Can Gun Control Reduce Violence?

[Yesterday, I posted a quote from Preston K. Covey, Ph.D. Professor Covey has graciously authorized WarOnGuns to post his entire presentation, to use his words, "in the spirit of 'pass the ammunition'."

This currently appears nowhere else on the Internet, and I am grateful to Professor Covey for allowing me to present it here. How rarely do we see an academic speaking plainly to legislators about the folly of "gun control"? This is good stuff--much of which even an ornery absolutist like me can agree with--and deserves to be disseminated far and wide. I hope you will agree and help to do so by sharing the url to this post. This is one smart man, and his perspectives make us think.--DC]

Can Gun Control Reduce Violence?

What Do We Know? What Do We Need to Know?
Commonsense Logic & Ethics for Evaluating Policy Options

Cases in Point: Restricted Purchases & Permissive Carry Laws

presented to

The Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on Urban Violence

August 10, 2006
Pittsburgh, PA

by
Preston K. Covey, Ph.D.
Director, Ethics, History, & Public Policy Program
Department of Philosophy
Carnegie Mellon University

Preston received his B.A. (Psychology) and Ph.D. (dual, in Philosophy and in the Humanities Graduate Program)from Stanford University, and is a tenured Associate Professor of Philosophy, Founding Director of the Center for the Advancement of Applied Ethics, and Director of the inter-departmental Ethics, History, & Public Policy Program at Carnegie Mellon University, where he teaches courses in ethics, law, public policy, and conflict resolution as well as issues of criminal justice and violence in American society.

Preston served for a decade as a fully sworn Special Deputy Sheriff detailed to the Firearms Training Staff of the Sheriff’s Reserve of Allegheny County PA, on the Board of Directors of the National Institute of [Law Enforcement] Ethics, and currently serves as a deadly-force and officer-survival training consultant for Team One Network, a national consortium of law enforcement firearms and use-of-force trainers (www.teamonenetwork.com).

He is a member of the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, the Institute of Criminal Justice Ethics, the Society for Risk Analysis, the Risk Assessment & Policy Association, the Association for Conflict Resolution, the International Wound Ballistics Association, and the Institute for Research on Small Arms in International Security.

Preston served on the Ethics Committee of the American Society of Law Enforcement Trainers (ASLET) from 1994-2000 and has served on the following committees of the International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors (IALEFI): Firearms Training Standards Committee, Instructor Criteria Committee, Safety Committee, and Ethics Committee. He has been a member of ASLET and IALEFI since 1990 and 1991, respectively.

In 1994, Preston was elected by the IALEFI Board of Directors to Life Member (a service award, the fourth in the history of IALEFI) for outstanding service to law enforcement firearms and lethal force training.

He is Editor and co-principal author of IALEFI's Standards and Practices Reference Guide for Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors and (with 600 hours of certified training himself) served for over a decade as an instructor in lethal threat management and the judicious use of deadly force by police officers and civilians.

Recent publications and research projects include a book entitled Gun Control: For & Against (invited by Rowman & Littlefield), the articles on Gun Control in The Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (Academic Press, 1997) and The Encyclopedia of Ethical Issues in Politics & Media (Academic Press, 2000), and the articles on Self-Defense--Legal Issues, Self-Defense—Reasons for Gun Use, and The ‘Sporting Purposes’ Test (an analysis and principled critique of the 1994 federal ‘assault weapon’ ban) in Guns in American Society: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics, Culture, and the Law, Gregg Lee Carter, Editor (ABC-CLIO, 2002).

Introduction

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I thank you for the opportunity to address this panel.

I hope to provide perspective for your important public service on the evaluation of policy options addressing urban violence.

Guns figure prominently in urban violence, so gun control is high profile.

But there are ‘101’ types of interesting gun control. (I provide a typology --and the controversies attending them-- in my article on Gun Control in The Encyclopedia of Ethical Issues in Politics & the Media Academic Press, 2000.)

Briefly today, I focus on just two types: RESTRICTIVE and PERMISSIVE

and relevant examples of each type: RESTRICTIVE PURCHASE LAWS
and PERMISSIVE CARRY LAWS


To set the stage: Three Keynotes

It ain’t what we don’t know that’s the problem. It’s what we know that ain’t so.
-- a paraphrase of Josh Billings/Mark Twain/Will Rogers/Artemus Ward [origin disputed]

It’s easy to lie with statistics, but easier to lie without them.
-- Frederick Mosteller
(Founder of Harvard’s Statistics Department & premier pioneer of applied stats in public affairs)

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived, and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
-- President John F. Kennedy

What we don’t know is indeed a big problem.

