Suter EA, Waters WC, Murray GB, et al. "Violence in America - Effective
Soutions." Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia. 1995; 85:253-263.

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* Edgar A. Suter, MD                                      [s--t--r] at [crl.com] *
* Chair, DIPR             Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research, Inc.*
*************************************************************************

Violence in America - Effective Solutions

[Authors]

Treating the weapon

In 1662 the Armarium Urguentum advised physicians on the treatment of
gunshot and other wounds:

If the wound is large, the weapon with which the patient has been wounded
should be anointed daily; otherwise, every two or three days. The weapon
should be kept in pure linen and a warm place but not too hot, nor squalid,
lest the patient suffer harm.[1]

Three centuries later some physicians are still treating the weapon instead
of the wound.

It is increasingly common to hear "guns are a virus"[2] or discussion of
"the bullet as pathogen."[3] According to Koch's Postulates of
Pathogenicity, the criteria used to assess disease-causing potential, any
observation of the peaceful use of firearms is sufficient reason to reject
the hypothesis that guns or ammunition are pathogens. The half of American
homes with guns offer a multitude of such observations. Further still,
review of the literature shows that guns and ammunition meet none of Koch's
Postulates of Pathogenicity.[4] As appealing as the claim may be to some,
guns are not pathogens and crime is not a disease. Crime is a social problem
that does not lend itself to analysis or treatment under the medical model.

Treating crime as a disease - the essence of the "public health" approach to
gun violence - is as illogical and ineffectual as the converse, treating
disease as a crime. We would mock any criminologist who advocated
criminalizing disease by measures such as fines for obesity or jail time for
tobacco-related emphysema. We would condemn the police if they invaded
bedrooms to ensure the use of condoms in the crusade against AIDS. The
silliness of such proposals are readily apparent, yet are no more illogical
and insupportable than the proposals by advocates of the "public health"
model of gun violence, banning or severely restricting good citizens' access
to guns simply because a tiny fraction of guns are misused by predatory
aberrants. It is a distorted concept, indeed, that the rights of good
people, the most virtuous and productive citizens, should be defined - more
precisely, restrained - by the criminal actions of predators in our society.

"Do no harm!"

Reducing violence is a laudable goal we share with many of our colleagues,
but the evidence suggests that the gun control proposals made by many of our
colleagues will be worse than ineffectual. The weight of evidence suggests
that gun bans and draconian restrictions will not reduce criminals' access
to guns, but will instead disproportionately disarm good citizens who cannot
be effectively protected by the police - in so doing, gun control will do
more harm than good.

It may seem a harsh claim, indeed, but there is considerable documentation
that zealous advocacy of gun prohibition by some high-profile researchers
and editors has been associated with a panoply of sins - a spectrum of
trangressions ranging from simple unfamiliarity with the literature, through
bias, incompetence, and even outright mendacity.[4,5,6,7,8,9,10] The most
common transgression, however, is the medical literature's refusal to
recognize or address the majority of the literature on guns and violence
which is in sociological and criminological literature. Several acclaimed
reviews are available.[11,12,13,14,15] The second most common flaw is the
"costs only" approach to gun violence, neither acknowledging nor analyzing
the evidence that many more lives are protected by guns than are taken by
guns.

Certain authors' unfamiliarity with guns and gun safety jeopardizes not only
the quality of their work, but has also caused them to advance potentially
dangerous "solutions." For example, it has been proposed that gun
manufacturers make "childproof" triggers - heavy trigger pulls - to enhance
safety.[16] Such a proposal enhances safety neither for adults nor for
children. For adults, a heavy trigger pull is not conducive to good
marksmanship and increases the chance that an innocent bystander, rather
than an assailant, would be injured. A child frustrated by a stiff trigger
pull will attempt to obtain greater mechanical advantage than available from
the natural shooting grip by inserting a thumb into the trigger guard and
gripping the gun's handle with four fingers. This grip points the pistol at
the child, increasing the risk of death or injury. It is education in a few
infallible safe gun handling habits, not a myriad of fallible devices, that
enhance gun safety.

Since the promotion of stringent gun regulation and gun bans is so familiar
in the medical literature, it would be redundant to repeat such advocacy
here. Instead, we will examine what is unfamiliar, a few representative
flaws in common gun law proposals. We will also identify promising areas of
research to reduce violence in our society - a problem that takes a terrible
toll, but a problem that is often overstated as being an "epidemic."[4] Our
research and policy proposals focus upon the root causes of violence, rather
than upon the instruments or symbols of violence. We expect that solutions
will be neither simple, quick, nor cheap.

Cost-without-benefit analysis (Doctors or Guns - Which is the deadlier
menace?)

