Eugene Volokh

Eugene Volokh: “GUNS IN AMERICA” AND DEFENSIVE GUN USES: So here’s a
riddle for you: How many times does the entire CBS “Guns in America”
presentation (see below for the link) mention defensive uses of guns?
Defensive uses; those are the reason why lots of people own guns, and
they are a huge part of the debate about guns in America. In two of
the school shootings for which CBS provides blurbs in the “School
Shootings” section (Pearl, Mississippi and Edinboro, Pennsylvania),
the shooters were actually apprehended by law-abiding citizens using
guns of their own. Studies estimate the number of defensive uses in
the country at 60,000 to 2.5 million per year (yes, the range is that
broad; it’s hard to figure these things out). You know, those
defensive uses. How many times does the report point to either
specific defensive gun uses, or statistics on defensive gun uses? (I
don’t count the statement that “In 1995, 1 in 12 students in a
national survey reported carrying a firearm for fighting or
self-defense at least once in the previous 30 days,” which says
nothing about actual uses, only carrying for the purpose of use;
refers to conduct that’s largely illegal, since it presumably
involves people who are mostly too young to get concealed carry
licenses; and combines carrying for offensive and defensive
purposes.) It would be unsporting to give the answer away, but I will
give you a hint: If you answered “1,” your answer would be too high.

Eugene Volokh: ANOTHER ITEM FROM THE CBS “GUNS IN AMERICA” SERIES
(see below for the link): The “Kids and Guns” icon will take you to a
page that promises “more facts on guns and juveniles”; and then the
first icon there tells you that “For 10 to 24 year olds, firearms are
the second leading cause of death — trailing only unintentional
deaths (which include motor vehicle accidents and drownings).” Hmm;
why “24″? 18-to-24-year-olds don’t seem to be kids, and they don’t
seem to be juveniles. In fact, the 10-to-17-year-olds make up a bit
less than 21% of the 10-to-24-year-old range — the remaining 79% is
18-to-24-year-old adults. (Naturally, the lion’s share of firearms
deaths even among juveniles is among older juveniles,
15-to-17-year-olds; once again, my sources for this are the CDC’s
invaluable WISQARS.
<http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10.html> Likewise, some
of the other items under the “more facts on guns and juveniles” /
“Kids and Guns” include ages above the age of majority — 24, 20, 19.
One page reports that “Among young people 10 to 19 years old, there
were 1,308 suicides with guns in 1996″; might it be relevant that 589
– nearly half of the 1,308 — were among 18-to-19-year-olds (i.e.,
adults)? Now I don’t want to overstate the problem here — when the
pages report the numbers, they do candidly report the age range. But
the large ranges obscure the reality that patterns of gun deaths and
gun use vary greatly from 10-to-14-year-olds to 15-to-17-year-olds to
18-to-24-year-olds. And I am curious why the front pages promote the
information as involving “kids” and “juveniles,” and then the back
pages give statistics in which huge fractions of the deaths were
actually deaths of adults.

http://volokh.blogspot.com/2003_04_27_volokh_archive.html#200229463

Eugene Volokh: GUN DEATHS: CBSnews.com has an interesting interactive
feature on “Guns in America” — it’s on the right-hand side of the
screen here
<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/01/national/main551842.shtml>
(ignore the main story, which is unrelated to the subject). Here’s
what it says at the start of the “Gun Death & Laws” item:
The number and rate of firearm related deaths in the United States
have declined in the past decade. Still, 28,663 people died of
gunshot wounds in 2000 and the national rate of deaths by firearms
per 100,000 residents was 10.4. When you click on each state (“click
on each state to see the number of people killed by firearms”), it
gives you the number (e.g., for Vermont, “Firearm deaths, 2000: 55
(63 in ’98) Rate per 100,000: 9.2″).
Here’s my question — when you read that “28,663 people died of
gunshot wounds in 2000,” how many did you think were homicides? It
turns out that, even if you include accidents (fewer than 1000), the
number was a bit over 12,000. The remainder (16,586) were suicides
(16,049 by adults). Might it have been helpful for CBS to make this
clear to people? Suicides, after all, might be, in many people’s
eyes, morally different from homicides — do you, for instance, feel
the same sense of tragedy when you hear about a homicide (assume it’s
not in self-defense) than when you hear about a suicide? If you
don’t, then wouldn’t breaking out the suicides as a separate number
be more helpful than silently combining suicides and other deaths?
Also, suicides seem particularly unlikely to be sensitive to changes
in gun laws (and the section, judging by its “Gun Death & Laws”
title, seems to be suggesting a connection between gun deaths and gun
laws) — among other things, as I’ve mentioned before, since one can
commit suicide even more easily with a shotgun than with a handgun,
even a perfectly enforced total handgun ban doesn’t seem at all
likely to change the homicide rate much. So the numbers are
technically accurate — but quite misleading, unless most readers
will quickly understand that the “died of gunshot wounds” number
includes suicides as well as homicides and accidents. (The later
“Who’s At Risk?” section, to CBS’s credit, does separate different
kinds of gun deaths, but obviously some people will see the “Gun
Deaths & Laws” section but not the “Who’s At Risk?” section.)
http://volokh.blogspot.com/2003_04_27_volokh_archive.html#200229379