But what we think we know that ain’t so corrupts public inquiry into what more we need to know.

My students complain that statistics can be used to “prove” anything you want.

They learn to be more discerning -- to discern that among contrary research findings some are damn well better than others.

First, fair warning about where I’m coming from:

Commonsense Logic & Ethics for Evaluating Policy Options

Commonsense is a commodity that’s commonly available, but not often enough availed.

Guns in our society are commonly available.

Violence --criminal violence-- is too often availed.

It seems commonsense to think that the incidence of violence correlates with the availability of guns and would be reduced by restricting gun availability.

At your committee’s Philadelphia hearing, Police Commissioner Johnson proclaimed [quote]:

“I think the availability of guns is the real problem.”

Commonsense --more strenuously deployed-- shows us that it’s not that simple.

For starters, it depends on what we mean by “availability.” This is not some silly semantic gamesmanship like Clinton’s “Well, it depends on how you define ‘sex’.”

Pennsylvania has more guns & more carry licensees per capita than any other state. Yet – if Philadelphia is subtracted from the equation— our state’s homicide rate is as low as Western Europe’s and our violent crime rate is lower than England’s.

Quantity of guns and quantity of violence are NOT simply or uniformly correlated.

----------

My Value, Fact, & Policy seminar at Carnegie Mellon frames the commonsense logic of how facts and values are inter-related in the evaluation of policy and the commonsense ethics of debating policy options.

Sub-titled Violence in America, the seminar addresses inter-related issues of crime control, drug control, & gun control. Our basic interest is in questions like:

“Is this a good policy?” “What do we need to know to decide or judge?”
and –equally important-- “How should we vote when we don’t know?”

Logic tells us that we can’t answer the question “Is this a good policy?” without answering the logically prior question “GOOD FOR WHAT PURPOSE?”

Ethics tells us that in honest controversy our duty is to hark to the best evidence available --the best research delivered by the best methods and the best authorities.

I’ll illustrate these imperatives with policies of interest to the committee:

RESTRICTIVE GUN PURCHASE LAWS

The bad news is that there’s enough equivocal research out there to confuse the unwary, such that we often can’t know “beyond a reasonable doubt” the very best options --or best combination of options-- for reducing violence, even gun violence.

The good news is that there’s enough unequivocal evidence to keep debate honest and to distinguish good firearms policy from bad in a lot of cases -- by a “preponderance of the evidence” if not, indeed, “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Let’s take a couple examples of restrictive purchase laws for illustration:

----------

The 1994 Ban on So-Called ‘Assault Weapons’ & High-Capacity Magazines

Was this a good policy? That depends on the purpose for which it’s evaluated.

Logic says that the purpose for which anything is evaluated dictates the criteria by which it must be evaluated --and the kind of evidence needed to evaluate whether it achieves a given goal.

The ban was good for inciting pre-ban purchase & hording of banned items
--an unintended pre-ban effect

It was good for skyrocketing the price to lawful buyers of pre-ban items
--a collateral cost (intended or not) to law-biding citizens

It was good for making advocates & believers feel good when it passed
--a partisan benefit irrelevant to the common good

It might have been good for softening-up middle-roaders for further bans
--an ulterior purpose of some gun-ban advocates:

As Charles Krauthammer frankly wrote in The Washington Post (4/5/06):

"Passing a law like the assault weapon ban is a symbolic - purely symbolic - move . . . Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation. . . The real steps, like the banning of handguns, will never occur unless this one is taken first."

But was it good for its vaunted pretext, for the purpose of reducing violence

--in particular, reducing the quantity of harm from gun violence?

The good news on this critical question is that we have state-of-the-art mandated-by-law government-sponsored research on the ban’s effects; for example:

The National Research Council 2005 report Firearms & Violence: A Critical Survey, available from the National Academies Press, Chapter 4 Interventions Aimed at Illegal Firearm Acquisition, pp.96-97, citing C.S. Kopper & J. Roth. 2001: The impact of the 1994 federal assault weapon ban on gun
violence outcomes .... Journal of Quantitative Criminology Volume 17, Issue 1 and
The impact of the 1994 federal assault weapon ban on gun markets .... Journal ofQuantitative Criminology Volume 18, Issue 3.

The bad news is that the answer --on the best available evidence-- is NO, the ‘assault weapon’ ban had no discernible effect respecting its ultimate goal: reducing criminal violence --even criminal gun violence.

More specifically, it had no effect on the crucial OUTCOMES OF INTEREST
--the very rationale for banning so-called ‘assault weapons’—to wit:

THE QUANTITY OF HARM from criminal gun violence --in particular, THE RATE OF MULTIPLE-WOUND & MULTIPLE-VICTIM SHOOTINGS.

There are many interesting tactical reasons for this, but three major factors are:

(1) that the ban’s long-gun targets figured in only a small fraction of criminal violence in the first place,
(2) SUBSTITUTION of non-banned repeating firearms which provide comparably lethal firepower for all criminal purposes, and
(3) residual availability because of the vast quantity of banned items already in lawful and illicit circulation.

The research cited also doubts that the ban had any effect in its proximate goal of reducing the availability of the banned items to criminals. But the ban’s effect on criminal markets is academic and beside the point, insofar as the ban had no discernible manifest effect on the quantity of harm from criminal violence.

On the other hand, the ban imposed blanket restrictions and appreciable costs on law-biding citizens for ten years.

Basic ethics says that the benefits of any policy for the common good must outweigh –or counter-balance-- the costs or harms to innocent law-biding folk.

Restrictions on the liberty of the law-abiding require counter-balancing benefit.

But the ‘assault weapon’ ban had NO demonstrable benefits to the commonweal. Except, of course, for the lessons learned from this expensive ten-year experiment.

Sure, we can learn by mistakes. But at what cost? And at whose expense?

Some think that the lack of evidence of benefit just shows that the gun ban/the experiment wasn’t restrictive enough, comprehensive enough, or allowed to continue long enough. That’s mere speculation –of the kind that advocated the ban.

OK. But how far are we justified in experimenting --with no evidence, merely on speculation, and at a stiff cost to the vast law-biding populace-- in order to try to control a fractional criminal element? (Counter-terrorism is a separate issue.)

Of course, the burden of justification is less when the cost to the law-biding is less.

Putting aside blunt-instruments and blanket prohibitions on legitimate interests like gun bans, what about more modest, less invasive purchase restrictions that try surgically to target the criminal cancer in the body politic? For example:

Background Checks For the Purchase Of Handguns

Background screening is a prime example of a low-burden purchase restriction. (Today --with instant background checks-- waiting periods are a separate issue.)

Is this a good policy? Good for what?

The Brady law’s proximate goals and effects are to prevent people with criminal records from acquiring handguns from lawful gun shops, to cut off one source for criminal gun acquisition, and –presumably-- thereby raise the cost of guns to criminals.

A policy that raises the cost of guns to criminals is arguably good enough
-- provided that the cost to law-biding buyers is negligible (e.g., a few minutes wait and low risk of a false-positive in the NCIS with resultant false denial or arrest).

The ultimate goal of supply-side restrictions on the law-biding surely should be demonstrably to reduce both criminal gun availability and criminal gun violence. But these outcomes –for point-of-sale background screening alone-- are extremely difficult –if arguably unnecessary-- to demonstrate . . .

. . . because many other illicit sources make guns available to criminals: e.g., theft, robbery, fraudulent retail purchases, finding corrupt licensed gun dealers willing to ignore the law, and ‘straw buyers’ (who buy guns legally to sell illegally to others).

This brings us to a much debated purchase restriction:

The One-Gun-a-Month Limit

Is this a good policy?

When we debate this question (for a city, county, or state):

Logic requires us to identify the policy’s express and tacit, perhaps various PURPOSES for which it is to be evaluated –especially its proximate and ultimate goals respecting the common good (as well as its ulterior partisan motives);

and

Ethics requires us to seek the best available evidence of its actual OUTCOMES respecting its benefits for the common good --as well as its collateral costs or harms to legitimate interests of the vast law-biding, tax-paying public.

