Article we all need to know.

                  Posted By: Robertj       Date: 7:50 p.m. 5/9/99 

We need to stay sharp on our facts. Read up Taking Aim at Gun Control 

By Daniel D. Polsby and Dennis Brennen  October 30, 1995 

Click here to see the executive summary. 

(Online versions of Heartland Policy Studies are are stripped of citations and graphics. If you would like to receive a complete version by snail mail, 
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In the twenty-year period between 1973 and 1992, the number of privately owned firearms in the United States increased 73 percent--from 122 million to nearly 
222 million. Handgun ownership increased by 110 percent, from 37 million to 78 million. In 1994, the latest year for which data are available, there were 231 
million firearms in private hands in the U.S., 82 million of them handguns. 

Advocates of gun control see in these statistics not the wide distribution of the tools for self-defense or recreation, but rather an enormous potential for private violence. Indeed, if gun owners were substantially more violent than their fellow citizens, the streets would run red with blood. Or more precisely, country lanes would run red with blood, since gun ownership is considerably more prevalent in rural than in urban areas. The fact that rates of violent crime are much higher in urban areas than in rural and suburban areas is just one of many pieces of evidence suggesting that the simplistic, but popular, theory that "guns cause crime" is wrong. 

Gun owners are not, in fact, more violent than citizens who do not own guns. Indeed, the evidence suggests that they tend to be a bit less prone to violence. Gun owners are better-educated, more middle-class, more affluent, and somewhat older than average Americans. Gun owners have roughly the same personality 
characteristics as non-owners, and indeed it would be strange if they did not. As psychologists Edward Deiner and Kenneth Kerber put it: 

Since about one-half of the households in the U.S. contain a gun, it seems somewhat unrealistic to attribute severe abnormal characteristics to the 
average gun owner (unless one is willing to see considerable pathology in most people). 

The prevalence of firearms in private hands constitutes a practical limitation on what gun control laws can be expected to accomplish. Some of the more phobic 
anti-gun activists have urged that all guns should be "outlawed"; but such proposals are no more sensible than asking that toasters or automobiles or pet dogs be "outlawed." At most, one could hope for regulation of firearms ownership and rules for their use, but the feasibility of strict mandates, let alone the proscription of whole classes of commonplace household items, is dubious indeed. 

Nevertheless, we do not lack for laws. It is commonly estimated that more than 20,000 federal, state, and local firearms laws are on the books in this country, and more are being written all the time. There is little evidence that these laws have restrained crime.  

Nor is there much reason to believe that still more laws would produce additional public benefit. The reasons why are examined in this study. 

Part 1 offers an overview of several pivotal issues in the gun control debate. First, we briefly address ten popular misunderstandings about crime, guns, and gun control. Then we consider three of these misunderstandings in further depth, concluding: 

The problem of "friends killing friends" is much less troublesome than the media and other gun control advocates would have us believe. The evidence suggests 
that this problem is more accurately described as criminals killing criminal associates. 

Mandatory waiting periods (such as those required under the Brady law) affect legitimate users of firearms more than criminals and the mentally ill, against 
whom waiting periods are supposedly directed. 

Drive-by shootings are already against the law; in fact, they are potential death penalty cases under the Illinois criminal code. There is no reason to believe that additional gun control laws aimed at drive-by shootings will provide any increment of deterrence. 

In Part 2, The Record on Gun Control, we ask: What has it achieved for Americans to date? Many respected researchers-- James Wright and Peter Rossi, Gary 
Kleck, Brandon Centerwall, and others--have found little or no direct connection between gun control and crime. A case study of Chicago's experience with gun 
control closes this section. 

Part 3, The Economics of Gun Control, helps explain why the record on gun control is so poor. Gun control laws intend to affect both the supply and the demand for guns in the illegal market by raising the price of obtaining guns in the legal market. Economics-the science of supply and demand--offers an ideal framework for understanding the likely outcome of gun control policies. 

