Raging Against Self Defense:
A psychiatrist Examines The Anti-Gun Mentality-By Sarah Thompson, M.D.
http://jpfo.org/filegen-n-z/ragingagain ... efense.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
and
Open letter to the American Psychiatric
Association from Gene Flick, MD.
http://jpfo.org/articles-assd02/open-letter-to-apa.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
the second one had a dead link to a research paper written by doctors,
I would encourage the APA to take an honest look at the data on gun ownership before committing its dwindling resources (that was the key issue in the last APA presidential election, right?) to the wrong side of this discussion. In addition to the link above, I would refer you to an article on guns and violence in America (sorry -http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/wbardw ... olence.txt [/u][/b]link is not properly functional) for an excellent review of the positive social aspects of gun ownership, written by physicians.
Violence in America - Effective Solutions
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/wbardw ... olence.txt" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Paper authored by a group of doctors addressing gun violence and proposing solutions.
This is that research paper:
http://www.titleii.com/bardwell/guns_and_violence.txt" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
References below are part of this
guns_and_violence.txt
Violence in America - Effective Solutions
by
Edgar A. Suter MD
National Chair, Doctors for Integrity in Research & Public Policy
Family Practice
San Ramon CA
William C. Waters IV, MD
Internal Medicine/Nephrology
Atlanta GA
George B. Murray MD
Director, Psychiatric Consultation Service, Massachusetts General Hospital
Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Boston MA
Christie B. Hopkins MD
Professor of Medicine, Acting Division Director, Cardiology
University of South Carolina School of Medicine
Columbia SC
Joseph Asiaf MD
Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics
Boston University School of Medicine
Boston MA
John B. Moore MD FACS
Chairman, Colorado Committee on Trauma
Associate Clinical Professor of Surgery
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center
Denver CO
Col. Martin Fackler MD
Chief, US Army Wound Ballistics Laboratory (retired)
Hawthorne FL
David N. Cowan PhD, MPH
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences School of Medicine
Bethesda MD
Roderic G. Eckenhoff MD
Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Wallingford PA
Thomas R. Singer MD
Assistant Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology
Stanford University School of Medicine
Palo Alto CA
Miguel A. Faria, Jr. MD
Editor in Chief, Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia
Professor of Surgery (Neurosurgery) and Professor of Medical History,
Mercer University School of Medicine
Macon GA
Joseph W. Goldzieher MD
Distinguished Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology
Texas Tech Health Sciences Center, School of Medicine
Amarillo TX
Nicholas Johnson JD
Professor of Law
Fordham University School of Law
New York City NY
Glenn Harlan Reynolds JD
Associate Professor of Law
University of Tennessee Law College
Knoxville TN
Claude Zeifman MD
Assistant Professor of Critical Care Medicine
Texas Tech University School of Medicine
El Paso TX
Harry H. White MD
Professor of Neurology
University of Missouri School of Medicine
Columbia MO
Donald E. Waite DO, MPH
Professor Emeritus, Department of Family Medicine
College of Osteopathic Medicine
Michigan State University
Lansing MI
Lawrence E. Widman MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine (Cardiology)
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
Oklahoma City OK
Allen Clark MD
Professor, Department of Surgery
Division of Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery
Medical College of Georgia
Augusta GA
Theodore A. Noel II, MD
Clinical Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology
University of Florida College of Medicine
Maitland FL
Jerome C. Arnett, Jr, MD
Pulmonology
Elkins WV
David Stolinsky MD
Oncology
Los Angeles CA
Timothy Wheeler MD
President, Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership
Member, Technical Advisory Committee on Violence, California Medical
Association
Otorhinolaryngology
Upland CA
Lenwood Wert DO
Family Practice
Lansdowne PA
George Raniolo MD
Family Practice
St. James NY
Henry E. Schaffer PhD
Professor, Department of Genetics
North Carolina State University
Raleigh NC
Edwin H. Cassem MD
Chief, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital and
Associate Professor
Harvard Medical School
Boston MA
Barlow Smith MD
Department of Pathology
Medical College of Virginia
Richmond VA
George R. Brown MD
Director of Psychiatric Research
Mountain Home Veterans Administration Medical Center/ East Tennessee State
University
Johnson City TN
Michael L. Foreman MD, FACS
Director, Division of Trauma
Baylor University Medical Center
Dallas TX
Michael L. Hawkins MD, FACS
Chief, Trauma/Surgical Critical Care
Medical College of Georgia
Augusta GA
Arthur Astorino MD
Ophthalmology
Newport Beach CA
Wayne Pickard MD
Anesthesiology
Brandon FL
Julian M. Goldman MD
Director of Anesthesia Research
Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology
University of Colorado School of Medicine
Denver CO
Theodore L. Fritsche MD
Alternate Delegate, American Medical Association
President, MinnesotaAcademy of Ophthalmology
Associate Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology, University of Minnesota
Marshall MN
John Cavanaugh MD, MS
Academic Fellow of Anatomic Pathology
Lutheran General Hospital
Park Ridge IL
David G. Mohler MD
Musculo-skeletal Tumor Surgery
Clinical Faculty, Department of Orthopedics
University of California
San Francisco CA
Daniel Orr DDS, PhD, JD
Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery
Professor of Surgery
University of Nevada
Las Vegas, NV
(academic and profesional affiliations of the authors do not necessarily
indicate official policies of the respective universities or
organizations)
Violence in America - Effective Solutions
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.