There are several candidate goals for one-gun-a-month purchase limits:

A. Political kudos for publicly addressing the problem of gun violence, which is certainly compatible with --although it does not ensure:

B. Cut off one source of criminal gun acquisition (multi-gun proxy buyers), which is certainly compatible with --although it does not ensure:

C. Reduce the embarrassing number of crime guns retrieved in other cities or states that are traced to one’s home city or state as the point of first purchase, which is certainly compatible with --although it does not ensure:

D. Reduce overall gun availability to criminals, which is difficult to demonstrate given all the other criminal sources and criminals’ ingenuity in creating supply where there’s demand

Then there are the ultimate goals of greatest public (as versus political) interest:

E. Reduce criminal gun violence, which might result from D, but neither D nor E follow from achieving the other goals (A, B, or C)

F. Reduce overall criminal violence, certainly the Gold Standard of outcomes:

If reducing criminal gun violence does not reduce overall criminal violence, we need to rethink “What, after all, is the good of the purchase restriction?”

Another crucial question: Which of these several goals –if achieved according to the best available evidence— are necessary or sufficient to justify the policy?

Surely, at the least, reducing criminal GUN violence is a necessary outcome for a GUN control policy.

Some states have implemented one-gun-a-month limits. So there’s available research on this policy’s performance record.

Take Virginia, an instructive example on what we need to know and consider in debating such a policy for any specific jurisdiction –city, county, or the whole state.

The evaluation of outcomes from Virginia’s 1993 one-gun-a-month limit is nicely summarized and referenced in

The National Research Council report Firearms & Violence: A Critical Survey, Chapter 4, Interventions Aimed at Illegal Firearm Acquisition, pp.93-94.

(See also Chapter 9, Criminal Justice Interventions to Reduce Firearm-Related Violence, on collateral policies or alternatives to restricting legal purchases: tough policing of gun dealers as well as the proxy buyers who sell to criminals – more vigorously exploiting under-enforced existing laws.

This kind of intervention strategy has been called Pulling Levers: coordinating federal, state and local resources to pull every available legal lever to target suspicious dealers and multi-gun buyers for investigation, and –if warranted-- vigorously prosecute them, fully enforcing existing law.)

The NRC’s assessment makes a crucial point [quote]:

“. . . in order for this intervention to work – in the sense of reducing violence – not only must the intervention make it more difficult for criminals to get new guns but also the substitution possibilities must be limited.

“That is, comparably harmful guns cannot be available from comparably accessible sources.” [All emphases in quoted material are mine.]

One such source is multi-gun proxy buyers in neighboring jurisdictions that do not have a one-gun-a-month limit.

This is the problem of ‘leakage’ from less restrictive states into more restrictive states, and a reason that advocates urge national legislation, to ensure uniform suppression of a crime-gun source like proxy buyers.

Before the 1993 passage of its one-gun-a-month law, Virginia had been one of the leading source states for crime guns recovered in northeastern cities.

The NCR cites research that, using BATF trace data, showed the following:

In the first 18 months after the law was implemented, the quantity of guns recovered in the northeast that were traced to Virginia was greatly reduced, from 35 percent before the law was implemented to 16 percent.

The NCR further notes [quote]:

“This study indicates a change in the origin of traced crime guns following the change in the law.

“. . . the law change had an effect.

“The Virginia legislature may ... have achieved its goal of reducing the role of the state in the interstate illegal gun trade.

“However, [the ultimate purpose of the law—reduction in violence] may have been undermined by a substitution of guns first purchased in Virginia to guns first purchased in other states.

“An important question not addressed by this study is whether the law change affects the ultimate outcome of interest

--the quantity of criminal harm committed with guns—

or even the intermediate questions of the law’s effects on the number of guns purchased or owned.”

The NRC highlights the crucial question of what we need to know (what research needs to be done) in order to conclude whether a one-gun-a-month limit is a good policy for purposes of

reducing the quantity of harm from overall criminal violence
or at least
reducing the quantity of harm from criminal gun violence

It’s doubtful that a single state will or can pay the freight for the requisite research to justify a one-gun-a-month limit by demonstrably ensuring these outcomes.

But, there are more modest goals, such as

reducing a state or city’s contribution to illegal gun trafficking.
The Inquirer reported that in written testimony to the Philadelphia hearing, Camden, New Jersey’s mayor cited ATF trace data showing that

the percentage of guns recovered in Camden that originated in Pennsylvania increased from 23 percent in 2000 to 40 percent in 2004,

while the percentage of recovered guns originating in New Jersey decreased from 23 percent to 16 percent.

The mayor apparently implied that New Jersey’s stricter law was responsible.

