More Guns Less Crime (3 page)

Similar trade-offs exist for gun-control issues, such as gun locks. As President Clinton has argued many times, "We protect aspirin bottles in this country better than we protect guns from accidents by children." 39 Yet gun locks require that guns be unloaded, and a locked, unloaded gun does not offer ready protection from intruders. 40 The debate is not simply over whether one wants to save lives or not; it involves the question of how many of these two hundred accidental gun deaths would have been avoided under different rules versus the extent to which such rules would reduce people's ability to defend themselves. Without looking at

data, one can only guess the net effects. 41 Unfortunately, despite the best intentions, evidence indicates that child-resistant bottle caps actually have resulted in "3,500 additional poisonings of children under age 5 annually from [aspirin-related drugs] ... [as] consumers have been lulled into a less-safety-conscious mode of behavior by the existence of safety caps." 42 If President Clinton were aware of such research, he surely wouldn't refer to aspirin bottles when telling us how to deal with guns. 43

Another common argument made in favor of banning guns involves the number of people who die from guns each year: there were 17,790 homicides and 18,169 suicides in 1992 alone. 44 Yet just because a law is passed to ban guns, it does not automatically follow that the total number of deaths will decline. Given the large stock of guns in the country, and given the difficulties the government faces in preventing other illegal items, such as drugs, from entering the country, it is not clear how successful the government would be in eliminating most guns. This raises the important question of whether the law would primarily reduce the number of guns held by law-abiding citizens. How would such a law alter the relative balance of power between criminals and law-abiding citizens?

Suppose it were possible to remove all guns. Other questions would still arise. Would successfully removing guns discourage murders and other crimes because criminals would find knives and clubs poor alternatives? Would it be easier for criminals to prey on the weakest citizens, who would find it more difficult to defend themselves? Suicide raises other questions. It is simply not sufficient to point to the number of people who kill themselves with guns. The debate must be over what substitute methods are available and whether they appear sufficiently less attractive. Even evidence about the "success rate" of different methods of suicide is not enough, because questions arise over why people choose the method that they do. If people who were more intent than others on successfully killing themselves previously chose guns, forcing them to use other methods might raise the reported "success rate" for these other methods. Broader concerns for the general public also arise. For example, even if we banned many of the obvious ways of committing suicide, many methods exist that we could never really control. These substitute methods might endanger others in ways that shootings do not—for example, deliberately crashing one's car, throwing oneself in front of a train, or jumping off a building.

This book attempts to measure the same type of trade-off for guns. Our primary questions are the following: Will allowing citizens to carry concealed handguns mean that otherwise law-abiding people will harm each other? Will the threat of self-defense by citizens armed with guns primarily deter criminals? Without a doubt, both "bad" and "good" uses

of guns occur. The question isn't really whether both occur; it is, rather, Which is more important? In general, do concealed handguns save or cost lives? Even a devoted believer in deterrence cannot answer this question without examining the data, because these two different effects clearly exist, and they work in opposite directions.

To some, however, the logic is fairly straightforward. Philip Cook argues that "if you introduce a gun into a violent encounter, it increases the chance that someone will die." 45 A large number of murders may arise from unintentional fits of rage that are quickly regretted, and simply keeping guns out of people's reach would prevent deaths. 46 Others point to the horrible public shootings that occur not just in the United States but around the world, from Tasmania, Australia, to Dunblane, Scotland.

The survey evidence of defensive gun use weighs importantly in this debate. At the lowest end of these estimates, again according to Philip Cook, the U.S. Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey reports that each year there are "only" 110,000 defensive uses of guns during assaults, robberies, and household burglaries. 47 Other national polls weight regions by population and thus have the advantage, unlike the National Crime Victimization Survey, of not relying too heavily on data from urban areas. 48 These national polls should also produce more honest answers, since a law-enforcement agency is not asking the questions. 49 They imply much higher defensive use rates. Fifteen national polls, including those by organizations such as the Los Angeles Times, Gallup, and Peter Hart Research Associates, imply that there are 760,000 defensive handgun uses to 3.6 million defensive uses of any type of gun per year. 50 Yet even if these estimates are wrong by a very large factor, they still suggest that defensive gun use is extremely common.

Some evidence on whether concealed-handgun laws will lead to increased crimes is readily available. Between October 1, 1987, when Florida's "concealed-carry" law took effect, and the end of 1996, over 380,000 licenses had been issued, and only 72 had been revoked because of crimes committed by license holders (most of which did not involve the permitted gun). 51 A statewide breakdown on the nature of those crimes is not available, but Dade County records indicate that four crimes involving a permitted handgun took place there between September 1987 and August 1992, and none of those cases resulted in injury. 52 Similarly, Multnomah County, Oregon, issued 11,140 permits over the period from January 1990 to October 1994; only five permit holders were involved in shootings, three of which were considered justified by grand juries. Of the other two cases, one involved a shooting in a domestic dispute, and the other involved an accident that occurred while a gun was being unloaded; neither resulted in a fatality. 53

12/CHAPTER ONE

In Virginia, "Not a single Virginia permit-holder has been involved in violent crime." 54 In the first year following the enactment of concealed-carry legislation in Texas, more than 114,000 licenses were issued, and only 17 have so far been revoked by the Department of Public Safety (reasons not specified). 55 After Nevada's first year, "Law enforcement officials throughout the state could not document one case of a fatality that resulted from irresponsible gun use by someone who obtained a permit under the new law." 56 Speaking for the Kentucky Chiefs of Police Association, Lt. Col. Bill Dorsey, Covington assistant police chief, concluded that after the law had been in effect for nine months, "We haven't seen any cases where a [concealed-carry] permit holder has committed an offense with a firearm," 57 In North Carolina, "Permit-holding gun owners have not had a single permit revoked as a result of use of a gun in a crime." 58 Similarly, for South Carolina, "Only one person who has received a pistol permit since 1989 has been indicted on a felony charge, a comparison of permit and circuit court records shows. That charge,... for allegedly transferring stolen property last year, was dropped by prosecutors after evidence failed to support the charge." 59

During state legislative hearings on concealed-handgun laws, the most commonly raised concerns involved fears that armed citizens would attack each other in the heat of the moment following car accidents or accidentally shoot a police officer. The evidence shows that such fears are unfounded: although thirty-one states have so-called nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws, some of them decades old, there exists only one recorded incident of a permitted, concealed handgun being used in a shooting following a traffic accident, and that involved self-defense. 60 No permit holder has ever shot a police officer, and there have been cases where permit holders have used their guns to save officers' lives.

