More Guns Less Crime (41 page)

10. Stories involving defensive uses of guns in the home are featured even more prominently. For example, four intruders forced their way into the home of two elderly women, struggled with them, and demanded their car keys. The attack stopped only after one of the women brandished her handgun ("Pistol-Packing Grandmas Honored by Sheriff," Associated Press Newswire, Feb. 16, 1997 2:30 p.m. EST, dateline Moses Lake, WA). In another case a twenty-three-year-old burglar "pummeled" a 92-year-old man and "ransacked]" his house. The burglar left only after the elderly man reached his gun ("Burglar Puts 92-Year-Old in the Gun Closet and Is Shot," New York Times, Sept. 7, 1995, p. A16). Although the defensive use of guns in the home is interesting, my focus in this book is on the effects of allowing citizens to carry concealed handguns.

11. Not all news stories of defensive uses involve shots being fired. For example, the Arizona Republic reported the following: "In January 1995, a permit-holder who lives in Scottsdale pulled a handgun from a shoulder holster and scared off two men armed with aluminum baseball bats who attempted to rob him near 77th Street and East McDowell Road. No shots were fired." ("In Arizona, High Numbers of Concealed-Weapon Permit Holders Are Found in the Suburbs," Arizona Republic, Mar. 17, 1996.)

12. "Mom Saves Self and Child with Handgun," Atlanta Constitution, Nov. 12, 1996, p. E2.

13. See Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 1997, p. Bl. Similarly, Pete Shields, Handgun Control, Inc.'s founder, wrote that "the best defense against injury is to put up no defense—give them what they want or run. This may not be macho, but it can keep you alive." See Pete Shields, Guns Don't Die, People Do (New York: Arbor, 1981).

14. Problems exist with the National Crime Victimization Survey both because of its nonrepresentative sample (for example, it weights urban and minority populations too heavily) and because it fails to adjust for the fact that many people do not admit to a law-enforcement agency that they used a gun, even defensively; such problems make it

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difficult to rely too heavily on these estimates. Unfortunately, this survey is the only source of evidence on the way the probability of significant injury varies with the level and type of resistance.

15. Lawrence Southwick, Jr., "Self-Defense with Guns: The Consequences," Managerial and Decision Economics (forthcoming), tables 5 and 6; see also Kleck, Point Blank.

16. For example, see David B. Kopel, The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1992), p. 155; and John R. Lott, Jr., "Now That the Brady Law Is Law, You Are Not Any Safer Than Before," Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 1, 1994, p. A9.

17. James D. Wright and Peter Rossi, Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms (Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter Publishers, 1986).

Examples of anecdotes in which people successfully defend themselves from burglaries with guns are quite common. For example, see "Burglar Puts 92-Year-Old in the Gun Closet and Is Shot," New York Times, Sept. 7, 1995, p. A16. George F. Will, in "Are We 'a Nation of Cowards'?" Newsweek, Nov. 15, 1993, discusses more generally the benefits produced from an armed citizenry.

18. See Wright and Rossi, Armed and Considered Dangerous, p. 150.

19. Ibid., p. 151.

20. Baltimore Sun, Oct. 26, 1991; referred to in Don Kates and Dan Polsby, "Of Genocide and Disarmament," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 86 (Fall 1995): 252.

21. Rebecca Trounson, "Anxiety, Anger Surround Return of Young Survivors," Los Angeles Times, Mar. 14, 1997, p. Al.

22. It is possible that both terrorists and citizens are worse off" because of the switch to bombings if shootings would have involved targeted attacks against fewer citizens.

23. David Firestone, "Political Memo: Gun Issue Gives Mayor Self-Defense on Crime," New York Times, Mar. 7, 1997, p. Bl.

24. Using an on-line retrieval search, it is easy to find many news articles and letters to the editor that repeat this common claim. For example, one letter to the Newark Star-Ledger (Oct. 12, 1996) stated that "over half the firearm homicides are committed not by criminals but by friends, family members, and lovers—people with no criminal record."

25. The sum of these percentages does not equal precisely 100 percent because fractions of a percent were rounded to the nearest whole percent.

26. Captain James Mulvihill recently testified before the U.S. Senate that "the greater L. A. area suffers under the weight of more than 1,250 known street gangs, whose membership numbers approximately 150,000. These gangs are responsible for nearly 7,000 homicides over the last 10 years, and injury to thousands of other people." (Prepared testimony of Captain James Mulvihill, commander of the Safe Streets Bureau for Sheriff" Block of Los Angeles County before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Apr. 23, 1997.)

27. I would like to thank Kathy O'Connell of the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority for taking the time to provide me with such a detailed breakdown of these data.

28. Many such murders also end up in the "undetermined relationship" category.

Probably the best known study of who kills whom is by Daly and Wilson. They examined nonaccidental homicide data for Detroit in 1972. In contrast to my emphasis here, however, they focused exclusively on trying to explain the composition of murders when relatives killed relatives. Of the total of 690 murders committed in Detroit in 1972, 243 (47.8 percent) involved unrelated acquaintances, 138 (27.2 percent) involved strangers, and 127 (25 percent) involved relatives. Of this last category, 32 (4.6 percent) involved blood relatives, and 80 (11.6 percent) victims were spouses (36 women killed by their husbands, and 44 men killed by their wives). The percentage of Chicago's murders involving relatives in 1972 was very similar (25.2 percent), though by the 1990—95 period the percentage of murders involving relatives had fallen to 12.6 percent (7.2 percent involving spouses). For the information about Detroit, see Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, Homicide (Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter Publishers, 1988).

29. Kathy O'Connell of the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority provided these data.

30. See also Daniel D. Polsby, "From the Hip: The Intellectual Argument in Favor of Restrictive Gun Control Is Collapsing. So How Come the Political Strength of Its Advocates Is Increasing?" National Review (Mar. 24, 1997): 35—36.

31. In these seventy-five largest counties in 1988, 77 percent of murder arrestees and 78 percent of defendants in murder prosecutions had criminal histories, with over 13 percent of murders being committed by minors, who by definition cannot have criminal records. This implies that 89 percent of those arrested for murders must be adults with criminal records, with 90 percent of those being prosecuted. See Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Reports, "Murder in Large Urban Counties, 1988," (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 1993), and "Murder in Families" (Washington, DC: US. Department of Justice, 1994); see also Don B. Kates and Dan Polsby, "The Background of Murders," Northwestern University Law School working paper (1997).

32. The average victim had 9.5 prior arraignments, while the average offender had 9.7. David M. Kennedy, Anne M. Piehl, and Anthony A. Braga, "Youth Violence in Boston: Gun Markets, Serious Youth Offenders, and a Use-Reduction Strategy," Law and Contemporary Problems 59 (Winter 1996): 147-96.

33. The relationship between age and sex and who commits murders holds across other countries such as Canada; see Daly and Wilson, Homicide, pp. 168—70.

34. James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnstein, Crime and Human Nature, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), p. 177. Wilson and Herrnstein also discuss in chapter 3 evidence linking criminality to physical characteristics. The surveys that they summarize find evidence that criminality is more likely among those who are shorter and more muscular.

35. Ibid., pp. 204—7; see also Michael K. Block and Vernon E. Gerety, "Some Experimental Evidence on the Differences between Student and Prisoner Reactions to Monetary Penalties," Journal of Legal Studies 24 (Jan. 1995): 123-138.

36. John J. Dilulio, Jr., "The Question of Black Crime" The Public Interest 117 (Fall 1994): 3-24; and "White Lies About Black Crime," The Public Interest 118 (Winter 1995): 30-44.

37. While there are many sources of misinformation on the deaths that arise from handguns, some stories attempt to clarify claims. For example, a Nando Times (www.nando. com) news story (Oct. 26, 1996) reported that "during a campaign visit here this week, President Clinton met with the widow of a police officer killed in the line of duty and later during a political rally cited his death as a reason to outlaw armor-piercing bullets. What he did not tell his audience, however, was that the officer died in an auto accident, not from gunfire.... Neither a bulletproof vest nor a ban on 'cop-killer bullets,' however, would have saved Officer Jerome Harrison Seaberry Sr., 35. He was responding to a radio call for backup on Christmas night last year when 'he lost control of his vehicle, going too fast ... hit a tree head-on, and the vehicle burst into flames,' said Lake Charles Police Chief Sam Ivey. Armor-piercing bullets, Ivey said, 'had nothing to do with it.'"

38. National Center for Injury Prevention, Injury Mortality Statistics (Atlanta: Centers for Disease Control, 1999).

39. Editorial, "The Story of a Gun and a Kid," Washington Times, May 22, 1997, p. A18.

40. Joyce Price, "Heston Attacks Trigger-Lock Proposal: Actor Begins Role as NRA Executive," Washington Times, May 19, 1997, p. A4.

41. Currently, the impact of gun locks is difficult to test simply because no state requires them. Seven states (California, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Minnesota, New Jersey, and North Carolina) and the District of Columbia have laws regarding proper storage, but these laws do not mandate a particular method of storage.

42. W Kip Viscusi, "The Lulling Effect: The Impact of Child-Resistant Packaging on Aspirin and Analgesic Ingestions," American Economic Review (May, 1984): 324—27.

43. The Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice recently released a

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government-funded study entitled "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms," by Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig. The study used poll evidence from 2,568 adults in 1994 to claim that "20 percent of all gun-owning households had an unlocked, loaded gun at the time of the survey. The report cited the accidental deaths of 185 children under the age of 14, and many times that number of accidental shootings. For each death, there are several accidental shootings that cause serious injuries." Fifty percent of respondents were said to have stored an unloaded gun that was unlocked. The Justice Department's press release quoted Attorney General Janet Reno as claiming that "these results show how dangerous unlocked guns are to children. That's why we must pass the child-safety-lock provision in the President's Anti-Gang and Youth Violence Act of 1997, now before Congress. A locked gun can avoid a family tragedy." Ignoring problems with the survey itself, several problems exist with these conclusions. First, the report does not show that those 20 percent of gun-owning households with "unlocked, loaded" guns were responsible for the 185 firearm deaths of children. We would be interested to know if the 20 percent of households included children. Second, the report only concentrates on the costs, while ignoring any possible benefits. One question that might be useful in considering benefits is this: Where did those with unlocked, loaded guns tend to live? For example, were they more likely to live in urban, high-crime areas? (See Department of Justice, PRNewswire, May 5, 1997.)

Unfortunately, despite issuing press releases and talking to the press about their findings, neither the Department of Justice, nor professors Cook or Ludwig, nor the Police Foundation, which oversaw the government grant, have made any attempt to release their data at least by August 1997.

44. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995). A common claim I will discuss later is that "more than half of all firearm deaths occur in the home where the firearm is kept." As noted in the text, since one-half of all firearm deaths are suicides, this should come as no surprise.

45. Editorial, Cincinnati Enquirer, Jan. 23, 1996, p. A8. Others share this belief. "It's common sense," says Doug Weil, research director at the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, in Washington. "The more guns people are carrying, the more likely it is that ordinary confrontations will escalate into violent confrontations" (William Tucker, "Maybe You Should Carry a Handgun," the Weekly Standard, Dec. 16, 1996, p. 30).

46. For these arguments, see P. J. Cook, "The Role of Firearms in Violent Crime," in M. E. Wolfgang and N. A. Werner, eds., Criminal Violence (Newbury, NJ: Sage Publishers, 1982); and Franklin Zimring, "The Medium Is the Message: Firearm Caliber as a Determinant of Death from Assault," Journal of Legal Studies 1 (1972): 97-124.

47. P. J. Cook, "The Technology of Personal Violence," Crime and Justice: Annual Review of Research 14 (1991): 57, 56 n. 4. Cook reported 82,000 defensive uses for an earlier period. The irony of Cook's position here is that his earlier work argued that the National Crime Victimization Survey radically underreports other violence-related events, including domestic violence, rapes, and gunshot woundings linked to criminal acts; see Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns (Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter Publishers, 1997).

It is easy to find people who argue that concealed handguns will have no deterrent effect. H. Richard Uviller writes that "more handguns lawfully in civilian hands will not reduce deaths from bullets and cannot stop the predators from enforcing their criminal demands and expressing their lethal purposes with the most effective tool they can get their hands on." See H. Richard Uviller, Virtual Justice: The Flawed Prosecution of Crime in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 95.