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Fifth Response to ‘Del. Weldon Says, "I
can tell that Sarah Brady is a good woman"’ Phil
Lee1 Oct
26, 2003 (rev. 12/29/04) [ Op Eds ] On Oct. 8, Del. Weldon (R) from
District 3B published the article "Guns And
Gun Violence"). The
issues and questions raised were both Constitutional and practical.
This note begins a "practical" response to his article rather than
continue a Constitutional one. One of the most horrifying
stories of my college days was the killing of Kitty Genovese on March 13,
1964. The story is linked by the following: http://web.archive.org/web/20030228112145/http://www.newsday.com/extras/lihistory/8/hs818a.htm A striking part of this story
was the depraved indifference to her screams for help shown by her neighbors
in New York to repeated knife attacks. What kind of people would ignore
Kitty's cries over a half hour period with her killer returning again and
again to stab her? Her neighbors would not even call the police until
far too late. The lesson from this crime and
so many more is that there are evil people in our society and not all of them
are thugs. Some are our nice neighbors who will turn their backs
on us when we need help the most. Some of those
neighbors will not even dial "911". And, even if they
do, there are many examples of police standing by while murders
happen. The most memorable recent example is the shootings at
Columbine High School -- the following quotes from "60 Minutes"
broadcast on 4/17/2001 tells it all: Ms. DAWN ANNA (Parent): If you're going to tell my child
to stay put, you're coming to get her, then either go in there and do
something or take off the uniform and find another job. But that day you were
a cop, and that day you chose to stand by and listen to homicide. Ms. FLEMING: There was no one in that school that had a
gun other than the two killers. And no one pursued them. No one tried to
engage them. Mr. DON FLEMING (Parent): And in essence, they
[police] chased them into the school and then let them just kill at
will, knowing that they were killing. Ms. FLEMING: For almost 20 minutes, she [Fleming's
victim daughter] waited. Twenty minutes. That's a long time for someone to
have the opportunity to come in and make a difference. So, even the police may not
protect us. By
contrast, consider the recent event:
"Cops seek
shooter who saved girl, 16,"DAN SHINE AND BEN SCHMITT, Wednesday, October
22, 2003, FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS: A man was beating a 16-year-old girl with a pipe Wednesday
morning on Detroit's west side. Suddenly, the man was dead, shot several times by a passenger
in a passing car. . . . It
appears from this report that a 16-year old girl is alive today because an
armed individual intervened to stop an attack. This report is so
untypical of how firearms are used to defend. Most defensive gun uses
(DGUs) are not reported in the news -- you need a body to make the news and
this case has a body. Bodies
tend to get produced rarely in DGU by decent people -- in most cases of DGUs
the gun is not fired (surveys report between 2 and 10% of cases of DGUs is
the gun fired see: http://www.guncite.com/kleckandgertztable1.html
-- notice that the reference reports in the table presented by the link are
academic surveys by independent researchers). Frequently, for DGUs
where a gun is not fired, no reports to the police are filed (if you file a
report, you will incur legal expenses and harassment by the police
typically). Even
cases of DGUs by private citizens are seriously undercounted by official UCR
data collected by the FBI. Professor Gary Kleck has concluded that the number
of civilian legal defensive homicides (CLDHs) with guns per year is typically
7.1% to 12.9% of the reported murder rate (approximately five times the FBI's
"justifiable homicide with a gun" figures). Part of the
reason these CLDHs are under-reported by the FBI is that the FBI bases its
reports on initial classification of the homicide and Police tend to charge
individuals unless there is clear evidence the killing was justified.
We get some idea of the scope of this under-reporting from Time magazine
which published the article "Death by Gun" July 17, 1989. That article reported 199 murders
(charges since trials had not yet been held) and 14 CLDHs (6.6% of gun
homicides) for the week of 1-7 May. A year later, Time
followed-up their report with the article "Death
by Gun: One Year Later", Time,
May 14, 1990, to see how the courts had handled the cases. They
reported that there were now 28 CLDHs (13.1% of gun homicides), an increase
of 100% on the original report with at least 43 cases not yet adjudicated at
the one-year later follow-up. Gun owners feel we had better be
prepared to take care of ourselves. Not only is it our responsibility,
but we'd be foolish to count on society for help. But some promote the
notion that preparing to meet violence with a gun creates more risks than it
solves. They mistakenly claim that owning a gun makes people inclined
to violence, places family members of the gun owner at risk, and puts society
at risk. They are wrong and we start the process of identifying
practical reasons why they are wrong. As Del. Weldon said in his article,
"both sides of the question can point to studies and analyses that
support their particular argument." It seems almost pointless to
point to studies and analyses in response, but Del. Weldon also says he is
"looking for the logical, rational public policy debate on this
question" and I can't think of any way to join that rational policy
debate on this question without pointing to evidence that I believe to be
relevant including studies and analyses. The evidence from studies and
analyses is overwhelmingly against gun control laws and, recently, the Center
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed that there is no
evidence to confirm reduction of violence from gun control (see "First Reports