Amongst the most pervasive flaws in the medical literature on guns is the
discussion of the "costs" of gun violence without any consideration of the
innocent lives saved by guns. These and other benefits of guns are not so
"intangible" as has been dogmatically claimed.[17] We would be mortified if
our colleagues' cost-without-benefit analysis[18,19] became the standard for
evaluating the medical profession. The 1990 Harvard Medical Practice Study
quantified non-psychiatric inpatient deaths from physician negligence
(excluding outpatient, extended care, and inpatient psychiatric deaths) in
New York State.[20] "If these rates are typical of the United States, then
180,000 people die each year partly as a result of iatrogenic injury, the
equivalent of three jumbo-jet crashes every two days."[21] - almost five
times the number of Americans killed with guns. One might fairly conclude
from such a "costs only" analysis that doctors are a deadly public menace.
Why do we not reach that conclusion? Because, in balance, doctors save many
more lives than they take and so it is with guns.

A conservative estimate from the largest scale, methodologically sound study
to date, the study by Kleck and Gertz, suggests that there are 2.5 million
protective uses of guns by adults annually.[22] As many as 65 lives are
protected by guns for every life lost to a gun. For every gun tragedy
sensationalized, dozens are averted by guns, but go unreported. Whether or
not "newsworthy," scientific method begs accounting of the benefits of guns
- enumeration of the lives saved, the injuries prevented, the medical costs
saved, and the property protected. Such an accounting is absent from the
medical literature. The protective benefits of guns - and the politicized
"science" that has been used to underestimate or totally deny those benefits
and to exaggerate the costs of guns - have been extensively reviewed.[4-12]

As ten studies have shown, in any year, about 1 to 2.5 million Americans use
guns to protect themselves and their families. and about 400,000 of those
defenders believe that they would almost certainly have lost their lives if
they had not had a gun for defense.[11,22] Even if only one-tenth of those
defenders are correct, the lives saved by guns would still be more numerous
than the lives lost to guns. The flaws in the only study to suggest
otherwise, the outlier data of the National Crime Victimization Survey
(NCVS), have been discussed elsewhere.[22,23] Briefly, the NCVS is a study
of victimization, not defense, and, by its design, undercounts the most
numerous types of defensive gun use (e.g. women protecting against domestic
attacks). As additional sources of undercount error, the NCVS is the only
such survey conducted by law enforcement and the only study in which the
respondents are denied anonymity. When any statistic, such as the NCVS count
of defensive gun use, is at odds with every other measurement, it is
discarded.[22]

Nonetheless, even those US Bureau of Justice Statistics samples show that
defense with a gun results in fewer injuries to the defender (17.4%) than
resisting with less powerful means (knives, 40.3%; other weapon, 22%;
physical force, 50.8%; evasion, 34.9%; etc.) and in fewer injuries than not
resisting at all (24.7%).[11] Guns are the safest and most effective means
of self defense. This is particularly important to women, the elderly, the
physically challenged, those who are most vulnerable to vicious and bigger
male predators.

These benefits can be weighed against the human costs of guns - recently
about 38,000 gun deaths from all causes and about 65,000 additional serious
injuries annually (the remainder of gun injuries were so minor as to require
no hospital treatment at all). Totaling all gun deaths, injuries, and
criminal mischief with guns leads to a generous estimate of about 1 million
criminal misuses of guns annually (involving less than one-half of 1% of
America's more than 200-million guns)[7,11] So, all things considered, the
human benefits of guns at least equal and likely exceed the costs of guns to
society by a factor of 2.5.

Of the 38,000 gun deaths, a majority are suicides. This has caused advocates
of gun prohibition to note that gun bans result in lower gun suicide rates,
but they fail to note a compensatory increase in suicide from other
accessible and lethal means of suicide (hanging, leaping, auto exhaust,
etc.). The net result of gun bans? No reduction in total suicide rates.[11]
People who are intent in killing themselves find the means to do so. Are
other means of suicide so much more socially acceptable that we should cede
resources to measures that only shift the means of suicide, but do nothing
to reduce total suicide deaths?

"Friends and Family"

It is common for the "public health" advocates of gun bans to claim that
most murders are of "friends and family." The medical literature includes
many such false claims, that "most [murderers] would be considered law
abiding citizens prior to their pulling the trigger"[24] and "most shootings
are not committed by felons or mentally ill people, but are acts of passion
that are committed using a handgun that is owned for protection."[25]

Not only do the data show that acquaintance and domestic homicide are a
minority of homicides,[26] but the FBI's definition of acquaintance and
domestic homicide requires only that the murderer knew or was related to the
decedent. That dueling drug dealers are acquainted does not make them
"friends." Over three-quarters of murderers have long histories of violence
against not only their enemies and other "acquaintances," but also against
their relatives.[27,28,29,30] Oddly, medical authors have no difficulty
recognizing the violent histories of murderers when the topic is not gun
control - "A history of violence is the best predictor of violence."[31] The
overwhelming majority of the perpetrators of acquaintance and domestic
homicide are vicious aberrants with long histories of violence inflicted
upon those close to them. This reality belies the deceptive imagery of
"friends and family" murdering each other in fits of passion simply because
a gun, an evil talisman, was present "in the home."

