protection. We are often told
that we may not and should not have the same tools that the
police say they need to protect themselves from the same
criminals who threaten us.

Gun ban advocates routinely portray good citizens with guns
as inept and dangerous, but good citizens use guns about
seven to ten times as frequently as the police to repel crime
and apprehend criminals[11] and they do it with a better
safety record than the police. About 11% of police shootings
kill an innocent person – about 2% of shootings by citizens
kill an innocent person. The odds of a defensive gun user
killing an innocent person are less than 1 in 26,000.[49]
Citizens intervening in crime are less likely to be wounded
than the police.[49] We can explain why the citizen record
is better than the police (the police usually come upon a
scene in progress where it may not be clear who is attacker
and who is defender; also, the police, unlike defenders, must
close to handcuff the arrestee), but the simple truth
remains: citizens have an excellent record of protecting
themselves, their families, and their communities.

Some polls claim that Californians support “more restrictive”
gun laws, yet many Californians were surprised to discover
that existent “waiting period” law thwarted their attempts to
arm themselves for protection during the1992 Los Angeles
riots. The police department was so overwhelmed that
residents discovered that they were virtually abandoned to a
“let burn” policy. Indeed, without causing even a single
death or injury, it was those good citizens displaying their
fearsome “assault weapons” who turned back mob and gang
violence, protecting their lives, their families, and their
livelihoods. It was good citizens displaying such weapons
who turned back looting police and out-of-control US Army
National Guardsmen during Hurricane Hugo.[50] It was armed
African-Americans that protected themselves and their
families from Ku Klux Klansmen and other racist terrorists
(terrorists that often included local law enforcement
officers).[51,52,53]

When faced with multiple assailants, mob and gang violence,
terrorism, or civil insurrection, it is precisely high-
capacity “assault weapons” that are necessary for good people
to defend themselves – particularly when police resources are
stretched to the breaking point. It is not only protection
from criminals and lunatics about which we must be concerned.
Governments are the worst mass murderers. Not including
wars, as a conservative estimate, in this century 65 million
people have been killed by their governments – after first
being disarmed.[54] Protection, not “sporting use,” is the
issue.

The automobile model of gun ownership

Advocates of increased gun restrictions have promoted the
automobile model of gun ownership, however, the analogy is
selectively and incompletely applied. It is routinely
overlooked that no license or registration is needed to “own
and operate” any kind of automobile on private property. No
proof of “need” is required for automobile registration or
drivers’ licensure. Once licensed and registered,
automobiles may be driven on any public road and every
state’s licenses are given “full faith and credit” by other
states. There are no waiting periods, background checks, or
age restrictions for the purchase of automobiles. It is only
their use and misuse that is regulated.

Although the toll of motor vehicle tragedies is many times
that of guns, no “arsenal permit” equivalent is asked of
automobile collectors or motorcycle racing enthusiasts.
Neither has anyone suggested that automobile manufacturers be
sued when automobiles are misused by criminals, as they
frequently are, by drunk and reckless drivers, in drive-by
shootings, bank robberies, car bombs, and all manner of crime
and terrorism. No one has suggested banning motor vehicles
because they “might” be used illegally or are capable of
exceeding the 55 mph speed limit, even though we “know” speed
kills. Who needs a car capable of three times the national
speed limit? “But cars have good uses” is the usual response.
So too do guns have good uses, the protection of 2.5-million
good Americans every year.[22]

Importantly, the proponents of the automobile model of gun
ownership fail to note that controls appropriate to a
privilege (driving) are inappropriate to a constitutional
right (gun ownership and use).

Constitutional issues

An important nexus exists where public policy touches the
constitution. Television violence has been deemed a cause of
violence,[55,56,57] but outlawing entertainment violence and
sensationalized newscasting is precluded by First Amendment
guarantees. The spread of AIDS might be reduced by draconian
measures that, thankfully, are precluded by our inherent
enumerated and unenumerated civil rights guaranteed in the
Bill of Rights. Analogously, even if gun bans could be
demonstrated to be effective in reducing violence, such
measures are precluded by our right to keep and bear arms,
our inherent and irrevocable right to protection against
criminals, crazies, and tyrants.

We are alarmed that the constitutional impediments to gun
bans, draconian restrictions, and confiscatory levels of fees
and taxation, if discussed at all, are offhandedly and
mistakenly dispatched.[58] No “need” must be demonstrated
or license obtained in order to exercise a constitutional
right; such “prior restraint” is a patently unconstitutional
denial of civil rights. To support purportedly “reasonable”
restrictions, the claim is often made that the Right to Keep
and Bear Arms is a only a collective right of states to
maintain militias.[58,59,60] Such a claim is incongruous
with Supreme Court case law,[61,62] the history of the
right,[63,64,65,66] and legal scholarship.

