—-Original Message—–
From: Joe Brower <>
Date: Saturday, November 18, 2000 11:35 AM
Subject: sacfla Gary Kleck/David Kopel meeting notes (long)

a detailed writeup of the
>11/15 Indepence Institute meeting in Oakland, California. Feel free
>to forward as desired:
>
>***
>
>It was a good meeting Nov 15 at the Independent Institute. There were
>easily 100 people, and probably more, packed into a relatively small
>conference room. Following is my far-too-long info from my notes:
>
>Recommended Books and web sites from this meeting:
>
>That Every Man Be Armed by Steven Holbrook
>
>Fire and Smoke by Michael Pross (sp) (pronounced with a long O).
> These above two were recommended as good background reading into
> the Second Amendment and its origin.
>
>www.independenceinstitute.org – good online resource for RKBA info, to read
>their newsletter, and other related resources
>
>One particular page: http://www.2ndlawlib.org/journals/okslip.html – All
>the Way Down the Slippery Slope – about gun control in England and lessons
>for America – supposed to be an excellent read
>
>Origin of the Second Amendment by David Young
>
>Gary Kleck
>First up to speak was Gary Kleck. Most people know he is a well-known
>criminologist, with at least two books to his name. Point Blank was one,
>and they were selling another at the meeting – TARGETING GUNS: Firearms and
>Their Control.
>
>Gary talked about various things, including how good research should start
>with evidence and move to a conclusion (as opposed to some “researcher’s”
>infamous starting with a conclusion, then finding evidence to support it).
>Gary recommended that in determining which is the most reliable research to
>base your opinions on, you will want to look at how the researcher comes to
>their conclusions. Look for those who use GOOD research to produce reliable
>results.
>
>He commented that guns are instruments of power – they can help those in
>control remain in control, but they are equally good at empowering the
>weaker among us.
>
>He commented that in a confrontation, a criminal with a gun quite
>frequently will not be concerned if someone gets hurt (ie, the victim), so
>criminal use of guns will more often lead to human harm.
>
>However, and I was interested in this – when a victim uses a gun for
>defense, first of all the attacker will quite often want to leave at that
>point. But additionally, the victim more often does NOT want to see anyone
>hurt, not even the agressor. So victim use of guns for protection is less
>likely to lead to harm to a human than agressor use of guns.
>
>A couple statistics that Gary gave: first is the commonly-quoted 2.5
>million defensive uses of guns per year. The second was the HIGHEST
>reliable estimate of CRIMINAL uses of guns per year is only 1 million.
>
>An interesting turn on thought that Gary made is that a criminal getting
>and having a gun is not likely to increase crime. (The criminal is going to
>commit the crime anyway.) The most significant impact is that crime is more
>lethal, creating an increase in the number of homicides.
>
>Gary stated that to make a strong case for gun control, they need to
>overcome the increase in lethality. Compare this to when victims have a
>gun, they will experience less physical harm, and see less property loss
>(due to increase in the number of criminals that “run away” on seeing the
>gun). Overall, Gary sees the net good and net bad of gun control as being a
>wash overall – for the amount of good accomplished, there is just as much bad.
>
>Another set of statistics: currently we have about 270 million guns in
>private citizens’ hands. We have about 3/4 million guns stolen per year,
>estimated.
>
>Good gun control – it must determine a way to distinguish between the good
>guy and the bad guy. He was looking at it as a “if you are going to have
>gun control, don’t infringe on the ‘good guy’s’ right to have a gun in the
>process of stopping the ‘bad guy’ from getting one.” Talked about having to
>draw a line and say “these people on this side are ‘good’, and those people
>on that side are ‘bad’”.
>
>Gary sees longer prison sentences for those who commit crimes with guns as
>NOT being a panacea. His take on it is that the more people you have locked
>up for longer periods, the fewer people total you can lock up. There is
>only so much space in prison, so at some point you will not be able to lock
>up someone who needs it because someone else is serving the last 2 years of
>a 20 year sentence. And he said you can’t just build more prisons, because
>eventually you will fill them up, too. (Don’t know if I agree with it, but
>that was what Gary was saying.) He also said that because of this, longer
>prison sentences mean you are trading certainty of punishment with severity
>of punishment. He sounded to me like he was pushing for shorter, but
>guaranteed, sentences in order to have the criminals KNOW that if they get
>caught, they are doing time.