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Strategies for Preventing Violence: Firearms
Laws" and a press
conference). In fact, the CDC report says
"Evidence was insufficient to determine the effectiveness of any of
these laws ...." The CDC has funding many research efforts to
justify gun control measures and these efforts were so biased that Congress
stopped funding their efforts. It is ironical that the CDC employed an
"independent nonfederal panel" of scientists to look at their
funded studies and many others to find these studies did not give sufficient
evidence of whether gun control laws were effective against violence. A
rough equivalent would be for the Catholic Church to support an independent
panel of religious experts to announce that there was no evidence in
scripture to justify the doctrine of Papal Infallibility announced by the
first Vatican Council of 1870. The announcement from this panel
of scientific experts is as significant in debunking the bogus science of gun
control advocates as the publications of a few interested historians who
debunked claims that Americans were not extensively armed in Colonial times
(see Bellesiles for an introduction to this
topic). It is hard to overstate the political ramifications of the CDC
result. Thousands of laws passed to attack violence now stand with no
rational justification as to their effectiveness. It is true that the other side
has their politically motivated research with desired conclusions driving
their analyses. Many of their efforts are understood to be “sagecraft”
(efforts aimed at buttressing predetermined positions, not at discovering the
truth) as discussed in Professor Gary Kleck's article "Degrading Scientific Standards
to Get the Defensive Gun Use Estimate Down," Journal on Firearms,
#11. In a previous response, I
referred to the a prime example of such “sagecraft papers, the article
'Effects of Maryland’s Law Banning “Saturday Night Special” Handguns
on Homicides,' by Daniel W. Webster, Jon S. Vernick, and Lisa M. Hepburn, Am
J Epidemiol, Vol. 155, No. 5, 2002.
That paper is so blatantly wrong that one must conclude gross lack of
scientific competence or the paper was dishonestly biased (see the white paper for a discussion of errors). The easiest technical error of
the Webster-Vernick-Hepburn paper to understand is that the authors used the
wrong data for analyzing a handgun ban. The data they used contained
all firearms homicides in Maryland obtained from the CDC and that data
included long gun homicides (with rifles and shotguns). The 9%
reduction of homicides they claim as benefit of the handgun ban is almost
entirely due to a decrease of long gun use over the period. In fact,
long guns were used in 328 of 3220 murders or 10.2% of all murders over the
period 1981-1988. Long gun use declined to 16 out of 588
murders or 2.7% of total murders in 1996. Handgun murders increased
from 241 in 1988 to 405 in 1996 -- a 68% increase. Handgun use for
murder increased in absolute numbers and as a percent of the total and total
murders increased during the period too. Long gun use decreased in
absolute numbers and as a percentage of the total. Had the 1988
ban reduced the availability of handguns, one would expect there to be
decrease in total murder or a increase in alternative methods. That
increase didn't happen. Yet, the Webster-Vernick-Hepburn paper asserts
the handgun ban was successful. Their mistake was too simple for
serious researchers to make and it is difficult to believe the mistake is
innocent. This mistake was identified to one of the paper authors, Daniel
Webster, and to MAHA representatives in testimony to the Maryland House and
Senate in 2002. Yet, John Hopkins submitted testimony repeating their
claim (see their testimony offered last year) of a 9% reduction in homicides
by guns. Ceasefire (MAHA) continues the claim (slightly altered) to be
a 9% reduction between the two specific years 1990 and 1998 (see their press release). The MAHA claim is approximately
true, but deceptive. The CDC shows Maryland homicides from 1985 through
2000 as 228, 266, 281, 316, 373, 428, 426, 469, 481, 452, 459, 436, 417, 389,
410, 366. By selecting 1990 with 428 homicides and 1998 with 389
homicides, MAHA can claim a ((428-389)/428) * 100 = 8.9%
decrease. There is nothing magic about 1990 and 1998 and picking 1988
(the year the ban was enacted) and 1998 gives a 23% increase in
homicides. Also, between 1988 and 1998 handgun murders increased from
241 to 313, an increase of 29.9% (handgun murder data supplied by the
Maryland State Police). So we have here an example in the small of why there are
dueling analyses. In part, these dueling analyses exist because our
elected representatives are not willing (or able) to unravel the facts.
Either, our representatives wish to use the gun control debate as a political
tool to advance their interests (and there are people on both sides so
motivated), or they lack ability, or they are unwilling to invest the time
for understanding. Conniving, stupid,
or lazy – take your choice – does it really matter? BUT ... the recent announcement from the CDC allows
us to cut through dueling analyses. Gun control is without rational
justification. It will take several more notes
to establish a basis for evidence against gun control, but this note has
shown examples of the evils of gun control (1964 NYC "I don't want to
get involved while Kitty Genovese is stabbed to death" and Columbine
where the police stood by while kids were murdered), examples of the benefits
of armed decent citizens (the shooter
saves girl, 16 article above), and has pointed to a CDC panel of independent
experts who admitted they don't have evidence that gun control reduces
violence. We have also pointed to defects in understanding official statistics
with the FBI under-reporting of DFUs by civilians. 1 Phil Lee has a PhD in Mathematics and is active
in Maryland politics to support the right of the people to keep and bear arms. |