In fact, the Supreme Court has explicitly acknowledged a
_pre-existent_ (“pre-existent,” rather than “granted” by the
Constitution) _individual_ right[67,68,69,70,71] to keep and
bear _military-style_71weapons. The familiar contention that
there is no individual right to arms derives partly from a
common misunderstanding of the constitutional “militia.”
Advocates of “broad-based gun control”[58] emphasize merely
the mention of “militia,” but historians, legal scholars,
and Supreme Court Justices agree that, “The ‘militia’ was the
entire adult male citizenry,” so that “one purpose of the
Founders having been to guarantee the arms of the militia,
they accomplished that purpose by guaranteeing the arms of
the individuals who made up the militia.”[61]

Adherents of the “states’ right only” theory of the Second
Amendment assert their position without examining the
implications of their own theory. A full understanding of
the “states’ right only” theory leads to conclusions that
will make its proponents even more uncomfortable than if they
accepted the individual right theory.[72 ] An honest
application of the “states’ right only” theory, according to
the rationale advanced by its own adherents,[58-60] demands
not merely armed state militias, but full military parity for
the states. In these times of tension between the states and
the federal government, gun prohibitionists should rethink
the advisability of promoting a theory that would return the
US to armed confederacy. Further, as Reynolds and Kates
discuss, citizen disarmament would not necessarily be an
outcome of an honest application of the “states’ right only”
theory of the Second Amendment.[72]

That the Supreme Court has acknowledged the individual right,
but done little to protect that right, is reminiscent of the
sluggishness of the Supreme Court in protecting other civil
rights before those rights became politically fashionable.
It has taken over a century for the Supreme Court to
meaningfully protect civil rights guaranteed to African-
Americans in the Fourteenth Amendment. The claim that “no
court has ever overturned a gun law on Second Amendment
grounds” is not only false (Nunn v. State [73] and in re:
Brickey[74] overturned gun laws on Second Amendment grounds),
but is also the equivalent of a morally indefensible claim
in 1950 that “no court has ever overturned a segregation
law.”

Supreme Court decisions have been thoroughly reviewed in the
legal literature. Since 1980, of thirty-nine law review
articles, thirty-five note the Supreme Court’s acknowledgment
of the individual right to keep and bear arms[75] and only
four claim the right is only a collective right of the states
(three of these four are authored or co-authored by employees
of the anti-self-defense lobby).[76] One would never guess
such a precedential and scholarly mismatch from the casual
misinterpretations of the right in the medical literature and
popular press. The error of the gun prohibitionist view is
also evident from the fact that their “states’ right only”
theory is exclusively an invention of the twentieth century
“gun control” debate – a concept of which neither the
Founding Fathers nor any pre-1900 case or commentary seems to
have had any inkling.[61-65,77]

Though the gun control debate has focused on the Second
Amendment, legal scholarship also finds support for the Right
to Keep and Bear Arms in Ninth Amendment “unenumerated”
rights,[78] Fourteenth Amendment “due process” and “equal
protection” rights,[79,80,81,82] and natural rights
theory.[77] Also, in the absence of explicit delegated
powers, the Tenth Amendment guarantees that the powers are
reserved to the States and the people,[83] making several
provisions of the Brady Law unconstitutional.[84]

Progressive reform

Complete, consistent, and constitutional application of the
automobile model of gun ownership could provide a rational
solution to the debate and enhance public safety. Reasonable
compromise on licensing and training is possible. Generally,
where state laws have been reformed to license and train good
citizens to carry concealed handguns for protection, violence
and homicide have fallen.[49,85] Even those unarmed
citizens who abhor guns benefit from such policies because
predators cannot distinguish in advance between intended
victims who carry and victims who eschew _concealed_ weapons.

In Florida, as in other states where they have opposed
reform, the anti-self-defense lobby claimed that blood would
run in the streets of “Dodge City East,” the “Gunshine
State,” that inconsequential family arguments and traffic
disputes would lead to murder and mayhem, that the economic
base of communities would collapse, and that many innocent
people would be killed[49,88] — but we do not have to rely
on irrational propaganda, imaginative imagery, or political
histrionics. We can examine the data.