>
>He went on to say that “Crime is a young man’s game.” Statistically, most
>crimes are committed by men 13 to 25, or maybe 29 years old. 18 is about
>the peak of a criminals career. After that, statistically, the amount of
>crime committed starts diminishing. So if a criminal does a 5 year sentence
>from age 18, it will prevent some crime, but keeping him locked up after
>age 25 “you aren’t preventing him from doing much anyway.” Basically it is
>the Hot Young Stud vs the Old Fart – and Gary wants to see the HYSs locked
>up, and not focus so much on the Old Farts.
>
>Some popular strategies that don’t work:
>-Lawsuits against gun makers. They want gun makers to make safer guns,
>using smart gun technology. Only one problem – the smart gun technology
>doesn’t even exist yet.
>
>-Waiting periods. They may stop an occassional homicide, but mostly they
>are ineffectual. Murderers are not “last minute shoppers.” They don’t go
>get a gun to commit a crime “right now.”
>
>-Add on laws – those where the penalty is x years, but if you use a gun
>while doing the crime it’s x+10 years. Generally are not a deterrent.
>
>Smart strategy is to focus on the high frequency criminals. Go after the
>one with the most priors. So if you have a first-timer that did a crime,
>and you have another guy with a rap sheet a mile long, go for the most you
>can against the ‘big rap sheet’ guy, and don’t push so hard for the 50-year
>sentence on the first timer. (At this time, Gary was also talking about how
>the lawyers get kudos for the “big prison sentences,” so they tend to try
>to prosecute them longer and harder.)
>
>David Kopel
>David Kopel was up next. He is with the Independence Institute. They were
>selling one of his books at the meeting: Guns: Who Should Have Them?
>
>David spoke more on the self-defense angle of gun ownership. The gun
>control issue has frequently been couched in the “sporting” aspect – the
>controllers don’t (yet) attempt to infringe on the sporting use of guns.
>
>As an aside, some predictions on gun control and other legislation and the
>next president. Gore apparently found the gun control issue was a liability
>during the election, so at some point he started distancing himself from
>it. His campaigners tried to tell folks in some areas that “Gore is not
>going to try to take away your guns.” So if he gets elected, you will
>probably see him lay low on the gun control issue. He will probably push
>for more laws, but not very hard.
>
>On the other hand, if Bush gets elected, he may have to support some
>control legislation. However, the other things you will probably see: he
>despises trial lawyers, so he will most likely support product liability
>reform law. This makes sense, especially from the point of view of the gun
>makers – guns are THE MOST regulated product in the US. It is incredible to
>try to sue them for the criminal use of their legally produced and sold
>product. If the suits against them manage to get thru, it will be open
>season on any manufacturer of any product – starting with the alcohol and
>automobile industries. There are practically no manufacturers that want to
>see these suits continue or succeed.
>
>Additionally, we have seen the tobacco companies fighting (and losing)
>their legal battles. They have a LOT of $$, they can fight forever. On the
>gun companies – they DON’T have the money to fight. And they are severely
>hampered by this reality.
>
>The interesting thing about the suits against the gun companies is that
>each and every one of them assumes NO defensive use value from the private
>ownership of guns.
>
>As to the self-defense use of guns: no matter how much Gore wanted to
>separate himself from gun control, he simply could NOT support the use of
>guns for self defense.
>
>Self defense is the pivotal point on gun control. Recommended reading at
>this point was the site referenced above – All the Way Down the Slippery Slope.
>
>In England, they talked about thinking of the gun as a sporting tool or “a
>golf club.” Well, the problem with that approach is that as soon as people
>are killed with a “sporting tool,” it becomes hard to legitimize the
>ownership of these “sporting tools” (remember the mantra “If is saves just
>one life, it’s worth it”) – with a sporting tool, there is very little
>defense against this argument.
