Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
From: [r--s] at [cbnewsc.cb.att.com] (Morris the Cat)
Subject: Batman and Gun/Month by David Kopel
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1993 14:43:14 GMT

Date: Sat, 12 Jun 93 12:24:25 EDT
Organization: Blue Moon BBS ((614) 868-998[0245])
 
       SHOULD OTHER STATES IMITATE BATMAN AND DOUG WILDER?
By Dave Kopel

     Remember when you were a kid, and you wanted to do something
stupid, and you told your mother that other kids were already
doing it. "So what," your mother might typically reply, "If your
friends jumped off a bridge, would you do that too?" Now that
Virginia has decided to ration gun rights to one handgun per
month, should West Virginia follow suit? Common sense suggests
not.

     When the Virginia legislature debated the details on how to
restrict gun sales in Virginia, Democrats and Republicans argued
about which kind of gun laws would slow down the flow of Virginia
guns into the hands of New York City street criminals. Omitted
from the debate has been the most important fact: do Virginia
guns, or West Virginia guns, actually supply New York's
criminals? The evidence suggests not.

     True, Governor Wilder and Batman both insisted that Virginia
was the main source for violent crime guns in New York City. And
gun control advocates recite statistics that the federal Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) found 41% of New York
City crime guns came from Virginia, and a lesser number from West
Virginia.

     But the Bureau does not trace every gun confiscated by the
police. In New York City, the police only ask BATF to trace 8% or
less of the guns which the police seize.

     Simply put, the small fraction of guns which BATF is asked
to trace may not be representative of street crime guns as a
whole. The fact was clearly illustrated during the 1989
controversy over "assault weapons."

     In early 1989, two journalists from the Cox Newspapers chain
studied gun traces by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms. They announced that 10% of guns traced by BATF were
"assault weapons," and hence "assault weapons" were 10% of crime
guns.
      
     But the actual data from police departments contradicted the
assertions based on BATF traces. For example, in Los Angeles, 19%
of the guns that BATF was asked to trace were "assault weapons."
But when the Los Angeles police took a comprehensive inventory of
guns which they had taken from criminals, only 1% were "assault
weapons."

     The same story was repeated in major city police departments
such as New York, San Francisco, Washington, Chicago, Denver, and
San Diego. "Assault weapons" usually amounted to 1% of crime
guns, sometimes as much as 3%, but never anywhere close to 10%.

     Given the wide gap between BATF traces of "assault weapons"
(10% of the total) and actual police data about use of the guns
in crime (only 1% of the total), is it safe to use BATF traces to
blame West Virginia for New York gun crimes? Probably not.

     First of all, it should be noted that many of the West
Virginia guns in New York which were traced were not connected to
violent crime. True, it's been claimed that all the Virginia guns
were taken from "crime scenes," but you have to keep in mind what
constitutes a crime in New York City: just owning a handgun.
Except for influential folks like Donald Trump, it's very
difficult to get a license to own or carry a gun in New York
City. Accordingly, as many as two million New Yorkers own illegal
handguns, since they know that the City is dangerous, and the
police cannot be everywhere at once.

     Thus, when a policeman conducting a traffic stop finds an
unlicensed handgun under the front seat of a secretary's car, the
secretary gets charged with felony possession of an unlicensed
gun. And if the gun came from West Virginia, it's counted as a
New York City "crime" gun, although owning a handgun isn't
considered a crime by most people.

     Indeed, the frightened secretary is more likely to own a
traceable handgun than are street criminals. Ordinary folks who
own guns for protection rarely file off a gun's serial number
(thus making it untraceable). But according to a National
Institute of Justice study of felony prisoners, 60% consider a
gun's untraceability to be "very important" and another 21%
consider it to be "a little" or "somewhat" important.

     Of course there were a few New York City violent criminals
caught with West Virginia guns bearing serial numbers. Were these
guns smuggled in along the so-called "iron corridor" of I-95,
after being bought in Virginia? Again, the BATF trace data
doesn't say.
      
     In tracing the guns, BATF simply looked up the serial
numbers to see where the gun was originally sold. BATF did not
attempt to determine how the gun moved from Virginia to New York.
Thus, a gun stolen in Virginia, and then shipped to New York
shows up as a Virginia gun in the New York trace data.

     So where's the proof that guns sold over the counter in West
Virginia actually are a large part of New York City's gun crime
problem? It isn't there.

     Before following the Virginia lead in jumping off the gun
control bridge, West Virginians ought to take a more careful look
at the facts than Batman and Virginia Governor Wilder did.
                             --30--
 
This paper was published as part of the Independence Institute's
Firearms Research Project. It was sent to every newspaper in West
Virginia, shortly after Virginia enacted its "one-gun-a-month"
law, and some West Virginia politicians began stating that West
Virginia should do the same. Other papers published as part of
the project include:
 
* The "Assault Weapon" Panic: Political Correctness Takes Aim at
the Constitution (94 pp., GBC-bound). $12.00.
* Why Gun Waiting Periods Threaten Public Safety (62pp, stabled).
$8.00
* Do Federal Gun Traces Accurately Reflect Street Crime? (11pp).
$6.00
* Children and Guns: Sensible Solutions (90pp, GBC bound).
 $12.00
* The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America
     Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies? (450 pp)
      $28.95 + $4.00 ship
 
Membership in the Independence Institute starts at $25.00 per
year. Members who join at the one hundred dollar level receive
all of the above publications, plus all Independence Issue Papers
published in the next twelve months. Membership at the 25 or 100
dollar level entitles the member to a year-long subscription to
the monthly Independence Bulletin. The Independence Institute is a
free-market think-tank, dedicated to the principles of individual
liberty expressed in the Declaration of Independence.