Economic analysis

The actual economic cost of medical care for gun violence is approximately
$1.5-billion per year[32] - about 0.16% of America's $900-billion annual
health care costs. To exaggerate the costs of gun violence, the advocates of
gun prohibition routinely include estimates of lost lifetime earnings -
assuming that gangsters, drug dealers, and rapists would be as socially
productive as teachers, factory workers, and other good Americans - to
generate inflated claims of $20-billion or more in "costs."[32] One recent
study went so far as to claim the "costs" of work time lost while workers
gossip about gun violence.[33]

What evidence is there that the average homicide decedent can be fairly
compared to the average worker, that average wages should be attributed to
homicide victims? What fraction of homicide victims are actually "innocent
children" who strayed into gunfire? Far from being pillars of society, more
than two-thirds of gun homicide "victims" are involved with drug trafficking
or have evidence of ante-mortem illicit drug use.[34,35] In one study, 67%
of 1990 homicide "victims" had a criminal record, averaging 4 arrests for 11
offenses.[35] Such active criminals cost society not only untold human
suffering, but also an average economic toll of $400,000 per criminal per
year before apprehension and $25,000 per criminal per year while in
prison."[36] It is not a slander on the few truly innocent - and highly
sensationalized - victims to note that the overwhelming predominance of
homicide "victims" are as predatory and socially aberrant as the
perpetrators of homicide. Cost-benefit analysis is necessarily a bit
hardhearted, and, though repugnant for physicians to consider monetary
savings alone, the advocates of gun prohibition routinely force us to
address the "costs" of gun violence. So, we are forced to notice that, in
cutting their violent "careers" short, the gun deaths of those predators and
criminals may actually represent an economic savings to society on the order
of $4.5 billion annually - three times the declared "costs" of guns.

Those annual cost savings are only a small fraction of the total economic
savings from guns, because the $4.5 billion does not include the additional
financial savings from the innocent lives saved, injuries prevented, medical
costs averted, and property protected by guns. If we applied the
prohibitionists' methods[33] to compute the savings by guns, we would find
that the annual savings approach $1/2 trillion, about 10% of the US Gross
Domestic Product. We perform this exercise only to demonstrate that all such
"virtual reality" estimates of "indirect" costs and savings are inflated and
to condemn them all as meaningless.

Whether by human or economic measure, we conclude that guns offer a
substantial net benefit to our society. Some "quality of life" benefits,
such as the feeling of security and self-determination that accompany
protective gun ownership, are not easily quantified. There is no competent
research that suggests making good citizens' access to guns more difficult
(whether by bureaucratic paperwork, exorbitant taxation, zoning laws,
contrived application of environmental or consumer product safety statutes,
reframing the debate as a "public health" issue, or outright bans - the
current tactics of the anti-self-defense lobby[37]) will reduce violence. No
matter what tactics are used by the anti-self-defense lobby to incrementally
achieve citizen disarmament, it is only good citizens who comply with gun
laws, so it is only good citizens who are disarmed by gun laws. As evidenced
by jurisdictions with the most draconian gun laws (e.g. New York City,
Washington, DC, etc.), disarming these good citizens before violence is
reduced causes more harm than good. Disarming these good citizens costs more
- not fewer - lives.

Imagery and fact collide

Mountains of scholarly data on guns and gun laws[11] including the work of
Presidential Commissions and the National Institute of Justice,[12,13] are
available, yet the medical literature frequently cites instead editorials
and articles by avowed gun control advocates. Besides failing to perform a
true risk-benefit assessment, our colleagues commonly make errors of fact
easily preventable by a literature search. Consider false assertions about
"assault weapons." Over two dozen studies overlooked by those who advocate
the prohibition of such guns show that these false icons of violence are
rarely used in crime.[10,38] Pejoratively and inaccurately named, "assault
weapons" are, in fact, civilian firearms that fire one shot per trigger
pull, but share cosmetic similarities with true military weapons (e.g. black
plastic stocks, bayonet lugs, corrosion resistant finishes, and similar
features that do nothing to enhance the criminal use of such guns). Claims
of "sheer destructive power"[18] are only unscientific and inflammatory
imagery refuted by peer-reviewed research in the medical
literature.[10,39,40,41] Discredited theories of wounding, "watermelon wound
ballistics,"[42] should have no place in the medical literature.
Unfortunately, particularly when coming from physicians, the political
effectiveness of such embarrassingly unscientific hyperbole cannot be
denied.

Unlike hunting weapons which, by definition, are designed to kill, military
weapons are designed to wound,[39] our colleagues' claim of "designed to
kill human beings at close range"[18] notwithstanding. In military doctrine,
wounding is more useful than killing because it removes not only the injured
enemy, but also removes personnel and resources necessary to transport and
care for the injured. "Assault weapons" using typical military ammunition
actually have reduced lethality when compared to sporting weapons, reduced
lethality that is comparable to handguns using non-expanding ammunition.[39]

Our colleagues briefly noted that "these weapons account for only a small
percentage of firearm deaths."[18] More pointedly, ten times more Americans
die annually from attacks using hands and feet than die from military-style
rifles.[43] Let us emphasize that, in the worst areas of gang and drug
crime, over two dozen studies show that military-style, semiautomatic guns
account for generally 0% to 3% of crime guns.[10,38] Unfortunately, our
colleagues completely overlooked the legitimate and constitutionally
protected uses of these guns.[10,38]

Police protection

Criminals do not announce their intentions and police resources are
stretched, so it is unsurprising that the police rarely arrive in time to
prevent death or injury from much violent crime. Many are surprised,
however, to discover that the police do not have any legal obligation - not
even a theoretical obligation - to provide protection to individuals, even
if in immediate danger. The police are only obligated to provide some
unspecified level of general protection to the community at
large.[44,45,46,47,48] It is a bitter irony indeed that, at the same time
the police are relieved of responsibility for our protection, we are forced
to depend upon their protection. We are often told that we may not and
should not have the same tools that the police say they need to protect
themselves from the same criminals who threaten us.

Gun ban advocates routinely portray good citizens with guns as inept and
dangerous, but good citizens use guns about seven to ten times as frequently
as the police to repel crime and apprehend criminals[11] and they do it with
a better safety record than the police. About 11% of police shootings kill
an innocent person - about 2% of shootings by citizens kill an innocent
person. The odds of a defensive gun user killing an innocent person are less
than 1 in 26,000.[49] Citizens intervening in crime are less likely to be
wounded than the police.[49] We can explain why the citizen record is better
than the police (the police usually come upon a scene in progress where it
may not be clear who is attacker and who is defender; also, the police,
unlike defenders, must close to handcuff the arrestee), but the simple truth
remains: citizens have an excellent record of protecting themselves, their
families, and their communities.

Some polls claim that Californians support "more restrictive" gun laws, yet
many Californians were surprised to discover that existent "waiting period"
law thwarted their attempts to arm themselves for protection during the1992
Los Angeles riots. The police department was so overwhelmed that residents
discovered that they were virtually abandoned to a "let burn" policy.
Indeed, without causing even a single death or injury, it was those good
citizens displaying their fearsome "assault weapons" who turned back mob and
gang violence, protecting their lives, their families, and their
livelihoods. It was good citizens displaying such weapons who turned back
looting police and out-of-control US Army National Guardsmen during
Hurricane Hugo.[50] It was armed African-Americans that protected themselves
and their families from Ku Klux Klansmen and other racist terrorists
(terrorists that often included local law enforcement officers).[51,52,53]

When faced with multiple assailants, mob and gang violence, terrorism, or
civil insurrection, it is precisely high-capacity "assault weapons" that are
necessary for good people to defend themselves - particularly when police
resources are stretched to the breaking point. It is not only protection
from criminals and lunatics about which we must be concerned. Governments
are the worst mass murderers. Not including wars, as a conservative
estimate, in this century 65 million people have been killed by their
governments - after first being disarmed.[54] Protection, not "sporting
use," is the issue.

The automobile model of gun ownership

Advocates of increased gun restrictions have promoted the automobile model
of gun ownership, however, the analogy is selectively and incompletely
applied. It is routinely overlooked that no license or registration is
needed to "own and operate" any kind of automobile on private property. No
proof of "need" is required for automobile registration or drivers'
licensure. Once licensed and registered, automobiles may be driven on any
public road and every state's licenses are given "full faith and credit" by
other states. There are no waiting periods, background checks, or age
restrictions for the purchase of automobiles. It is only their use and
misuse that is regulated.

Although the toll of motor vehicle tragedies is many times that of guns, no
"arsenal permit" equivalent is asked of automobile collectors or motorcycle
racing enthusiasts. Neither has anyone suggested that automobile
manufacturers be sued when automobiles are misused by criminals, as they
frequently are, by drunk and reckless drivers, in drive-by shootings, bank
robberies, car bombs, and all manner of crime and terrorism. No one has
suggested banning motor vehicles because they "might" be used illegally or
are capable of exceeding the 55 mph speed limit, even though we "know" speed
kills. Who needs a car capable of three times the national speed limit? "But
cars have good uses" is the usual response. So too do guns have good uses,
the protection of 2.5-million good Americans every year.[22]

Importantly, the proponents of the automobile model of gun ownership fail to
note that controls appropriate to a privilege (driving) are inappropriate to
a constitutional right (gun ownership and use).

