FROM DON KATES — FLAWED GUN LAWS HELP STALKERS VICTIMIZE WOMEN
Date: Apr 10, 2007 6:43 PM
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 1:39 PM
Subject: FROM DON KATES — FLAWED GUN LAWS HELP STALKERS VICTIMIZE WOMEN

A memo concerning women and guns by Don Kates follows John Lott’s and Sonya
Jones’ piece.
-Dan Gifford

“Gun free zones may be well intentioned … But time after time when these public shootings occur, they disproportionately take place in gun free zones.”
-John Lott

Flawed Laws Help Stalkers Victimize Women By John Lott and Sonya Jones ***
On Fox News
April 09, 2007
http://johnrlott.tripod.com/2007/FoxNewsStalkers040907.html
(Original story contains background links)

What do you do when the police can’t protect you? Police may be the single most important factor for reducing crime, but there is something the police themselves understand: They almost always arrive at the crime scene after the crime has occurred.

Expecting people to trust the police to protect them and to behave passively is a recipe for disaster.

The last couple of weeks have seen a couple prominent murders where restraining orders did women little good. Numerous news organizations, such as ABC News, have run headlines asking “How Do You Stop a Stalker From Killing You?”

Unfortunately, despite acknowledging that “many women find themselves on their own,” the media are drawing the wrong lessons. To simply advise that women “Get the hell away him” often doesn’t go anywhere near far enough.

With her tragic murder on Monday on the campus of the University of Washington, Rebecca Griego learned this the hard way. Twice she had filed for restraining orders against her abusive and physically violent former boyfriend, Jonathan Ghulam-Nabi Rowan, but the police didn’t know where he lived and could never serve him.

It wasn’t like they didn’t try, for in January they couldn’t even locate
Rowan for an outstanding warrant for a drunk driving conviction.

Rowan made Rebecca’s life hell. In police reports as well as her request for a restraining order, she described Rowan as a “suicidal alcoholic” who had “punched,” “slammed,” and “thrown” her to the ground.

To no avail, she moved a couple of times and changed her cell phone number. Nevertheless, on March 7th and 14th, Rowan called her at work, threatening both her and her dog. He then called and threatened Rebecca’s older sister.

But restraining orders often aren’t worth the paper on which they’re written, even when they are served.

For a stalker intent on killing his victim or committing suicide after the attack, the penalty for violating a restraining order is irrelevant. With Seattle police’s response time of seven minute for the highest-priority emergency calls, the police simply can’t be there to protect you even with a restraining order. Seven minutes can seem like an eternity.

With such rampant failures in the system, there is one piece of advice that could have saved Rebecca’s life: self-defense, get a gun.

Indeed, the University of Washington goes in the opposite direction and tries to protect people by declaring the campus a “gun free zone,” with
the school’s code of conduct banning the “possession or use of firearms
. . . except for authorized university purposes.”

Gun free zones may be well intentioned, but good intention is not enough. It is an understandable desire to ban guns. After all, if you ban guns from an area, people can’t get shot, right? But time after time when these public shootings occur, they disproportionately take place in gun free zones.

It is the law-abiding good citizens who would only use a gun for protection who obey these bans. Violating a gun free zone at a place such as a public university may mean expulsion or firing and arrest, real penalties for law-abiding citizens. But for someone intent on killing others, adding on these penalties for violating a gun free zone means little to someone who, if still alive, faces life in prison.

Unfortunately, instead of gun free zones ensuring safety for victims, ensuring that the victims are unarmed only makes things safer for attackers.

One of us conducted research with Bill Landes at the University of Chicago that examined all the multiple-victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1999. We found that when states passed right-to-carry laws, these attacks fell by 60 percent. Deaths and injuries from multiple-victim public shootings fell on average by 78 percent.

To the extent that attacks still occurred, they overwhelmingly happened in the special places within right-to-carry states where concealed handguns were banned. The University of Washington is a good example of this.

There is no evidence that there are any more accidental gun deaths that
occur from right-to-carry laws. Permit holders also tend to be extremely law-abiding.

Ironically, earlier this year University of Washington President Mark Emmert began consideration of making the school’s ban somehow apply to students living off campus as well. Students are sitting ducks on campus, but the change would make them vulnerable off campus as well.

Not only did the gun free zones fail here, but it is extremely unlikely that Rowan could even legally own a gun. As a non-resident alien Rowan needed an alien firearms license to even own a gun, something that rarely granted.

There is an even simpler point to make. It is the physically weakest, women and the elderly, who benefit the most from having a gun to protect themselves. The U.S. Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey has shown for decades that resistance with a gun is by far the safest course of action when one confronts a criminal.

Good intentions don’t necessarily make good rules. What counts is whether the rules ultimately save lives. Unfortunately, too many rules primarily disarm law-abiding citizens, not criminals.

***John Lott is the author of the forthcoming book, Freedomnomics and
the Dean’s visiting Professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton.
Sonya Jones is a lawyer
——————————————————–
A memo concerning women and guns by Don Kates:
C. Concealed Carry — A Woman’s Issue?
We address the impetus for the “shall issue” revolution at length
below. But one point deserving emphasis here is that it began in the tenure of two women, Marian Hammer and Tanya Metaksa, as president of the NRA, and
head of its lobbying arm, respectively. To them concealed carry was a
women’s safety issue. By the mid-1980s they had made it a major NRA goal.

