Firearms
in America: The Facts
Martin L. Fackler, MD Monday, Dec. 25, 2000
I must confess
to being a member of a very dangerous group. I am a physician: We
cause more than 100,000 deaths per year in the USA by mistakes and
various degrees of carelessness in treating our patients. Why does
society tolerate us?
Because we
save far more patients than we kill. Firearms are entirely analogous.
Although used in far fewer deaths* - they are used to prevent about
75 crimes for each death. Firearms, like physicians, prevent far
more deaths than they cause. (Gary Kleck, "Point Blank: Guns
and Violence in America," Hawthorne, N.Y., Aldine de Gruyter
Publisher, 1991)
Consider
the implications of the fact that firearms save many more lives
than they take. That means decreasing the number of firearms would
actually cause an increase in violentcrime and deaths from firearms.
This inverse
relationship between the number of firearms in the hands of the
public and the amount of violent crime has, in fact, been proven
beyond any reasonable doubt.
(John R. Lott Jr., "More Guns Less Crime," University
of Chicago Press, 1998)
History supports
the inverse firearm-crime relationship. In "Firearms Control
-A Study of Armed Crime and Firearms Control" in England and
Wales (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, p. 243), Chief
Inspector Colin Greenwood found that:
No matter
how one approaches the figures, one is forced to the rather startling
conclusion that the use of firearms in crime was very much less
when there were no controls of any sort. . Half a century of strict
controls on pistols has ended, perversely, with a far greater use
of this class of weapons in crime than ever before.
In Tasmania,
Australia, on 28 April 1996, a lone gunman killed 35 and wounded
21 at the Port Arthur Historic Site. The Australian legislature
reacted by outlawing self-loading rifles and pump as well as self-loading
shotguns. One year after the massive confiscation of guns the effects
of this action became clear. Every category of violent crime had
increased; the most striking was a 300 percent increase in assaults
against the elderly.
Those demented
persons who have expressed their frustration by a shooting spree
have apparently retained enough good sense to choose places where
those shot would almost certainly be unarmed: a schoolyard in Stockton,
Calif., the Columbine High School, a Jewish day care center in Los
Angeles, a Long Island Rail Road car (due to the highly restrictive
ban on handgun carry permits in New York).
The emotional
reaction to these incidents, attempting to make certain places "gun
free" zones, for example, revealed a striking lack of rational
thought. Apparently those pushing for "gun free" zones
failed to recognize that the perpetrators of these incidents chose
their sites specifically because they were already essentially "gun
free" areas - practically guaranteeing no armed resistance
to foil their plans.
Such gun-restrictive
proposals are a certain recipe for making the situation worse. Lott's
studies have shown that such mass shootings essentially disappear
in states that pass laws allowing qualified citizens to carry concealed
handguns (The American Enterprise, July- August, 1998).
Consider the
steadily decreasing rate of violent crime over the past eight years.
An article in USA Today (K Johnson, 9 Oct 00, 3A) reported "Gun
injuries in crimes fall 40% in 5 years." This stark decline
has occurred concomitantly with a constant rise in the number of
firearms in the hands of the American public.
This strongly
supports the "more guns less crime" relationship verified
by Kleck, Lott, history, and common sense. This steady decrease
has brought the current percentage of gun violence in the USA to
its lowest rate in the past three to four decades. One would expect
the anti-gun groups to be pleased and to moderate their goals.
Instead, apparently
rankled by the facts proving their theories dead wrong, they are
promoting increasingly prohibitive gun laws with ever-increasing
zeal. Could it be that the media attention bestowed upon their cause
has become addictive? Certainly, legislators have found the free
TV time given to their anti-gun tirades something they cannot live
without.
I suggest that
a reason for the decreasing crime rate, caused in part by the increasing
number of guns, lies, perversely and ironically, in the counterproductive
exaggerations and incessant repetitions, by the TV media, of each
and every bloody shooting they can find.
This has frightened
and misled the public into believing the threat from guns is ever
increasing, rather than decreasing sharply, and has whetted their
appetites for firearms to defend themselves. Thus the public has
bought more firearms -which has further decreased the violence from
firearms.
There is
a perception among gun owners that they are being treated irrationally
as legislators pander to the misinformed majority who are being
swayed by emotional appeals that fly in the face of the studies
cited above, history, and basic common sense. They feel that legislators
should be obliged to soberly consider the facts and not have their
votes dictated by blind, unthinking, and most often counterproductive,
emotion.
Consider firearm
registration: being increasingly promoted by nearly all anti-gun
groups - and politicians. These promoters neglect to explain why
or how they expect firearm registration to prevent future violence;
especially since, historically, such restrictive laws have always
proven ineffective or counterproductive - most often causing a marked
increase in violent crime, as shown in the examples given above.
We already know how honest, formerly law-abiding, citizens will
react to irrational laws requiring them to register their firearms.
California
has taught us. After Purdy's shooting spree on the Stockton schoolyard
in 1989, the Californian legislature passed a law requiring the
registration of all "assault rifles." In the emotional
frenzy following that shooting incident, everybody expected legislators
to pass such a restrictive law.
What happened?
The price of "assault rifles" tripled in California. Many
tens of thousands of these rifles poured into California before
the law went into effect. Then came the time for registration. Very
few "assault rifle" owners chose to obey the law.
It is uncertain
how many criminals were created by this irrational law, but most
estimate that fewer than 10 percent of the "assault rifles"
in California were registered. If an estimated several hundred thousand
"assault rifle" owners in California chose to become criminals
rather than obey an irrational law, how many gun owners nationwide
can we expect to do the same if required to register their guns?
Most of
the facts explained above are unknown to the majority of the American
public. The pro-gun political activists spend so much time harping
on the Second Amendment that they tend to overlook the factual proof
that decreasing the number of guns increases violence, and vice-versa.
Additionally,
I believe that most Americans consider their right to protect themselves
and their families a far more fundamental right than the Second
Amendment.
Many honest
gun owners are now frightened. They have every reason to be. Few
of the facts outlined above have been revealed by a media that,
instead, gives full play to the emotionally based appeals and flagrant
exaggerations of the anti-gun groups.
These gun owners
fear that they will be forced into a difficult moral decision: Do
they obey a law requiring them to register their firearms, when
they are fully aware of the irrationality and counterproductive
nature of such a law? Or are they morally obligated to disobey such
an unjust law -and thus become a criminal? Our forefathers faced
a similar moral dilemma. Had most of them chosen to obey, we would
still be a colony of England.
We must separate,
dispassionately, the clearly established facts about firearms in
the USA from emotionally based opinions, exaggerations, and falsehoods.
No rational approach to any problem is possible until this is done.
I worry that
irrational restrictive measures, such as mandated gun registration,
will result in a massive backlash of civil disobedience - not by
drug-dazed teenagers, but by sober, honest, and mature adults who
are well-armed and proficient in the use of their weapons. That
could tear this country apart.
*Footnote.
When anti-gun activists list the number of deaths per year from
firearms, they neglect to mention that 60 percent of the 30,000
figure they often use are suicides. They also fail to mention that
at least three-quarters of the 12,000 homicides are criminals killing
other criminals in disputes over illicit drugs, or police shooting
criminals engaged in felonies. Subtracting those, we are left with
no more than 3,000 deaths that I think most would consider truly
lamentable.
Dr.
Martin Fackler is America's most foremost forensic expert on ballistic
injuries.
Added
to this website July 4, 2005.
