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EVERY 48 HOURS An
Analysis Of Assault Rifles An Analysis Of Assault Rifles Traced
To Crime In Maryland September
2006 authored
by CeaseFire Maryland Inc. Board Member Susan Peschin 5th comment on Ceasefire's
"EVERY 48 HOURS" Phil
Lee1 Jan 12, 2007
(rev. 3/8/08) [ Testimony
] On page 8 her document,
Ms. Peschin repeats one of the most outrageously false claims made by the
grabbers. It is: "According to a 2004
study, during the same four year period from 1998 to 2001, one in five law
enforcement officers killed in the line of duty were killed with assault
weapons.19" No Maryland police officer has been shot and killed with
a rifle since before 1980 – not any rifle; not even semi-automatic rifle
having some pistol grips or removable magazine or bayonet lugs or a flash
hider or . . . The real risks to
Maryland police officers are discussed in the paragraphs around "Risks to Police from Firearms". If Maryland, one of the most violent
states in the union, has so little demonstrated risk to police from
semi-automatic rifles, how can other states have a special peril? Rifles are used infrequently in
murder. They are used infrequently in
murdering police officers in all states.
Such murders are rare events – so rare that every one is widely
reported in the news media unlikely the more frequent murders of police
officer with handguns. The "one-in-five" number claimed by Peschin is
false and she knows it is false – she was around when refutations to the
claim were given in 2004, 2005 and 2006 testimony to the Maryland
legislature. FBI data shows that 30 years
ago, rifles were used for about the same proportion of police murders as are
used today. On a normalized
population basis, a police officer’s risk from murder is near a 100 year low. In her document’s section titled "History Lesson"
Ms. Peschin quotes approvingly from Dr. Aaron J. Westrick (Note 20, page 8),
whom she identifies as "Director of Research, Composite Development for
Second Chance Body Armor". Richard C. Davis, the President of
Second Chance Body Armor, Inc., describes Dr. Westrick's expertise a bit
differently in a 11/19/2004 Memo to NBC and Wall St. Journal responding to
allegations by them and others (see http://www.policeone.com/police-products/tactical/body-armor/press-releases/93763/
): "FACT - Westrick was
never a soft body armor expert. He's a sociologist, primarily hired to
conduct training seminars for law enforcement. Originally he did behavioral
research to partly support his PhD thesis. Later, he was also involved in evaluating
hard armor products designed by others." Dr. Westrick's confirms his education (see http://www.westrickphd.com/resume.htm
) as: Ph.D. - Sociology and Criminal Justice (1998), Wayne
State University, Detroit, MI M.S. - Criminal Justice (1986), Wayne State University,
Detroit, MI B.A. - Social Science (1982), Michigan State University,
East Lansing, MI in his own posted resume. Dr. Westrick was a
police officer who survived a shooting incident in part because of the body
armor he wore and he is qualified to comment on police tactics and to
evaluate incidents, but he lacks formal hard science education. It appears that he stretches truth (or he
is being misquoted) to say in 2002, "There appears to be an overall
increase in the use of rifles to kill officers in tactical situations and on
patrol assignments." To
illustrate the error in this claim, we give FBI counts of officers killed
with firearms from 1990 through 2005 (see Table 26, page 30 for 2002 at http://www.fbi.gov/filelink.html?file=/ucr/killed/02leoka.pdf
, Table 28 for 2005 at http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/killed/2005/table28.htm
, and Table 3 for 1996 at http://www.fbi.gov/filelink.html?file=/ucr/killed/96killed.pdf
)
|
Year
|
90 |
|
|
|
|
95 |
|
|
|
|
00 |
|
|
|
|
05 |
|
Handgun |
48 |
50 |
43 |
51 |
67 |
43 |
50 |
50 |
40 |
25 |
33 |
46 |
38 |
34 |
36 |
42 |
|
Rifle |
8 |
14 |
9 |
13 |
8 |
14 |
6 |
12 |
17 |
11 |
10 |
11 |
10 |
10 |
13 |
3 |
|
Shotgun |
1 |
4 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
1 |
6 |
1 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
3 |
1 |
5 |
5 |
Over the 1993 through 2002 ten year period, 112 officers
were killed with rifles (an average of 11.2 per year), 443 were killed with
handguns and 36 were killed with shotguns.
In 2000 and 2001, the numbers of officers killed with rifles were
about average for the period (or slightly below average). No one looking at this data could say
honestly that there is an "overall increase in the use of rifles to
kill officers". Dr. Westrick
was wrong (or misquoted) as the data trends show. In 2003 there was no increase.
A slight increase of officers killed with rifles happened in 2004, and
a radical decrease happened in 2005.
Again, no particular trend emerges and, more importantly, rifles are
rarely used compared to other methods of killing officers.
In error is the statement Ms. Peschin attributed to Dr.
Westrick (Note 20, page 8) that "The .22 caliber rifle (bullets can
be stopped on soft armor) is being used less to kill officers and is being
replaced by the assault rifle calibers." Table 32 of the
2002 report shows the .22 rifle was used in 5 cases over 10 years to kill
officers. Two of them were killed in 1993, 1 in 1994, 1 in 1997,
and 1 in 2001. In earlier year reports (see for example the 1996
report, Table 4 at http://www.fbi.gov/filelink.html?file=/ucr/killed/96killed.pdf
) the use of .22 rifles wasn't even reported (but the .22 handgun was).
With so few numbers of .22 rifles being used, a statistical trend cannot be
confidently asserted.
Ms. Peschin quotes Dr. Westrick to have said "The
common rifle used is the 7.62x39 caliber (AK-47/SKS type), which accounted
for over one third of officers killed by rifle deaths do to a sharp increase
in its use. Other
common rifle threats are the .223 (AR-15/Mini-14 type) and .308 (HK-91 type)."
Dr. Westrick couldn't have known when he made these assertions in 2002 that
the year would end with 3 officers being killed with bullets of the caliber
listed for "assault weapons" (Table 32 of the 2002 FBI report) and
that 3 officers would be killed with .38 caliber bullets (a revolver caliber
technology in existence for more than a century). That is, in the
year Dr. Westrick supposedly asserted assault weapons were sharply increasing
in deaths of police officers, a new low in officer deaths from rifles of all
type happened with no more deaths due to assault rifles than due to .38
caliber revolvers.
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.