One-third of Americans live in the 22 progressive states that
have reformed laws to allow good citizens to readily protect
themselves outside their homes, openly or concealed.[49,88]
In those states crime rates are lower for every category of
crime indexed by the FBI Uniform Crime Reports.[26]
Homicide, assault, and overall violent crime are each 40%
lower, armed robbery is 50% lower, rape is 30% lower, and
property crimes are 10% lower.[26] The reasonable reform of
concealed weapon laws resulted in none of the mayhem
prophesied by the anti-self-defense lobby. In fact, the data
suggest that, providing they are in the hands of good
citizens, more guns “on the street” offer a considerable
_net_ benefit to society – saving lives, a deterrent to
crime, and an adjunct to the concept of community policing.

As of 12/31/93, Florida had issued 188,106 licenses and not
one innocent person had been killed or injured by a concealed
weapon licensee in the 6 years post-reform.[49] Of the
188,106 licenses, 17 (0.01%) were revoked for misuse of the
firearm. Not one of those revocations were associated with
any injury whatsoever.[49] In opposing reform, fear is often
expressed that “everyone would be packing guns,” but, after
reform, most states have licensed fewer than 2% (and in no
state more than 4%) of qualified citizens.[49]

A recent flurry of pre-publication publicity highlighted an
upcoming paper by critics of reform, David MacDowall, Colin
Loftin, and Brian Wiersema of the University of Maryland
Violence Research Group.[86] These researchers are best
known for their 1989 paper in the New England Journal of
Medicine[87] that, in the face of a tripled homicide rate,
claimed that Washington DC’s 1976 handgun freeze had lowered
homicide.[4] In the face of data showing statewide
reductions in homicide rates in many states that have adopted
reforms (particularly impressive when compared to concurrent
national trends),[49] these researchers now claim that
reform of concealed weapons laws has raised homicide rates.
To contrive such a “day is night” conclusion, they ignored
national trends and rejected the statewide benefits of
statewide laws without credible analysis. Instead they
simply selected the few exceptions, the few urban areas and
irregular, shifting time periods that could be contrived to
show a homicide increase. Furthermore, if FBI data is used
instead of the researchers’ National Center for Health
Statistics data (FBI data culls at least a fraction of lawful
self-defense homicides), MacDowall et al.’s claim collapses.

The anti-self-defense lobby has claimed that violent crime
rose 19% in Florida following reform, but they fail to note
that violent crime rose 23% nationally. Additionally, the
data became more difficult to interpret because the
accounting of violent crimes except homicide changed during
this period. So, the observed homicide rate reductions are
the best available indicator of the effectiveness of reform.
Following reform, Florida’s homicide rate fell from 36% above
the national average to 4% below the national average and
remains below the national average to this day.[49]

Notwithstanding gun control extremists’ politicized research,
histrionics, and unprophetic imagery , the observed reality
was that most crime fell, in part, because vicious predators
fear an unpredictable encounter with an armed citizen even
more than they fear apprehension by police[12] or fear our
timid and porous criminal justice system. It is no mystery
why Florida’s tourists are targeted by predators – predators
are guaranteed that, unlike Florida’s citizens, tourists are
unarmed. Those who advocate restricting gun rights often
justify their proposals “if it saves only one life?.” There
have been matched state pair analyses, crime trend studies,
and county-by-county research[49] demonstrating that
licensing good, mentally-competent adults to carry concealed
weapons for protection _outside_ their homes saves _many_
lives, so gun prohibitionists should support such reforms,
_if_ saving lives is truly their motivation.

Conclusion

Insisting that a frog is a cow will not give us milk.
Neither will insisting a social problem is a medical problem
give us a solution to violence. If medical researchers want
to investigate violence, they must learn the methods of
social science research and familiarize themselves with the
social science literature. Predatory criminals are neither
microbes nor automobiles.

We, too, call for better data collection, but then, on the
basis of existing data, we part company with our colleagues
who call for broad-based gun controls and bans. As we have
discussed, guns in the hands of good, mentally competent
adults offer a net benefit to society – whether measured in
human or economic terms. Until such time as we eliminate
violence from society, we believe that good people should
have available the safest and most effective means of
protection, guns. The rights of good and moral people, the
overwhelming majority of America’s citizens, are inherent
rights that are not forfeit as a result of the heinous
actions of predatory aberrants.

The predominance of data show that over 20,000 American gun
laws, including national gun laws, have done virtually
nothing to reduce violence or to reduce availability of guns
to criminals. Expectedly so! Vicious predators who ignore
laws against murder, mayhem, and drug trafficking routinely
ignore those existent American gun laws. No amount of well-
meaning, wishful thinking will cause these criminals to honor
additional gun laws. If “better” data are forthcoming, we
are ready to reassess the public policy implications. Until
such time, the data suggest that victim disarmament is not a
policy that saves lives.