We offer a summary and concluding remarks in Part 4. 

Gun Control: An Overview of the Issues 

Ten Myths vs. Reality 

Gun control is an issue surrounded by (some would say submerged in) myth and misunderstanding.  We present here ten myths that are most frequently raised . . . and, from our perspective, most commonly misunderstood. 

Myth No. 1: Guns cause crime. A review of the academic literature shows that there is no relationship between the number of guns and the amount of crime in the United States. Criminologists Gary Kleck and E. Britt Patterson reported in 1993 their finding that gun ownership had no significant effect on the rates of murder, assault, robbery, or rape in the U.S. Between 1973 and 1992, the rate of gun ownership in the U.S. increased by 45 percent (from 610 guns per 1,000 people to 887). The homicide rate during that period fell by nearly 10 percent (from 9.4 homicides per 100,000 people to 8.5). 

Myth No. 2: Gun control laws reduce crime. Firearms have been regulated with increasing stringency in the United States for most of the past thirty years. 
Nevertheless, the number of firearms in private hands has increased continuously by many millions per year; handguns have become an increasing proportion of 
privately owned firearms; and rates of crime, violent crime, and homicide have shown no relationship to the passage or enforcement of gun laws. In their 1993 
research, Kleck and Patterson analyze the impact of 19 gun control measures on six categories of violence. In ninety of the resulting 102 relationships, they found no significant correlation between gun laws and violence. 

Myth No. 3: Gun control laws stop friends from killing friends. Most murderers and most victims of homicide have criminal records. They are likely to have 
other criminals as friends and acquaintances. So while it is true that in many cases of homicide the offender and victim are known to each other, it is not true that these "friends killing friends" are the plain ordinary folks often portrayed in anti-gun propaganda. "It is not a slander on the few truly innocent and highly sensationalized victims," writes Dr. Edgar A. Suter and his colleagues, "to note that the overwhelming predominance of homicide victims' are as predatory and socially aberrant as the perpetrators of homicide." Indeed, according to City of Chicago data, the largest and fastest-growing category of relationship between killer and victim is "non-relative, non-friend acquaintance." 

Myth No. 4: Gun control laws keep criminals from obtaining guns. In surveys of prisoners, a majority report that they had owned a handgun prior to their 
imprisonment. But only 7 percent of criminals' handguns are obtained from legitimate retail sources.  Three-fourths of felons surveyed report they would have no trouble obtaining a gun when they were released, despite legal prohibitions against firearms ownership by convicted felons. 

Myth No. 5: Required waiting periods would prevent some of the most vicious crimes. The Brady waiting period law imposes waiting periods on 
handguns--the least-deadly type of firearm--while imposing no such restriction on much more deadly, substitutable weapons such as rifles or shotguns. While 
handguns are preferred by criminals because of their portability and concealability, not every criminal who planned to use a handgun will abandon his criminal plans when confronted by a waiting period. Indeed, for reasons discussed in more detail below (see "Why Waiting Periods Fail"), it is entirely possible that waiting period laws could increase the number of both killings and nondeadly woundings. 

Myth No. 6: Guns don't work as self-protection against criminals. In fact, guns are about as valuable to civilians as they are to police officers, and for the 
same reason. According to criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, every year adults use guns for protective purposes 2.5 million times. As many as 65 lives are protected by guns for every life lost to a gun. Each year, potential victims kill between 2,000 and 3,000 criminals; they wound an additional 9,000 to 17,000.  Moreover, mishaps are rare. Private citizens mistakenly kill innocent people only thirty times a year, compared with about 330 mistaken killings by police. Criminals succeed in taking a gun away from an armed victim less than 1 percent of the time. The real utility of defensive firearms, moreover, must surely be far greater, and would be measured not by how many people were shot or even how often a gun was fired, but rather by the deterrent effects of a civilian being armed. 

Myth No. 7: Guns aren't needed as self-protection. About 83 percent of the population will be victims of violent crime at some point in their lives, and in any given year serious crime touches 25 percent of all households. The odds are not likely to improve; there is only one police officer on patrol for every 3,300 people.  And the courts repeatedly have ruled that government has at most a limited duty to protect individual citizens from crime. An illustrative case is Warren v. District of Columbia, in which three rape victims sued the city under the following facts: Two of the victims were upstairs when they heard the other being attacked by men who had broken in downstairs. From an upstairs telephone, the two roommates made several calls to the police. Half an hour passed and their roommate's screams ceased; they assumed the police must have arrived. In fact, however, their calls had been lost in the shuffle while the roommate was being beaten into silent acquiescence. When her roommates went downstairs to see to her, as the court's opinion describes it, "For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands" of their attackers. 

Having set out these facts, the District of Columbia's highest court nevertheless exonerated the District and its police, noting that it is 
a fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police 
protection, to any individual citizen. 

Myth No. 8: Gun control laws are especially needed to prevent the purchase of Saturday Night Specials and "assault weapons." Inexpensive handguns are involved in only 1 to 3 percent of violent crimes; criminals generally prefer larger caliber and more expensive handguns. Moreover, in the past fifty years no 
civilian has ever used a legally owned machine gun in a violent crime. And despite their repeated use by drug dealers on television and movies, no Uzi has ever been used to kill a police officer in the United States. Even some gun control advocates concede that so-called assault weapons play a minor role in violent crime. In 1991, 1992, and 1993 combined, there were more than 2,500 criminal homicides in the City of Chicago--only three of which were perpetrated with a true, military-style, "assault weapon." 

Myth No. 9: Gun control laws are especially needed to prevent gun accidents in the home. "Gun-control advocates have sought to create the impression 
that firearm accidents involving children are a large and growing problem," writes the Independence Institute's David Kopel. "Many people mistakenly conclude that children die frequently in gun accidents and that sharp restrictions on gun ownership are necessary to address the problem." In fact, however, the number of gun accidents involving both children and adults has fallen dramatically. 

In 1970, 2,406 Americans died from firearms accidents. By 1991, that number had fallen to 1,441--even as the number of guns increased dramatically. Between 
1970 and 1991, the annual rate of fatal gun accidents was cut in half, from 1.2 to 0.6 per 100,000 Americans. The death rate from firearms accidents is lower than that from accidental drowning (1.6 per 100,000 in 1991), inhalation and ingestion of foreign objects (1.3), and complications from medical procedures (1.0). 

Myth No. 10: Gun ownership is not a constitutional right. The Second Amendment reflects the founders' belief that an armed citizenry (called the general militia ) was a necessary precaution against tyranny by our own government and its army. The idea that government has a constitutional right to disarm the general citizenry is totally foreign to the intent of the Constitutional framers. Samuel Adams, for example, expressed in the Massachusetts convention his intention that "the said Constitution be never construed . . . to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms." David Kopel summarizes the legal scholarship on this issue: 

In the field of legal scholarship, the primary question has been answered: the Second Amendment was plainly intended to guarantee a right of individuals to possess arms. The essential purpose of this guarantee was not to protect sporting uses of guns, but to facilitate resistance to criminal governments, 
which were seen as simply a larger case of resistance to individual criminals. 

Who Kills Whom? 

Joseph D. McNamara, one-time chief of the San Jose, California, police department, and a member of the board of directors of Handgun Control Inc., has written that "a gun can do strange things to people." He offers this grim picture: 

Take a successful businessman who ordinarily has complete control of his emotions. If you stick a gun in his hand when he is under stress, the feeling of 
power can become overwhelming. This man becomes fearless. He is a different person, and his otherwise good judgment may suddenly desert him. At any moment, this killer personality can present a danger to his wife and loved ones. 