Constitutional issues

An important nexus exists where public policy touches the constitution.
Television violence has been deemed a cause of violence,[55,56,57] but
outlawing entertainment violence and sensationalized newscasting is
precluded by First Amendment guarantees. The spread of AIDS might be reduced
by draconian measures that, thankfully, are precluded by our inherent
enumerated and unenumerated civil rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
Analogously, even if gun bans could be demonstrated to be effective in
reducing violence, such measures are precluded by our right to keep and bear
arms, our inherent and irrevocable right to protection against criminals,
crazies, and tyrants.

We are alarmed that the constitutional impediments to gun bans, draconian
restrictions, and confiscatory levels of fees and taxation, if discussed at
all, are offhandedly and mistakenly dispatched.[58] No "need" must be
demonstrated or license obtained in order to exercise a constitutional
right; such "prior restraint" is a patently unconstitutional denial of civil
rights. To support purportedly "reasonable" restrictions, the claim is often
made that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is a only a collective right of
states to maintain militias.[58,59,60] Such a claim is incongruous with
Supreme Court case law,[61,62] the history of the right,[63,64,65,66] and
legal scholarship.

In fact, the Supreme Court has explicitly acknowledged a _pre-existent_
("pre-existent," rather than "granted" by the Constitution) _individual_
right[67,68,69,70,71] to keep and bear _military-style_71weapons. The
familiar contention that there is no individual right to arms derives partly
from a common misunderstanding of the constitutional "militia." Advocates of
"broad-based gun control"[58] emphasize merely the mention of "militia," but
historians, legal scholars, and Supreme Court Justices agree that, "The
'militia' was the entire adult male citizenry," so that "one purpose of the
Founders having been to guarantee the arms of the militia, they accomplished
that purpose by guaranteeing the arms of the individuals who made up the
militia."[61]

Adherents of the "states' right only" theory of the Second Amendment assert
their position without examining the implications of their own theory. A
full understanding of the "states' right only" theory leads to conclusions
that will make its proponents even more uncomfortable than if they accepted
the individual right theory.[72 ] An honest application of the "states'
right only" theory, according to the rationale advanced by its own
adherents,[58-60] demands not merely armed state militias, but full military
parity for the states. In these times of tension between the states and the
federal government, gun prohibitionists should rethink the advisability of
promoting a theory that would return the US to armed confederacy. Further,
as Reynolds and Kates discuss, citizen disarmament would not necessarily be
an outcome of an honest application of the "states' right only" theory of
the Second Amendment.[72]

That the Supreme Court has acknowledged the individual right, but done
little to protect that right, is reminiscent of the sluggishness of the
Supreme Court in protecting other civil rights before those rights became
politically fashionable. It has taken over a century for the Supreme Court
to meaningfully protect civil rights guaranteed to African-Americans in the
Fourteenth Amendment. The claim that "no court has ever overturned a gun law
on Second Amendment grounds" is not only false (Nunn v. State [73] and in
re: Brickey[74] overturned gun laws on Second Amendment grounds), but is
also the equivalent of a morally indefensible claim in 1950 that "no court
has ever overturned a segregation law."

Supreme Court decisions have been thoroughly reviewed in the legal
literature. Since 1980, of thirty-nine law review articles, thirty-five note
the Supreme Court's acknowledgment of the individual right to keep and bear
arms[75] and only four claim the right is only a collective right of the
states (three of these four are authored or co-authored by employees of the
antiselfdefense lobby).[76] One would never guess such a precedential and
scholarly mismatch from the casual misinterpretations of the right in the
medical literature and popular press. The error of the gun prohibitionist
view is also evident from the fact that their "states' right only" theory is
exclusively an invention of the twentieth century "gun control" debate - a
concept of which neither the Founding Fathers nor any pre-1900 case or
commentary seems to have had any inkling.[61-65,77]

Though the gun control debate has focused on the Second Amendment, legal
scholarship also finds support for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in Ninth
Amendment "unenumerated" rights,[78] Fourteenth Amendment "due process" and
"equal protection" rights,[79,80,81,82] and natural rights theory.[77] Also,
in the absence of explicit delegated powers, the Tenth Amendment guarantees
that the powers are reserved to the States and the people,[83] making
several provisions of the Brady Law unconstitutional.[84]

Progressive reform

Complete, consistent, and constitutional application of the automobile model
of gun ownership could provide a rational solution to the debate and enhance
public safety. Reasonable compromise on licensing and training is possible.
Generally, where state laws have been reformed to license and train good
citizens to carry concealed handguns for protection, violence and homicide
have fallen.[49,85] Even those unarmed citizens who abhor guns benefit from
such policies because predators cannot distinguish in advance between
intended victims who carry and victims who eschew _concealed_ weapons.

In Florida, as in other states where they have opposed reform, the
anti-self-defense lobby claimed that blood would run in the streets of
"Dodge City East," the "Gunshine State," that inconsequential family
arguments and traffic disputes would lead to murder and mayhem, that the
economic base of communities would collapse, and that many innocent people
would be killed[49,88] --- but we do not have to rely on irrational
propaganda, imaginative imagery, or political histrionics. We can examine
the data.

One-third of Americans live in the 22 progressive states that have reformed
laws to allow good citizens to readily protect themselves outside their
homes, openly or concealed.[49,88] In those states crime rates are lower for
every category of crime indexed by the FBI Uniform Crime Reports.[26]
Homicide, assault, and overall violent crime are each 40% lower, armed
robbery is 50% lower, rape is 30% lower, and property crimes are 10%
lower.[26] The reasonable reform of concealed weapon laws resulted in none
of the mayhem prophesied by the anti-self-defense lobby. In fact, the data
suggest that, providing they are in the hands of good citizens, more guns
"on the street" offer a considerable _net_ benefit to society - saving
lives, a deterrent to crime, and an adjunct to the concept of community
policing.

As of 12/31/93, Florida had issued 188,106 licenses and not one innocent
person had been killed or injured by a concealed weapon licensee in the 6
years post-reform.[49] Of the 188,106 licenses, 17 (0.01%) were revoked for
misuse of the firearm. Not one of those revocations were associated with any
injury whatsoever.[49] In opposing reform, fear is often expressed that
"everyone would be packing guns," but, after reform, most states have
licensed fewer than 2% (and in no state more than 4%) of qualified
citizens.[49]

A recent flurry of pre-publication publicity highlighted an upcoming paper
by critics of reform, David MacDowall, Colin Loftin, and Brian Wiersema of
the University of Maryland Violence Research Group.[86] These researchers
are best known for their 1989 paper in the New England Journal of
Medicine[87] that, in the face of a tripled homicide rate, claimed that
Washington DC's 1976 handgun freeze had lowered homicide.[4] In the face of
data showing statewide reductions in homicide rates in many states that have
adopted reforms (particularly impressive when compared to concurrent
national trends),[49] these researchers now claim that reform of concealed
weapons laws has raised homicide rates. To contrive such a "day is night"
conclusion, they ignored national trends and rejected the statewide benefits
of statewide laws without credible analysis. Instead they simply selected
the few exceptions, the few urban areas and irregular, shifting time periods
that could be contrived to show a homicide increase. Furthermore, if FBI
data is used instead of the researchers' National Center for Health
Statistics data (FBI data culls at least a fraction of lawful self-defense
homicides), MacDowall et al.'s claim collapses.

The anti-self-defense lobby has claimed that violent crime rose 19% in
Florida following reform, but they fail to note that violent crime rose 23%
nationally. Additionally, the data became more difficult to interpret
because the accounting of violent crimes except homicide changed during this
period. So, the observed homicide rate reductions are the best available
indicator of the effectiveness of reform. Following reform, Florida's
homicide rate fell from 36% above the national average to 4% below the
national average and remains below the national average to this day.[49]

Notwithstanding gun control extremists' politicized research, histrionics,
and unprophetic imagery , the observed reality was that most crime fell, in
part, because vicious predators fear an unpredictable encounter with an
armed citizen even more than they fear apprehension by police[12] or fear
our timid and porous criminal justice system. It is no mystery why Florida's
tourists are targeted by predators - predators are guaranteed that, unlike
Florida's citizens, tourists are unarmed. Those who advocate restricting gun
rights often justify their proposals "if it saves only one lifeI." There
have been matched state pair analyses, crime trend studies, and
county-by-county research[49] demonstrating that licensing good,
mentally-competent adults to carry concealed weapons for protection
_outside_ their homes saves _many_ lives, so gun prohibitionists should
support such reforms, _if_ saving lives is truly their motivation.

Conclusion

Insisting that a frog is a cow will not give us milk. Neither will insisting
a social problem is a medical problem give us a solution to violence. If
medical researchers want to investigate violence, they must learn the
methods of social science research and familiarize themselves with the
social science literature. Predatory criminals are neither microbes nor
automobiles.

We, too, call for better data collection, but then, on the basis of existing
data, we part company with our colleagues who call for broad-based gun
controls and bans. As we have discussed, guns in the hands of good, mentally
competent adults offer a net benefit to society - whether measured in human
or economic terms. Until such time as we eliminate violence from society, we
believe that good people should have available the safest and most effective
means of protection, guns. The rights of good and moral people, the
overwhelming majority of America's citizens, are inherent rights that are
not forfeit as a result of the heinous actions of predatory aberrants.