To understand their concern requires understanding how victimization of
women differs from male criminal victimization. Roughly one third of
American women will be raped sometime in their lives. Sometimes such
victims are also murdered. Yet women are far less often murdered than are
men – because women are far less often involved in the high risk criminal
behavior which characterizes most murder victims. The presence or absence
of guns is largely irrelevant to whether people living high-risk criminal
lives will be murdered. In the absence of guns innumerable other murder
weapons can be substituted. Consider Russia whose many decades of anti gun
policies were so stringently enforced that guns are rarely used in
murders. Despite a virtual absence of guns, for as long as we have data
Russia’s murder rates have been as much as four times higher than
American.

Unlike most male murder victims most females have not chosen high risk life styles. Rather they die because they were so unfortunate as to be targeted by sexual predators, stalkers or former mates who turned out to be violent aberrants. Help rarely comes from such politically correct solutions as restraining orders or cell phones. Almost all murderers have life histories of violence, felony, psychopathology and/or substance abuse. Does anyone seriously believe a man with such a life history who wants to kill a woman – and often ends up killing himself as well – will be deterred by a possible contempt sanction for violating a restraining order?

If a woman is so menaced, physical resistance is generally the only course – and the only or best means of resistance is a gun for it is the one weapon that allows a weaker victim to resist a stronger attacker. Analyses of available evidence discussed infra “reveal a great deal of self-defensive use of firearms; in fact, more defensive gun uses than crimes committed with firearms.” It may be instructive to contrast two sets of instances:

1.Outcomes of Criminal Attack – Women Without Guns To limit examples to manageable proportions we describe only ones in which: (a) the victims were store clerks; (b) they were murdered, not just raped; and (c)judicial proceedings ensued:
* New Mexico: suit against convenience store by family of clerk
kidnapped, raped and murdered Jan. 12, 2005;

Texas: James Allridge executed August 26, 2004 for abduction, rape and
murder of convenience store clerk ;

Tennessee: having been incarcerated for raping the same clerk, defendant
upon release from prison kidnapped her from her job and killed her.
(Whether he raped her could not be determined as her body was never
found);

Louisiana: murder of motel clerk by co-employee to cover up robbery

Indiana: convenience store clerk kidnapped, raped and tortured to death

Texas: Convenience store clerk abducted, raped and murdered.

Idaho: Convenience store clerk abducted, raped and murdered.,

2. Outcomes of Criminal Attack – Women With Guns
The following examples appeared in 2004 publications:
Eugene, OR Register-Guard 6/25/04: convenience store clerk gave robber all
the money she had. When he threatened to kill her unless she gave him more
she drew her gun, chased him out of the store, then shot the back window
out of his getaway car. He and his driver were shortly apprehended.

Johnson City (TN) Press 1/8/04: Alerted when a man broke through her porch
door and began kicking in her front door, a 56 year old Erwin, TN woman
routed him with two warning shots. He was arrested minutes later.
Daily Oakland (MI) Press 3/20/04: Though he had not supported Michigan’s
new “shall issue” law the Farmington, Michigan Police Chief changed
his mind when a woman walking to her office at 6:30 a.m. was menaced by a
stranger who only backed off when she drew her gun from her purse. The gun
“probably saved her life,” Chief Dwyer commented.

Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun 3/22/04: Springfield, Ohio resident
MelanyYancey locked herself in her bedroom when two armed men broke into
her house. She fired a warning shot when they began breaking down her
bedroom door. They shot back but fled when one was shot in the ensuing gun
fight.

Detroit Free Press 4/29/04: Detroit businesswoman Barbara Holland was
returning to the home she shares with her 18 year old daughter one evening
when an armed man knocked her down as she was unlocking her front door.
“He looked surprised” she reported when she pulled a gun from her purse and shot him.

Belleville, Il. News-Democrat 8/6/04: Nina Sloan, 87, grabbed her gun and
her cane and hobbled toward her kitchen door when she heard a man breaking
it in. He fled when she fired a warning shot as he stuck his hand through
the broken glass to unlock the door.

Spokane Review 7/9/04: When a man broke into her home and attempted to
enter her bedroom Spokane, WA resident Lisa Hansen arrested and held him
at gun point for police.

The Tennessean 7/19/04 Two young women hid in a bedroom with a gun when
two men broke into their Nashville, TN home, but when one man entered the
bedroom they shot him and both intruders fled.

Southern Sentinel 8/11/04:: An 88 year old Ripley, Miss. Woman was raped
by a man who forced his way into her house but as he began ransacking it
she got her gun and shot him whereupon he fled only to be arrested later
in the day.

Orlando Sentinel 8/11/04: Confronted in her store by two gun wielding
robbers, Haines City, FL store owner Judy Foster shot one and both robbers
fled.

Arab Tribune 8/4/04:: Observing a man rummaging through her car an Arab,
AL woman armed herself and chased him away into the arms of the police.

Obviously Marian Hammer and Tanya Metaksa did not know of these 2004
instances when they began promoting “shall issue” laws in the 1980s.
Bur they knew of numerous similar ones which the NRA had been collecting for
decades.

Moreover Hammer and Metaksa were well aware of a highly publicized1966
program in which 3,000 civilian women received defensive handgun training
from Orlando, Fl. police. As of 1967, rape had dropped 88.2% in Orlando
and aggravated assault and burglary 25%. While rape gradually increased
again after the year-long program ended, five years later the rate was
still 13% below the pre-program level; during that same period rape ha d
increased 64% nationally, 96.1% in Florida and over 300% in the immediate
area around Orlando

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !