From: [j s rustad] at [meqlan1.remnet.ab.com] (James S. Rustad) Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns Subject: Gun Control Lies FAQ - lies-faq.txt [1/1] Date: 4 Oct 1994 18:46:57 GMT The Anti-gun Lies FAQ is compiled by James S. Rustad and is intended to include answers to the common misstatements of facts and statistics used by anti-gun groups and individuals. If you have an additions or corrections to this FAQ, please send it to me at [j s rustad] at [meqlan1.remnet.ab.com.] Please any information known about the original source. Also note if you want to be credited in the FAQ for your contribution. CONTENTS: ******************* Misleading Statistics **************************** Guns in the home are 43 times more likely to kill a family member or friend than an intruder. (exact figure and quote will vary) 1 The number of murders in Washington, DC declined after the 1976 law banning handguns went into effect. 2 (Dean Payne <[d--a--p] at [lsid.hp.com]>) Cities with gun-control have lower crime rates than cities without. (Seattle-Vancouver study) 3 ([s--c--r] at [atlas.socsci.umn.edu]) ******************** Outright Lies *********************************** Assault weapons are the weapons of choice of criminals. 1 Experts agree that gun ownership should be prohibited. 2 Guns are complex devices not easily manufactured or smuggled. 3 Private gun ownership is not needed since the police will protect us. 4 Firearms and ammunition are inherently dangerous products, more dangerous than any other product sold in the US. 5 ******************* Misleading Statistic #1 ************************** Statement: "I understand the impulse to pick the sort of personal safety sold with a matching holster. But that sense of security is false. Guns in the home are 43 times more likely to kill a family member or friend than an intruder. They raise the level of violence, not safety." "Women and Guns" -- columnist Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe Response: "In a 1986 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Drs. Kellerman and Reay described the proper way to calculate how many people are saved by guns compared to how many are hurt by guns. The benefits should include, in the authors' own words 'cases in which burglars or intruders are wounded or frightened away by the use or display of a firearm [and] cases in which would-be intruders may have purposely avoided a house known to be armed...'" "However, when Kellerman and Reay calculated their comparison, they didn't include those cases, they only counted the times a homeowner killed the criminal. Because well under 1% of defensive gun usage involves the death of a criminal, Kellerman and Reay under stated the protective benefits of firearms by a factor of at least 100! They turned the truth on its head!" "GUNS: Facts & Fallacies" -- "Doctors for Integrity in Research & Public Policy", Edgar A. Suter, MD, Chairman. Phone # (510) 277 0333 SOURCES: The original study was published as: "Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearm-Related Deaths in the Home" Arthur L. Kellermann and Donald T. Reay The New England Journal of Medicine 314, no. 24 (June 12, 1986):1557-1560. It was then reprinted in: "The Gun Control Debate, You Decide" ed. Lee Nisbet, Prometheus Books 1990, 239-244. SUMMARY: 43:1 ratio breaks down as follows: 37 suicides 4.6 criminal homicides 1.3 accidents Note that the definition of defensive uses includes only cases where no charges were ever filed. If charges were filed the case was considered to be a "criminal homicide" even if the case was dismissed or the jury found "not guilty". Also note that the definition of defensive use requires killing the attacker -- apparently the researchers don't count wounding or driving off the attacker as defensive. Less than 0.5% of successful self-defense uses result in the death of the attacker (0.5% is based on ~400 justifiable homicides by civilians each year, FBI Uniform Crime Report, and the National Crime Survey's 80,000 self-defense uses which is a reasonable minimum estimate of the number of civilian-with-gun self- defenses.) Additionally it is useful to know that in ~85% of the cases where someone is killed by a friend or a family member, there was a police record of violence (criminal records, police calls over "domestic disturbances, etc...) In other words, if you have no history of violence, you are about five times less likely to kill a friend or family member. PARAPHRASING OF ORIGINAL SOURCE MATERIAL (some direct quotes): Procedure: The medical examiner case files for every firearm related death in King County, Washington (1980 population = 1,270,000 including Seattle = 494,000 and Bellevue = 74,000) between January 1, 1978 and December 31, 1983 was reviewed. Incomplete records were corroborated with information from police case files and interviews of investigating officers. Gunshot deaths involving the intentional shooting of one person by another were considered homicides. Self-protection homicides were considered "justifiable" if they involved the killing of a felon during the commission of a crime; they were considered "self-defense" if that was the determination of the investigating police department and the King County prosecutor's office. All homicides resulting in criminal charges and all unsolved homicides were considered criminal homicides. Data: Over a six year period there were 743 deaths from firearms in King County (a rate of 9.75 / 100,000 per year). Firearms related deaths were 22.7 percent of all violent deaths in King County excluding traffic deaths. Firearms were used in 45% of all homicides (national average is 61%) and 49% of all suicides (national average is 57%). Firearms were involved in less than 1% of all accidental deaths and 5.7% of deaths involving undetermined circumstances. inside a house or dwelling = 473 deaths (63.7%) in the home where the firearm involved was kept = 398 (53.6%) breakdown of 398 deaths in home where gun was kept: suicides = 333 (83.7%) homicides = 50 (12.6%) accidents = 12 (3%) unknown = 3 (0.7) breakdown of suicides with guns in home where gun was kept: male victim = 265 (80%) female victim = 68 (20%) blood tested for ethanol = 245 (74%) blood alcohol test positive = 86 (35% of those tested) blood alcohol level above 100 mg/dl = 60 (24.5% of those tested) handgun used = 226 (68%) long gun used = 107 (32%) breakdown of homicides with guns in home where gun was kept: male victim = 30 (60%) female victim = 20 (40%) blood tested for ethanol = 47 (94%) blood alcohol test blood alcohol test positive = 27 (54% of those tested) blood alcohol level above 100 mg/dl = 10 (21% of those tested) handgun used = 34 (68%) long gun used = 16 (32%) occurred during altercation in the home = 42 (84%) self-defense during altercation = 7 of 42 (17%) justifiable homicide of burglars = 2 of 50 (4%) resulted in criminal charges = 41 of 50 (82%) total self-defense and justifiable = 9 of 50 (18%) breakdown of accidental deaths with guns in home where gun was kept: male victim = 12 (100%) blood alcohol test positive = 2 (17%) handgun used = 11 (92%) deaths excluding suicides = 65 (50 homicide, 12 accident, 3 unknown) victim was stranger = 2 (3%) victim was friend or acquaintance = 24 (37%) victim was resident = 36 (55%) victim of homicide was resident = 29 (45% of total, 58% of homicides) resident shot by family member except spouse = 11 (31%) by spouse = 9 (25%) by self = 7 (19%) by roommate = 6 (17%) by other = 3 (8%) Conclusions: ratio of killed by stranger to killed by person known = 12 : 1 ratio of accidental deaths to self-protection homicides = 1.3 : 1 ratio of criminal homicides to self-protection homicides = 4.6 : 1 ratio of suicides to self-protection homicides = 37 : 1 ratio of suicides, criminal homicides, and accidental deaths to homicides for self-protection = 43 : 1 ******************* Misleading Statistic #2 ************************** "Effects of Restrictive Licensing of Handguns on Homicide and Suicide in the District of Columbia" Colin Loftin and others NEJM, Vol. 325, Num. 23, p. 1615-20 (December 5, 19??) This is still preliminary, as I am missing some 1983 numbers. The core data of Loftin's study shows that the average monthly number of gun-related homicides and suicides dropped significantly in DC after it imposed its 1976 handgun ban, whereas non-gun deaths in DC and gun and non-gun deaths in the surrounding MD/VA communities did not drop. Let me restate Loftin's data, but combining gun and non-gun deaths: mean numbers of deaths per month: before after change Homicide District of Columbia 20.3 16.7 -18% Maryland / Virginia 8.8 9.1 + 3% Suicide District of Columbia 7.0 6.0 -14% Maryland / Virginia 19.1 20.0 + 5% Note that these are deaths per month, not per-capita rates. The Loftin study mentions population only to assure us that there were no significant changes in the age distribution of either group. The report does not mention actual populations or any population growth or shrinkage. I averaged the populations from annual FBI and Census Bureau reports(*), and found significant population changes of the study areas: mean population: before after change District of Columbia 740,800 639,900 -14% Maryland / Virginia 2,197,400 2,587,900 +18% I also added up the homicides reported by the FBI UCR. My pre-ban numbers matched well with Loftin's figures, but the post-ban numbers show a large discrepancy(*). My count shows about 100 fewer homicides within DC and about 80 more in MD/VA than are evident in Loftin's numbers. Here are both my preliminary count and Loftin's numbers, but expressed as per-capita rates: mean annual rates, per 100k residents: before after change My homicide count District of Columbia 32.9 29.9 - 9% Maryland and Virginia 4.8 4.5 - 6% Loftin's homicide rates District of Columbia 32.8 31.3 - 5% Maryland and Virginia 4.8 4.2 -12% Loftin's suicide rates District of Columbia 11.3 11.3 - 1% Maryland and Virginia 10.4 9.3 -11% Loftin suggests that DC's handgun ban saved 47 lives per year (3.3 gun- related homicides and 0.6 gun-related suicides per month). This view collapses when per-capita rates are examined. Some lives in DC were saved by the overall death rate decline visible in both groups, but many lives were saved simply because many people moved out of the District of Columbia. Body counts in neighboring areas didn't drop simply because the declining death rate was outpaced by a rapidly growing population. Using my count, the reduction in death rates that could possibly be attributed to the handgun ban (DC experienced a 3% better homicide reduction than did MD/VA) is too small to be statistically significant. Using Loftin's rates, that difference vanishes altogether, because DC was less successful than its neighbors at reducing its death rates. Loftin's data ends in 1987, prior to the murder explosion that has made Washington DC the Murder Capital of the United States. I haven't yet recomputed these charts to reflect that data, but remain surprised that any city that is experiencing a doubling of its already horrendous homicide rate could simultaneously be heralded as a successful example of restrictive handgun control. ======================== Important notes =========================== (*) I don't have 1983 UCR data yet, so that year is left out of my MD/VA data. DC-city data for that year is taken from the 1984 UCR. For Loftin's study, "before" is Jan 1968 to Sept 1976, "after" is Oct 1976 to Dec 1987. Because my data is annual, not monthly, I counted all of 1976 as "before". This ought not be significant, especially in light of the legal battles that suspended the ban from Dec 1976 to Feb 1977. The portions of Maryland and Virginia used for this comparison are the communities neighboring DC that make up the Washington DC-Maryland- Virginia Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, exclusive of DC itself. This is the same area listed as the Washington DC MSA in Appendix IV of recent FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), or in Table 5 of older editions. In all cases, my Maryland and Virginia figures are derived by subtracting the DC-city figures from the DC-MSA figures. All DC-MSA populations are from the UCR. DC-city populations have been listed in the UCR only since 1979. Census Bureau data (from Statistical Abstracts of the U.S.) are used for earlier years. Different editions of the Statistical Abstracts display as many as three different population estimates for any given year. ******************* Misleading Statistic #3 ************************** The original study appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine (Sloan et al., 1988). A follow-up study appeared in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Centerwall, author of the AJE study (December 1, 1991 issue), comments on some of the earlier criticism of the NEJM study: that Seattle and Vancouver are not comparable in terms of racial and ethnic composition: "To the extent that homicide rates are linked to ethnic strife, then, this would need to be corrected. One of the early critiques of the Seattle/Vancouver study stated that homicide ratios should be scored separately for each ethnic category, and did this for nonhispanic whites (who made up 75-80% of each city). The result: the gun homicide rates for nonhispanic whites was LOWER in Seattle, though the two ratios were very close." Centerwall cites this, and mentions that he contacted Sloan to request his data, in order to do similar comparisons and compute relative odds. Sloan refused to release his data, Centerwall reports. Centerwall then did a comparison of Canadian provinces and bordering states, looking at gun crimes. He adjusted for major metropolitan centers, so that New York City and Buffalo wouldn't skew the NY stats, nor Toronto the Ontario stats. He made some other adjustments to assure that he was comparing apples to apples. Conclusion: no differences in gun homicide rates, no differences in gun aggravated assault rates, with handgun