Mr. McNamara does not document this extraordinary story, and the present authors would be grateful to receive any confirmation that there may be anything other 
than a very occasional incidence of unremarkable Jekylls magically transforming into bug-eyed Hydes because of a gun. The evidence, as it now exists, is very much the other way. People who commit murders with guns usually have a police record, as do their victims. 

The evidence usually given in support of the McNamara hypothesis is that homicide offenders often know or are related to their victims. That is true, but it hardly proves that these offenders are successful people ordinarily in control of their emotions. Much more plausibly, it shows that members of the criminal underworld often know one another, and that people with predatory, impulsive patterns of behavior attack relatives and associates as well as strangers. The often-repeated proposition that murder usually occurs between friends and family members is bogus--as Adam Walinsky has recently called it, "a twenty-year fraud" perpetrated by statistical distortions and misrepresentations. 

In a recent, fairly typical year (1993), fewer than 3 percent of Chicago homicides involved victims in a marital relationship with the offenders, and only 3 percent involved blood relatives. On the other hand, in 25 percent of cases the victim and offender were described by police as "acquaintances" but not "friends," and there were a similar number of cases where no previous relationship at all between victim and offender could be established. 

Those data surely understate the criminal histories of both offenders and victims. Only about two-thirds of homicides are ever "cleared" (that is, result in someone being arrested for the crime). Homicides resulting from domestic quarrels are cleared at a much higher rate than killings between gang members or strangers.  Furthermore, an unknown proportion of both offenders and victims who are shown as having no police record do in fact have such a record; they only appear not to because of statutes that expunge the records of juvenile offenders. 

In other words, it is not true that homicides are commonly committed by ordinary citizens who just fly off the handle. Very seldom are successful people who 
ordinarily have "complete control" of their emotions implicated in such crimes (or, for that matter, in any violent crimes). Most homicides are perpetrated by and upon socially marginal individuals, many of whom, because of prior run-ins with the law, are already forbidden by law to possess firearms. Controlling the 
behavior of this cohort through additional gun control legislation is nearly hopeless. 

Why Waiting Periods Fail 

When the Brady law was wending its way toward passage last year, much was said about the potential of waiting periods to restrict the flow of firearms into the 
hands of persons who should not possess them. It was theorized that the burden on legitimate users would be small, while the inconvenience to criminals and lunatics should keep at least a few of them from impulsively buying a gun. Since the law was passed, various estimates of its effectiveness have been circulated, all premised on the dubious idea that each sale denied represented a life saved or a crime averted. 

The reality is undoubtedly quite different, though admittedly difficult to measure. For one thing, the burden on legitimate users is not necessarily de minimis if the need for a firearm develops suddenly, as happened, for example, during the Los Angeles riot several years ago. Civil disturbances of that kind are rare, but when they occur, those caught in the crossfire may very well need immediate access to a firearm for self-defense or to defend family members. A delay of days, or even hours, can and has resulted in otherwise avoidable deaths. 

But aside from being burdensome, waiting period laws are apt to be ineffective. People who want guns for illegal purposes are unlikely to be deterred by such a low hurdle as a five-day waiting period, or indeed a waiting period of any other length. As Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker has noted, [Waiting periods] do little to keep guns out of the hands of teenagers and criminals who obtain their weapons underground, where guns are sold to anyone who can pay for them. This is the route by which arsenals of weapons have found their way into inner cities and elsewhere in the U.S. Guns continue to be smuggled into the illegal market from abroad, from military stock, and from crooked gun dealers. 

Confronted with a waiting period, a prospective firearms abuser has two options: either abandon his plans in frustration or find a substitute weapon. Substitutes 
include obtaining a gun illegally--buying one from a fence or other illicit dealer or simply stealing it outright; obtaining it legally by "borrowing" it from a relative or associate; obtaining an unregulated weapon, such as a knife or club; or, in the outrageously counterproductive case of the Brady law, simply buying a rifle or shotgun instead of a handgun. 

No theory predicts how such substitution behavior actually affects rates of violence or the number of resulting crimes. But it is difficult to see how a waiting period law could make matters better, and easy to see how it might make things worse. 

Substituting knives for guns. When confronted by someone with a gun, most people, victims and criminals alike, usually surrender, and for this reason they are less likely to be injured than when confronted by someone who is either unarmed or armed with a weapon other than a gun. If waiting period laws cause criminals to substitute lesser weapons for guns, one could expect to see more incidents in which woundings occurred. 

Substituting shoulder arms for handguns. Two-thirds of the firearms in private hands are rifles or shotguns, which shot-for-shot are two to three times deadlier than handguns. (Handguns nevertheless are preferred by criminals because of their portability and concealability.) The prospect of appreciable numbers of psychopaths buying, "borrowing," or stealing shoulder weapons in preference to handguns should be deeply troubling to any policymaker. Yet it is almost certainly to be expected from the Brady law, which imposes waiting periods on the least-deadly firearms while imposing no such restriction on much more deadly substitutes. 

Summary. It is entirely possible that waiting period laws could result in increased numbers of killings and non-lethal woundings. The former should increase because a larger proportion of criminals might be armed with rifles or shotguns, and the latter should increase because more criminals might be armed with knives or weapons other than a gun. 

Gun Control and Drive-By Shootings 

Because of their seemingly random nature and increasing frequency, drive-by shootings are among the most disturbing of crimes. In many cases these begin as affairs of honor, part of the tit-for-tat of the criminal life. They also may have an economic motive, as when rival gangs try to perfect a monopoly over drug sales or other illegal activity in a particular geographic area. Innocent bystanders are often injured or killed, and gun control advocacy groups seldom miss an opportunity to take maximum propaganda advantage of incidents of this kind. 

It can hardly be disputed that "something should be done." But attempts to reduce drive-by shootings by restricting access to firearms are doomed to failure. It must be borne in mind that in all cases of drive-by shooting, the weapons themselves and the use to which they are being put are already illegal and carry heavy penalties. 

Under Illinois law it is a felony to carry a loaded handgun in a vehicle. If the offenders are under 18, mere possession of a handgun is a Class A misdemeanor, 
punishable by a sentence of up to one year in prison. If the offenders are under 21 and convicted misdemeanants, or adjudged delinquent, their possession of any 
firearm or ammunition is a violation, punishable by a sentence of up to one year. If the offenders are convicted felons, possession of any firearm is a Class 3 felony, punishable by a sentence of two to five years. 

If the drive-by shooters are carrying an automatic weapon, they are in violation of federal law and face a penalty of up to ten years imprisonment. Possession is also illegal under Illinois law. (It is more likely, however, that the offenders were carrying semi-automatic weapons, often mistakenly referred to as "assault weapons" although mechanically no different from many popular hunting and target rifles.) 

The prospect of all these penalties appears not to deter drive-by shooters, and why should it? They are, after all, on their way to commit first-degree murder, 
punishable by no less than a death penalty. Further gun control laws could hardly be expected to offer more deterrence than that. 

The Record on Gun Control 

What is the evidence that gun control laws affect rates of violent crime? Scholars seem to be deeply and often bitterly divided on this question. Whether one thinks there is abundant evidence of efficacy or none at all depends on how one evaluates the many studies that purport to show this effect. 

The basic questions here are empirical, but--as is commonly the case with social science research, where data can be gathered but experiments cannot be 
conducted--the facts are difficult to ascertain and have become deeply embroiled in controversy. In any event, facts must first of all be organized by a theory. 

The theory favoring gun control begins with two plausible and related observations: First, that firearms facilitate the infliction of death or great bodily harm because they inflict more dangerous wounds than weapons that might be substituted for them; and second, that many killings or grave woundings are not the product of a literal intention to inflict death or great bodily harm, but are merely the byproduct of the fact that a gun was handy and was used. Colin Loftin and his colleagues have called this latter proposition the "Zimring-Cook" effect, referring to the work of researchers Frank Zimring and Philip Cook. 