Proposals

We note that public health efforts combating AIDS and
tuberculosis are most effective when high-risk populations
are targeted. If there is any kernel of truth in the “public
health” model of violence, it is that high-risk populations
should be addressed, specifically, broken, impoverished,
young families in the inner cities. Though we offer
proposals to reduce violence in our society, we have
realistic expectations. We know that utopia is not an
available alternative. It may take a generation or more to
obtain even incremental reductions in violence. A social
problem that has taken generations to develop, will not
disappear quickly or cheaply. We must replace today’s
rhetoric of entitlement with values of family life,
individual rights, and individual responsibilities. We must
avoid the tempting mirage, the false promises of gun control.
We encourage the following research and policy agenda:

1) Oversight of the competence and integrity of further
tax-funded research – Politicized science costs lives because
it leads us down a literal dead-end, the unilateral
disarmament of innocent victims. Of additional importance,
politicized science wastes resources and time that might be
spent productively. Editorial censorship, histrionics, and
medical “mob journalism” are equally unsuited to the
development of sound public policy.

Much of the shoddy research has been funded by taxpayers
through the Centers for Disease Control and legitimate
concern has been raised about the politicization of that
research.[4-9] While we fully support the First Amendment
rights of advocates at both poles of the debate, we do not
believe that it is appropriate for tax-payers to foot the
bill for polemics from either pole. There must be
Congressional oversight of tax-funded research to ensure the
integrity and competence of tax-funded studies and steps must
be taken to improve the peer review process. Editorial
privilege should entail responsibility and accountability.
Editorial license should end far short of the threshold of
carelessness, abuse, and censorship.

2) Enforce existent laws against violent crime – No
additional laws or sentence enhancements are necessary.
There are no violent crimes that are “missed” by criminal
codes. If applied, existent sentences prescribed for violent
crimes are already far from trivial, so we support “Truth in
Sentencing,” rather than early release of or plea bargaining
by violent criminals. If applied, existent sentences
prescribed for violent crimes make inflexible “Three Strikes,
You’re Out” proposals completely unnecessary. “The most
effective prison reform would be to return prisons to their
primary mission of incapacitating violent criminals.”[88]

President Clinton and his administration have spotlighted
violent crime and demanded draconian gun restrictions as a
“solution.” The administration’s lack of action, however,
belies its rhetoric. Senators Orrin Hatch and Robert Dole
have inquired of Attorney General Janet Reno why, according
to the Administrative Office of the US Courts, prosecutions
have actually declined 5% overall and, in the case of gun
crimes, prosecutions have declined 23%, under the Clinton-
Reno administration).[89]

3) Enforce existent laws against the true sources of
criminals’ guns – The enforcement of existent gun laws and
the enforceability of proposed gun laws are rarely discussed.
High rates of gun ban non-compliance and the police state
tactics necessary for enforcement are rarely discussed.[10]
The Clinton administration and many politicians, including
the “public health” advocates of gun prohibition, call for
more draconian gun laws when existent laws are poorly
enforced. Of how little benefit to public safety can
symbolic gestures be? Of what possible benefit can their
more draconian proposals be if those proposals are not – or
cannot be – enforced?

Only 7% of criminals’ handguns are obtained from retail
sources,[13] so controls on retail gun sales cannot be
expected to reduce criminals’ access to guns much, if at all.
Despite exaggerated claims of the success of the Brady
Law,[90] the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF)
has acknowledged that the little existent evidence is only
anecdotal.[91] If fact, almost all of Brady Law background
check discoveries of “thousands of _possible_ felons” are
false positives. Many are innocents whose names are similar
to felons. Misdemeanor traffic convictions, citations for
fishing without a license, and failure to license dogs are
the types of trivial crimes that resulted in a computer tag
that labeled the others as “potential” felons.[92] Of the
minuscule number of actual felons identified by Brady Law
background checks, not one has been prosecuted.[93]
Instead, those felons are merely displaced into the “black
market.” In such circumstance, the minimal expected benefit
of the Brady Law diminishes to no benefit at all.

Instead of heaping more onerous restrictions upon good
citizens or law-abiding gun dealers who are not the source of
crime guns, is it not more reasonable – though admittedly
more difficult – to target the real source of crime guns? It
is time to admit the futility of attacking the supply of
legal guns to interdict the less than 1% of the American gun
stock that is used criminally. Instead, we believe
enforcement effort should focus on targeting the long illegal
“black market” in stolen guns. It is equally important to
reduce the demand for illicit guns and drugs, most
particularly by presenting attractive life opportunities and
career alternatives to the inner-city youth that are
overwhelmingly and disproportionately the perpetrators[94]
and victims[95] of violence in our society.