>
>England, until a few years ago, had low gun crime. However, with the
>instigation of sever licensing and restricted ownership, gun crime has
>skyrocketed.
>
>HCI, etc, talk about saving lives from accidents, and the value of gun
>control from that aspect. However, the pro-gun stance response can be that
>defensive use of guns reduces occupied home invasion, and prevents deaths
>during attacks. (Deb here: so do you want to save one life from accidental
>death at the cost of ten, or more, in robberies?)
>
>HCI is mortally offended by the concept of defensive use. (Deb again: I
>guess they would rather see me dead than the criminal attacking me. Go
>figure. Does this mean they LIKE seeing proportionally more criminals
>roaming the country?)
>
>If HCI were TRULY interested in the “moderate licensing” they SAY they are
>interested in, then concealed carry permits SHOULD be completely acceptable
>- the applicant is fingerprinted, IDed, has a background check run on them,
>certified mentally competent, frequently certified competent with a
>handgun. HCI should have no problem with this. Except that they do. Which
>tends to lead us to see their true colors – the unspoken (and unadmitted)
>desire to eliminate all private ownership of handguns.
>
>And their “guns cost xx dollars in criminal damages each year” statement
>totally ignores the benefits (and therefore prevention of loss of dollars)
>from defensive use of guns. So they quote a number, but that is a
>one-sided, non-inclusive number using incomplete data.
>
>Q&A
>That was the end of the prepared talks. Then came a Q&A session. Some
>things from that:
>
>What difference in impact was seen in Kenesaw, GA (where every homeowner is
>required to have a gun on the premises) vs Morton Grove, IL (where they
>banned gun ownership)?
>David Kopel: Really, there was not much impact seen overall in either case.
>Kenesaw was a place where everyone pretty much already owned guns. There
>was also a clause that allowed conscientous objectors to abstain from
>ownership (which probably not many did). But they already had almost 100%
>gun ownership. So for a while there was an 80% drop in robberies, simply
>from the publicity reminding the criminals that they may well face a gun,
>but that slowly crept back to what it had been before the law. As for
>Morton Grove – again, practically no-one owned a gun there anyway, so it
>wasn’t doing much to disarm citizens. They also had very low gun crime to
>begin with.
>
>Gary and David, and John Lott, are frequently quoted in debates, and the
>anti’s response on occassion has been “that’s been discredited.” How does
>one respond to that?
>Gary Kleck: It comes back to the validity of the research. Anyone can do a
>study and claim a result. The answer is to look at the methodology of the
>study, and determine how reliable the study is. You need to make decisions
>on the best available flawed and incomplete evidence. Consider the flaws on
>both sides and determine which flaws are less likely to impact the evidence
>and the results of the study.
>
>A comment made (don’t remember if it was Gary or David) during this
>session: John Lott’s research was NOT funded by anyone in any way related
>to the gun industry.
>
>And another comment (from audience): If we can’t trust a felon to own a gun
>for self defense, how can we trust him to be out of jail? (This came about
>after someone commented that a neighbor had some tires stolen from his car,
>and the police were asking about the value of the tires, since after a
>certain value, the crime becomes a felony. So some punk could go from petty
>theft to felon by a “mere misjudgement of what to steal”.)
>
>Another comment from David Kopel: England used to have relatively good
>crime rates. Now, assault, robbery, rape, and homicide rates in England are
>higher than in the US.
>
>Education is the key to improving support of the Second Amendment. If you
>want to change someone’s mind (like in the legislature), write them
>respectful letters with supporting documentation.
>
>Uniformly, waiting periods do not have any positive effect. Nor does
>registration.
>
>And one final comment from one of these fine gentlemen: John Lott has done
>some research: relative to rape and assault on women – there has been a
>slight increase since the Brady Bill was passed.
>
>And this concludes the notes I have. All in all, it was a very informative
>way to spend a couple hours. If you have a chance to listen to either of
>these fine men, please do.
>
>***
>
>- Joe Brower
>