The opposite theory, attributable primarily to Florida criminologist Gary Kleck, stresses that there are two sides to the strategic ledger. Guns do inflict dangerous wounds, but they are also useful for self-defense. Moreover, while firearms are, wound-for-wound, more dangerous than other kinds of weapons, hostile confrontations with firearms are much less likely to result in woundings in the first place than face-offs without arms or with lesser weapons. Because firearms have the potential to reduce the variance between antagonists' capacity to do one another harm, they might well contribute to a world in which there is less predatory behavior rather than more. 

Many people believe that the complete disappearance of firearms would make for a more peaceable world. Still, there is no reason to believe that there would be a 
simple, monotonic relationship between diminishing firearms and diminishing violence. For example, if every year we could eliminate 10 percent of the nation's existing stock of firearms, and in Year One, the 10 percent that we eliminated were those carried by police officers, few people would expect to see a 10 percent reduction, or indeed any reduction at all, in violence. Of course no one proposes disarming the police first. But the point of the illustration is more general: Potential victims and their protectors, as well as aggressors, are disarmed by gun control laws. It is not the sheer number of firearms, but how and to whom they are distributed, that determines whether there is more violence and crime or less. 

Empirical Evidence: An Overview 

Much of the "evidence" on which both pro- and anti- gun control partisans rely is simplistic. It is noted, for example, that England has fewer guns and much less crime than the U.S. . . . but Switzerland has guns in almost every home, and much less crime than the U.S. Moreover, there are more guns per person in the American South than in the North, and more homicides . . . but there are more guns per person in rural areas than in urban areas, and fewer homicides. 

The thoughtful person immediately recognizes that England, Switzerland, and the United States, as well as urban and rural areas within the United States, differ in many ways other than in just the prevalence of guns. There are differences in culture, history, and ethnic mix, to name only a few. More variables must be taken into account. 

One method social scientists use to account for the effects of many variables is "multiple regression analysis." It is a statistical method that attempts to disentangle the effects of each of many variables that are thought to affect the phenomenon to be explained. If a variable seems to be explanatorily useful, it is termed "statistically significant." 

In the most comprehensive and careful such analysis to date, criminologists Gary Kleck and E. Britt Patterson reported in 1993 their findings on the relationship 
between guns, violence, and gun control. Kleck and Patterson sought to avoid the many methodological weaknesses that had in the past plagued studies of the effect of gun control laws on violent crime rates. Their analysis "covered all forms of violence which involves guns, encompassed every large (over 100,000 population) city in the nation, and assessed all major forms of existing gun control in the U.S." 

The preponderance of statistical evidence contradicts the notion that more gun control laws will reduce crime. If they could, we would have a simple solution to the crime problem. But they do not, and thus we do not. Believing that gun control will reduce crime is wishful thinking. 

Wishful Thinking, and Five Studies That Have Supported It 

There is no shortage of wishful thinking among gun control advocates and the nation's popular media. Nearly twenty years ago, the National Institute of Justice commissioned a three-year study to take stock of what was then known about firearms, crime, and violence in the United States. The authors of that study neatly summarized the popular case against privately owned firearms. The indictment, they wrote, includes the following particulars:
(1) Guns are involved in an astonishing number of crimes in this country. 
(2) In other countries with stricter firearms laws and fewer guns in private hands, gun crime is rare. 
(3) Most of the firearms involved in crime are cheap Saturday Night Specials, for which no legitimate use or need exists. 
(4) Many families acquire a gun because they feel the need to protect themselves; eventually they end up shooting one another. 
(5) If there were fewer guns around, there would obviously be less crime. 
(6) Most of the public also believes this and has favored stricter gun control laws for as long as anyone has asked the question.
(7) Only the gun lobby prevents us from embarking on the road to a safer and more civilized society. 

Information for the Future.  
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