4) Treat guns like cars, completely, consistently, and
constitutionally – Specifically, enact legislation to
license good citizens – mentally competent, law-abiding
adults – to carry concealed firearms for protection in
public. No “need” must be demonstrated. Self-protection is
a universally applicable need. Of course, there should be no
licensing or registration of _any_ kind of firearm used on
_private_ property. We believe _this_ is the _reasonable_
compromise, the _reasonable_ gun control this country needs.

Like for automobiles and prospective drivers, we believe guns
should be kept out of the hands of the mentally incompetent,
the criminal, and the irresponsible – adult or child – and we
advocate voluntary safety training programs. We recommend
that every prospective gun owner carefully weigh the
responsibility of gun ownership and, upon purchase, to be
certain that gun safety is paramount. It is encouraging to
note that National Safety Council data show that accidental
gun deaths have been falling steadily since the beginning of
this century and now hover at an all time low.[96]

5) Welfare reform – End government policy that destroys
families and, in turn, destroys the fabric of society. The
“War on Poverty” is another war lost by America. Welfare aid
has climbed from 1.5% of the Gross National Product when
Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” initiated the “War on
Poverty” to 5% of the Gross National Product ($305 billion)
in 1992, yet we have seen crime, substance abuse, divorce,
illegitimacy, and resultant single-parent families skyrocket
and the work ethic, family stability, and educational
aspiration erode. To reduce violence, welfare reform must
discourage dependency, encourage responsible, constructive
behavior, reduce illegitimacy and single-parent families, and
entail a system of mutual responsibility in which welfare
recipients are expected to contribute to society in return
for the aid they receive.[97]

6) Improve life and career opportunities for the poor – A
corollary of welfare reform, this is certainly the most
difficult, the most expensive, and the most important of our
proposals. Violent drug crime has been described as a
rational career choice for those so impoverished that their
job choices are virtually non-existent.[98] There must be
attractive and positive alternatives for the poor. Such
alternatives are more likely to be realized through the
private sector, than through typically wasteful and
inefficient government programs. Government may best serve
us all by getting out of our way and by letting families, not
politicians and bureaucrats, decide how to spend their
earnings.

Of course, the communities most afflicted by poverty and
violence, the inner cities, must begin, through home, church,
and school, to promote values that mitigate violence – among
such values, the work ethic, educational aspiration, delayed
gratification, respect for individual and property rights,
love of self, family, and community, and the sanctity of
life. Where public schools have brought valueless
bureaucracy, school vouchers hold promise of a renaissance of
inner city private and parochial schools, offering parents a
choice, cost effective educational opportunities that promote
values beneficial to society.[97]

To make the alternatives more attractive, it may be helpful
to remove profit from the illicit drug trade. While the
decriminalization of personal drug use by adults is
controversial, we believe that we must study such proposals.

7) Mitigate media violence – The role of media violence in
exacerbating violence in society is well documented.[55-57]
Rather than unconstitutional infringements of First Amendment
rights, it is parents who must exercise control over
children’s viewing habits and who must influence the media.
Parents should make their views known to producers and
advertisers when they are offended by sensationalized
newscasting and gratuitous violence in entertainment media.

8) Promote conflict resolution training – To offset the
deleterious effects of violence promoted in the media, we
believe that early in life children must learn the non-
violent means of conflict resolution.

9) End the scapegoating of guns and gun owners – It is
divisive and counter-productive to vilify America’s innocent
gun owners. Those who abhor guns must be reminded that half
of American households find legitimate reasons to own and
enjoy firearms, some for protection, some for recreation.[11]
Clearly, the abhorrence of guns (or gun owners) is _not_ the
dominant American paradigm. The vogue of describing gun
ownership as a pathology should pass, since gun ownership is,
in fact, a neutral or positive social phenomenon of half of
American households.

Guns are not charms that impel evil, neither are they
magically protective talismans. Guns are only powerful
tools. Fortunately, most citizens of our distressed society
are moral and responsible people in whose hands guns are the
safest and most effective means of protection against
criminals, crazies, and tyrants. The future will shine more
brightly if compassionate and thoughtful individuals join to
promote individual responsibility, personal freedom, and to
develop effective, long-term solutions to reduce violence in
America.

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