The predominance of data show that over 20,000 American gun laws, including
national gun laws, have done virtually nothing to reduce violence or to
reduce availability of guns to criminals. Expectedly so! Vicious predators
who ignore laws against murder, mayhem, and drug trafficking routinely
ignore those existent American gun laws. No amount of well-meaning, wishful
thinking will cause these criminals to honor additional gun laws. If
"better" data are forthcoming, we are ready to reassess the public policy
implications. Until such time, the data suggest that victim disarmament is
not a policy that saves lives.

Proposals

We note that public health efforts combating AIDS and tuberculosis are most
effective when high-risk populations are targeted. If there is any kernel of
truth in the "public health" model of violence, it is that high-risk
populations should be addressed, specifically, broken, impoverished, young
families in the inner cities. Though we offer proposals to reduce violence
in our society, we have realistic expectations. We know that utopia is not
an available alternative. It may take a generation or more to obtain even
incremental reductions in violence. A social problem that has taken
generations to develop, will not disappear quickly or cheaply. We must
replace today's rhetoric of entitlement with values of family life,
individual rights, and individual responsibilities. We must avoid the
tempting mirage, the false promises of gun control. We encourage the
following research and policy agenda:

1) Oversight of the competence and integrity of further tax-funded research
- Politicized science costs lives because it leads us down a literal
dead-end, the unilateral disarmament of innocent victims. Of additional
importance, politicized science wastes resources and time that might be
spent productively. Editorial censorship, histrionics, and medical "mob
journalism" are equally unsuited to the development of sound public policy.

Much of the shoddy research has been funded by taxpayers through the Centers
for Disease Control and legitimate concern has been raised about the
politicization of that research.[4-9] While we fully support the First
Amendment rights of advocates at both poles of the debate, we do not believe
that it is appropriate for tax-payers to foot the bill for polemics from
either pole. There must be Congressional oversight of tax-funded research to
ensure the integrity and competence of tax-funded studies and steps must be
taken to improve the peer review process. Editorial privilege should entail
responsibility and accountability. Editorial license should end far short of
the threshold of carelessness, abuse, and censorship.

2) Enforce existent laws against violent crime - No additional laws or
sentence enhancements are necessary. There are no violent crimes that are
"missed" by criminal codes. If applied, existent sentences prescribed for
violent crimes are already far from trivial, so we support "Truth in
Sentencing," rather than early release of or plea bargaining by violent
criminals. If applied, existent sentences prescribed for violent crimes make
inflexible "Three Strikes, You're Out" proposals completely unnecessary.
"The most effective prison reform would be to return prisons to their
primary mission of incapacitating violent criminals."[88]

President Clinton and his administration have spotlighted violent crime and
demanded draconian gun restrictions as a "solution." The administration's
lack of action, however, belies its rhetoric. Senators Orrin Hatch and
Robert Dole have inquired of Attorney General Janet Reno why, according to
the Administrative Office of the US Courts, prosecutions have actually
declined 5% overall and, in the case of gun crimes, prosecutions have
declined 23%, under the Clinton-Reno administration).[89]

3) Enforce existent laws against the true sources of criminals' guns - The
enforcement of existent gun laws and the enforceability of proposed gun laws
are rarely discussed. High rates of gun ban non-compliance and the police
state tactics necessary for enforcement are rarely discussed.[10] The
Clinton administration and many politicians, including the "public health"
advocates of gun prohibition, call for more draconian gun laws when existent
laws are poorly enforced. Of how little benefit to public safety can
symbolic gestures be? Of what possible benefit can their more draconian
proposals be if those proposals are not - or cannot be - enforced?

Only 7% of criminals' handguns are obtained from retail sources,[13] so
controls on retail gun sales cannot be expected to reduce criminals' access
to guns much, if at all. Despite exaggerated claims of the success of the
Brady Law,[90] the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) has
acknowledged that the little existent evidence is only anecdotal.[91] If
fact, almost all of Brady Law background check discoveries of "thousands of
_possible_ felons" are false positives. Many are innocents whose names are
similar to felons. Misdemeanor traffic convictions, citations for fishing
without a license, and failure to license dogs are the types of trivial
crimes that resulted in a computer tag that labeled the others as
"potential" felons.[92] Of the minuscule number of actual felons identified
by Brady Law background checks, not one has been prosecuted.[93] Instead,
those felons are merely displaced into the "black market." In such
circumstance, the minimal expected benefit of the Brady Law diminishes to no
benefit at all.