prevalence in the states which bordered Canada running 3 to 10 times those in the neighboring provinces. There was one exception: Quebec had low gun ownership but high gun crime. Centerwall's data, though, incorporated a long enough time series that the aftermath of Trudeau's imposition of martial law might still have been having effects. Hence this result, of low gun concentration yielding high crime, is likely to be spurious. The upshot, then, was that there was no discernible effect of Canada's gun law. Of course, even had the Centerwall study not been done, and if the crimes of the Sloan study (e.g., suggesting that there was similar ethnic composition in Vancouver to Seattle, when they have wildly different characters except for nonhispanic white percentages) not been so severe, one still couldn't reach the conclusion the Seattle/Vancouver study reached. Sloan et al tried to claim that lower gun homicide rates in Vancouver were due to Canada's strict gun law. To do this, one would have to compare the data from before Canada's gun law was passed to U.S. data for the same period, and evaluate relative changes. ******************** Outright Lie # 1 ********************************** STATEMENT: Assault weapons are criminal's weapons of choice. RESPONSE: "Since police started keeping statistics, we now know that assault weapons are/were used in an underwhelming 0.026 of 1% of crimes in New Jersey. This means that my officers are more likely to encounter an escaped tiger from the zoo that to confront an assault weapon in the hands of a drug-crazed killer on the streets...." -- Joseph Constance, Deputy Police Chief, Trenton, New Jersey ******************** Outright Lie # 2 ********************************** STATEMENT: Experts agree that gun ownership should be prohibited. RESPONSE: This year FSU professor Gary Kleck received the Hindelang Award (the American Society for Criminology's award for a book making the greatest contribution to the field of criminology) for "Point Blank - Guns & Violence in America". In it he sharply criticizes the methodology and relevance of the CDC studies so frequently cited in the media. His conclusions are particularly unsettling for gun control advocates because they come from one of their own. "Before I undertook this study I was a pro-control academic who believed instinctively that people should not have guns. Gradually, I came to see that the best available evidence did not support the case that is usually made for gun control." -- Gary Kleck Professor of Criminology Florida State University ******************** Outright Lie # 3 ********************************** STATEMENT: Guns are complex devices not easily manufactured or smuggled. RESPONSE: In 1977, of the guns confiscated in Washington DC, 40% were obtained from out of state, 40% were police weapons, and 20% were home-made. BATF, Analysis of Operation CUE (Concentrated Urban Enforcement, interim report (Washington D.C., February 15, 1977), pp. 133-34. ******************** Outright Lie # 4 ********************************** STATEMENT: Private gun ownership is not needed since the police will protect us. RESPONSE: "Law enforcement agencies and personnel have no duty to protect individuals from the criminal acts of others; instead their duty is to preserve the peace and arrest law breakers for the protection of the general public." -- Lynch v. N.C. Dept. of Justice, 376 S.E. 2nd 247 (N.C. App. 1989) ******************** Outright Lie # 5 ********************************** STATEMENT: Firearms and ammunition are inherently dangerous products, more dangerous than any other product sold in the US. RESPONSE: Leading causes of death and 1989 rates per 100,000 population are: 295.6 Heart disease 199.9 Cancer 47.4 Stroke 38.3 Accidents [details below] 34.0 Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease 30.8 Pneumonia 18.9 Diabetes 12.2 Suicide 10.8 Chronic liver disease, cirrhosis 9.2 Homicide and legal intervention The following are selected U.S. deaths from accidents in 1989. 95,028 All accidents & adverse effects 46,586 Motor vehicle accidents -- traffic 989 Motor vehicle accidents -- nontraffic 12,151 Accidental falls 5,035 Poisoning by drugs/medications 4,015 Drowning 4,716 Fire & flames 2,992 Complications of medical procedures 3,578 Inhalation/Ingestion of objects 1,489 Firearms accidents 702 Electric current 608 Railway accidents James S. Rustad | "A well regulated militia being necessary NRA Life Member | to the security of a free State, the right Libertarian Party | of the people to keep and bear Arms shall of Wisconsin | not be infringed." Executive Committee | Member-at-large | ------DON'T TREAD ON ME------