Let us return to the fundamental issue of self-protection. For many people, the ultimate concern boils down to protection from violence. Unfortunately, our legal system cannot provide people with all the protection that they desire, and yet individuals are often prevented from defending themselves. A particularly tragic event occurred recently in Baltimore:

Less than a year ago, James Edward Scott shot and wounded an intruder in the back yard of his West Baltimore home, and according to neighbors, authorities took away his gun.

Tuesday night, someone apparently broke into his three-story row house again. But this time the 83-year-old Scott didn't have his .22-caliber rifle, and police said he was strangled when he confronted the burglar.

"If he would have had the gun, he would be OK," said one neighbor

who declined to give his name, fearing retribution from the attacker, who had not been arrested as of yesterday....

Neighbors said burglars repeatedly broke into Scott's home. Ruses [a neighbor] said Scott often talked about "the people who would harass him because he worked out back by himself." 61

Others find themselves in a position in which either they no longer report attacks to the police when they have used a gun to defend themselves, or they no longer carry guns for self-defense. Josie Cash learned this lesson the hard way, though charges against her were ultimately dropped. "The Rockford [Illinois] woman used her gun to scare off muggers who tried to take her pizza delivery money. But when she reported the incident to police, they filed felony charges against her for carrying a concealed weapon." 62

A well-known story involved Alan Berg, a liberal Denver talk-show host who took great delight in provoking and insulting those with whom he disagreed. Berg attempted to obtain a permit after receiving death threats from white supremacists, but the police first attempted to talk him out of applying and then ultimately rejected his request. Shortly after he was denied, Berg was murdered by members of the Aryan Nations. 63

As a Chicago cabdriver recently told me, "What good is a police officer going to do me if you pulled a knife or a gun on me right now?" 64 Nor are rural, low-crime areas immune from these concerns. Illinois State Representative Terry Deering (Democrat) noted that "we live in areas where if we have a state trooper on duty at any given time in a whole county, we feel very fortunate. Some counties in downstate rural Illinois don't even have 24-hour police protection." 65 The police cannot feasibly protect everybody all the time, and perhaps because of this, police officers are typically sympathetic to law-abiding citizens who own guns. 66

Mail-in surveys are seldom accurate, because only those who feel intensely about an issue are likely to respond, but they provide the best information that we have on police officers' views. A 1996 mail survey of fifteen thousand chiefs of police and sheriffs conducted by the National Association of Chiefs of Police found that 93 percent believed that law-abiding citizens should continue to be able to purchase guns for self-defense. 67 The Southern States Police Benevolent Association surveyed its eleven thousand members during June of 1993 (36 percent responded) and reported similar findings: 96 percent of those who responded agreed with the statement, "People should have the right to own a gun for self-protection," and 71 percent did not believe that stricter handgun laws would reduce the number of violent crimes. 68 A national reader survey

conducted in 1991 by Law Enforcement Technology magazine found that 76 percent of street officers and 59 percent of managerial officers agreed that all trained, responsible adults should be able to obtain handgun-carry permits. 69 By similarly overwhelming percentages, these officers and police chiefs rejected claims that the Brady law would lower the crime rate.

The passage of concealed-handgun laws has also caused former opponents in law enforcement to change their positions. Recently in Texas, "vocal opponent" Harris County District Attorney John Holmes admitted, "I'm eating a lot of crow on this issue. It's not something I necessarily like to do, but I'm doing it on this." 70 Soon after the implementation of the Florida law, the president and the executive director of the Florida Chiefs of Police and the head of the Florida Sheriff's Association all admitted that they had changed their views on the subject. They also admitted that despite their best efforts to document problems arising from the law, they have been unable to do so. 71 The experience in Kentucky has been similar; as Campbell County Sheriff John Dunn says, "I have changed my opinion of this [program]. Frankly, I anticipated a certain type of people applying to carry firearms, people I would be uncomfortable with being able to carry a concealed weapon. That has not been the case. These are all just everyday citizens who feel they need some protection." 72

If anything, the support among rank-and-file police officers for the right of individuals to carry guns for self-protection is even higher than it is among the general population. A recent national poll by the Lawrence Research group (September 21-28, 1996) found that by a margin of 69 to 28 percent, registered voters favor "a law allowing law-abiding citizens to be issued a permit to carry a firearm for personal protection outside their home." 73 Other recent national polling by the National Opinion Research Center (March 1997) appears even more supportive of at least allowing some law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns. They found that 53.5 percent supported "concealed carry only for those with special needs," while 45 percent agreed that permits should be issued to "any adult who has passed a criminal background check and a gun safety course." 74 Perhaps just as telling, only 16 percent favored a ban on handguns. 75

The National Opinion Research Center poll also provides some insights into who supports tighter restrictions on gun ownership; it claims that "the less educated and those who haven't been threatened with a gun are most supportive of gun control." 76 If this is true, it appears that those most supportive of restrictions also tend to be those least directly threatened by crime. 77