Wall Street Journal by John Lott
May 12, 1999

By John R. Lott Jr., a fellow in law and economics at
the University of Chicago School of Law. He is author of
“More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control
Laws” (University of Chicago Press, 1998).

Keeping their promise to President Clinton, Republican
leaders in Congress have moved quickly to consider a broad
range of gun-control laws in the wake of the Littleton
attack. Today the Senate will be debating and voting on a
range of new proposals, with the House Judiciary Committee
set to start hearings tomorrow. Mr. Clinton says that we
must “do something” and that he knows “one thing for cer-
tain”: If more restrictions had been enacted, “there would
have been fewer kids killed.”

But would more gun laws save lives? There are already a
large number of laws in place. The Columbine murderers,
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, violated at least 17 state
and federal weapons-control laws. Mark E. Manes, who
allegedly sold the handgun to Harris and Klebold, may have
violated at least one federal and one state law, and if
either of the killers’ parents knew their child possessed a
handgun, they would have run afoul of a Colorado law.
Nationwide there are more than 20,000 gun-control laws that
regulate everything from who can own a gun and how it can be
purchased to where one can possess or use it.

Regulations have both costs and benefits, and rules
that are passed to solve a problem can sometimes make it
worse. The biggest problem with gun-control laws is that
those who are intent on harming others, and especially those
who plan to commit suicide, are the least likely to obey
them. Mr. Clinton frames the issue in terms of whether
hunters are willing to be “inconvenienced,” but this misses
the real question: Will well-intended laws disarm potential
victims and thus make it easier for criminals? Potential
victims use guns more than two million times a year to stop
violent crimes; 98% of the time simply brandishing a gun is
sufficient to stop an attack. Crimes are stopped with guns
about five times as frequently as crimes are committed with
guns.

Consider, then, the costs and benefits of Mr. Clin-
ton’s main proposals:

Waiting periods. A three-day waiting period for
handgun purchases could not possibly have stopped the Lit-
tleton attack, which the killers had been planning for a
year. Mr. Clinton focuses on the general benefits from a
“cooling-off period,” and such benefits might exist. Yet
real drawbacks exist, too. Those threatened with harm may
not be able to quickly obtain a gun for protection. Experi-
ence with the Brady waiting period that lapsed last year, as
well as with state waiting periods, indicates that these
laws are either neutral or do more harm than good. In the
only academic research done on the Brady law, I found that
the national waiting period had no significant impact on
murder or robbery rates and was associated with a small
increase in rape and aggravated-assault rates.

Mandatory gun locks. This proposal, too, is unrelated
to the attack in Colorado; Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
would have known how to unlock their guns. Mr. Clinton
claims that gun locks will save lives, particularly those of
young children. In 1996 30 children under five died in gun
accidents–fewer than the number who died of drowning in
water buckets. With some 80 million Americans owning 240
million guns, the vast majority of gun owners must be ex-
tremely careful or such accidents would be much more fre-
quent.

More important, thousands of children are protected
each year by parents or other adults using guns to defend
themselves and their families. Mechanical locks that fit
either into a gun’s barrel or over its trigger require the
gun to be unloaded; and locked, unloaded guns offer far less
protection from intruders. Thus requiring locks would
surely increase deaths resulting from crime. Gun locks may
make sense for parents who live in low-crime areas, but this
should be a matter of individual choice.

Prison sentences for adults whose guns are misused by
someone under 18. Parents are already civilly liable for
wrongful actions committed by their children, but Mr.
Clinton proposes a three-year minimum prison term for anyone
whose gun is used improperly by any minor, regardless of
whether the gun owner consents to or knows of the use. This
is draconian, to say the least, the equivalent of sending
Mom and Dad to prison because an auto thief kills someone
while driving the family car.

New rules for gun shows. The Clinton administration
has provided no evidence that such shows are important in
supplying criminals with guns. What’s more, it is simply
false to claim that the rules for purchasing guns at a gun
show are any different from those regarding gun purchases
anywhere else. Dealers who sell guns at a show must perform
the same background checks and obey all the other rules that
they do when they make sales at their stores. Private sales
are unregulated whether they occur at a gun show or not.

If, as Mr. Clinton proposes, the government enacts new
laws regulating private sales at gun shows, all someone
would have to do is walk outside the show and sell the gun
there. To regulate private sales, the government would have
to register all guns. Those who advocate the new rules for
gun shows should be willing to acknowledge openly if their
real goal is registration.

Age limits. Mr. Clinton proposes a federal ban on
possession of handguns by anyone under 21. Under a 1968
federal law, 21 is already the minimum age to purchase a
handgun, but setting the age to possess a handgun is a state
matter. While some people between 18 and 21 use guns im-
properly, others face the risk of crime and would benefit
from defending themselves. My own research indicates that
laws allowing those between 18 and 21 years of age to carry
a concealed handgun reduce violent crimes just as well as
those limited to citizens over 21.

Background checks for purchasers of bomb-making materi-
al. This will have little effect, simply because few items
are likely to be covered. No one seriously discusses in-
cluding fertilizer, used to make the bomb that killed 168 in
Oklahoma City in 1995, or propane tanks like the ones found
after the Littleton massacre. There are simply too many
common household items that can be used to make bombs.

Much of the debate over gun control these days is
conducted without regard for facts. For example, the press
reproduces pictures of a Tech-9, the so-called assault
pistol used in the Columbine attack. The pictures show a
much larger ammunition clip than was actually used, making
it look as frightening as possible. Few reports even men-
tion that at most one of the 13 Littleton victims was killed
with this gun. In spite of all the rhetoric and despite its
appearance, this “assault weapon” functions no differently
from other semiautomatic pistols sold in the U.S. It is no
more powerful, it doesn’t shoot any faster, and it doesn’t
shoot any more rounds. One pull of the trigger fires one
bullet.

Good intentions don’t necessarily make good laws. What
counts is whether the laws will ultimately save lives. The
real tragedy of Mr. Clinton’s proposals is that they are
likely to lead to the loss of more lives.