Instead of heaping more onerous restrictions upon good citizens or
law-abiding gun dealers who are not the source of crime guns, is it not more
reasonable - though admittedly more difficult - to target the real source of
crime guns? It is time to admit the futility of attacking the supply of
legal guns to interdict the less than 1% of the American gun stock that is
used criminally. Instead, we believe enforcement effort should focus on
targeting the long illegal "black market" in stolen guns. It is equally
important to reduce the demand for illicit guns and drugs, most particularly
by presenting attractive life opportunities and career alternatives to the
inner-city youth that are overwhelmingly and disproportionately the
perpetrators[94] and victims[95] of violence in our society.

4) Treat guns like cars, completely, consistently, and constitutionally -
Specifically, enact legislation to license good citizens - mentally
competent, law-abiding adults - to carry concealed firearms for protection
in public. No "need" must be demonstrated. Self-protection is a universally
applicable need. Of course, there should be no licensing or registration of
_any_ kind of firearm used on _private_ property. We believe _this_ is the
_reasonable_ compromise, the _reasonable_ gun control this country needs.

Like for automobiles and prospective drivers, we believe guns should be kept
out of the hands of the mentally incompetent, the criminal, and the
irresponsible - adult or child - and we advocate voluntary safety training
programs. We recommend that every prospective gun owner carefully weigh the
responsibility of gun ownership and, upon purchase, to be certain that gun
safety is paramount. It is encouraging to note that National Safety Council
data show that accidental gun deaths have been falling steadily since the
beginning of this century and now hover at an all time low.[96]

5) Welfare reform - End government policy that destroys families and, in
turn, destroys the fabric of society. The "War on Poverty" is another war
lost by America. Welfare aid has climbed from 1.5% of the Gross National
Product when Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" initiated the "War on Poverty"
to 5% of the Gross National Product ($305 billion) in 1992, yet we have seen
crime, substance abuse, divorce, illegitimacy, and resultant single-parent
families skyrocket and the work ethic, family stability, and educational
aspiration erode. To reduce violence, welfare reform must discourage
dependency, encourage responsible, constructive behavior, reduce
illegitimacy and single-parent families, and entail a system of mutual
responsibility in which welfare recipients are expected to contribute to
society in return for the aid they receive.[97]

6) Improve life and career opportunities for the poor - A corollary of
welfare reform, this is certainly the most difficult, the most expensive,
and the most important of our proposals. Violent drug crime has been
described as a rational career choice for those so impoverished that their
job choices are virtually non-existent.[98] There must be attractive and
positive alternatives for the poor. Such alternatives are more likely to be
realized through the private sector, than through typically wasteful and
inefficient government programs. Government may best serve us all by getting
out of our way and by letting families, not politicians and bureaucrats,
decide how to spend their earnings.

Of course, the communities most afflicted by poverty and violence, the inner
cities, must begin, through home, church, and school, to promote values that
mitigate violence - among such values, the work ethic, educational
aspiration, delayed gratification, respect for individual and property
rights, love of self, family, and community, and the sanctity of life. Where
public schools have brought valueless bureaucracy, school vouchers hold
promise of a renaissance of inner city private and parochial schools,
offering parents a choice, cost effective educational opportunities that
promote values beneficial to society.[97]

To make the alternatives more attractive, it may be helpful to remove profit
from the illicit drug trade. While the decriminalization of personal drug
use by adults is controversial, we believe that we must study such
proposals.

7) Mitigate media violence - The role of media violence in exacerbating
violence in society is well documented.[55-57] Rather than unconstitutional
infringements of First Amendment rights, it is parents who must exercise
control over children's viewing habits and who must influence the media.
Parents should make their views known to producers and advertisers when they
are offended by sensationalized newscasting and gratuitous violence in
entertainment media.

8) Promote conflict resolution training - To offset the deleterious effects
of violence promoted in the media, we believe that early in life children
must learn the non-violent means of conflict resolution.

9) End the scapegoating of guns and gun owners - It is divisive and
counter-productive to vilify America's innocent gun owners. Those who abhor
guns must be reminded that half of American households find legitimate
reasons to own and enjoy firearms, some for protection, some for
recreation.[11] Clearly, the abhorrence of guns (or gun owners) is _not_ the
dominant American paradigm. The vogue of describing gun ownership as a
pathology should pass, since gun ownership is, in fact, a neutral or
positive social phenomenon of half of American households.

Guns are not charms that impel evil, neither are they magically protective
talismans. Guns are only powerful tools. Fortunately, most citizens of our
distressed society are moral and responsible people in whose hands guns are
the safest and most effective means of protection against criminals,
crazies, and tyrants. The future will shine more brightly if compassionate
and thoughtful individuals join to promote individual responsibility,
personal freedom, and to develop effective, long-term solutions to reduce
violence in America.

[References]