But new stricter law in Pennsylvania --or fewer guns illegally trafficked from Pennsylvania-- will not ensure that criminals in New Jersey acquire fewer guns.

The Inquirer also reported testimony at the Philadelphia hearing to the effect that

gun dealers must keep a log and report multi-gun purchases to the ATF, so repeat multi-gun buyers suspected of proxy buying are identifiable
and
gun dealers to whom an inordinate quantity of crime guns are traced are readily identifiable for investigation and prosecution under existing law;
so
we don’t need a new law restricting liberty and legitimate commerce to crack down on the real culprits: scofflaw gun dealers & proxy buyers.

Is a one-gun-a-month limit justifiable for the singular purpose of reducing the quantity of Pennsylvania or Philadelphia guns illegally circulating interstate?

Regardless of whether a decrease in this illegal trafficking would result in
a decrease in the quantity of harm from criminal gun violence?

Ethics says that when we debate the goodness of a restriction on law-biding citizens for any purpose, especially for any purpose short of demonstrable violence reduction

--indeed, whenever we debate the justifiability of restrictions on the basis of
their vaunted but merely speculative benefits--

we need to take fair assiduous account of the costs to the innocent and law-biding.

The onus of justification, the burden of proof and persuasion is on those who advocate limiting the liberty and legitimate commerce of law-biding citizens

– at least to the standard of “a preponderance of the evidence.”

I do not mean summarily to preclude the justifiability of one-gun-a-month limits.

This would be as impudent and irresponsible as dismissing the legitimate interests of law-biding folk who want to be able –sometime-- to purchase more than one gun a month or of those folks whose livelihood relies on lawful gun sales.

My intention is to underscore what we need to know, what evidence needs to be adduced, and what interests need to be weighed and balanced in that justification.

Finally, a couple remarks and research references on a controversial subject likely thrown to the committee every now and then when folks get all in a sweat about all bloody hell breaking loose if other folks are allowed to carry guns in public places (or when criminal homicide rates spazz-upward in our murder capitals, like Philly).

We’ve looked at the impact of restrictive gun controls on violence. Let’s consider:

PERMISSIVE CONCEALED CARRY LAWS

Are these laws good policy? We put this policy to the same commonsense tests:

Good for what purpose? What’s the evidence?

Alternative policies on concealed carry of a loaded gun on one’s person are:

A. PROHIBIT it, with no provision for licensing. (Four states do so.)

B. ALLOW adults with no criminal record (resident or non-resident) to carry
guns as a state constitutional right, no license required. (Two states do so.)

C. LICENSE adults to carry, but only with a state issued or recognized permit.

1. DISCRETIONARY / ‘MAY ISSUE’ LICENSING (as old as New York’s notoriously arbitrary Sullivan law of 1911 --eight states, I believe, still abide this regime, but movements to defect to mandatory licensing are afoot):

The licensing authority (county or local --policy can vary radically across intra-state jurisdictions) may issue or deny permits at their discretion.

Besides being subject to summary denial, applicants must give (and often document) ‘good reason’ or evidence of ‘special need’ (like routinely carrying a lot of money or valuables or being a high-profile VIP). Wanting effective means of self-protection against criminal threat by itself does not qualify, unless the issuing authority chooses to so allow it.

Discretionary licensing is well documented to be arbitrary, prone to inequity,
political cronyism and rank bias. Why so many states have changed to:

2. MANDATORY / ‘SHALL ISSUE’ LICENSING (adopted by 36 states):

As with drivers’ licenses, the licensing authority must / shall issue a carry permit –without question or discretion—to any qualified person.

Mandatory licensing is more permissive than discretionary regimes, which are intently more restrictive in the types and numbers of people licensed.

Qualifications for a carry permit include age (21 usually) and passing a criminal background check. States may also require such as the following:

a class and written exam on gun and deadly force law, a gun safety course, a gun-handling or marksmanship operator’s test (and Texas requires a conflict management course).

Again: Is this a good policy? Good for what? What’s its justification?

For example, is it good for the purpose of reducing criminal violence
–a focal concern of this hearing?

The justification of permissive carry laws illustrates more boldly than previous examples the two essential foundations for justifying public policy:

1. SCIENTIFIC: MATTERS OF FACT

For example: The best available evidence that the policy benefits the commonweal --at fair cost-- by demonstrably reducing overall criminal violence --or at least that the policy occasions no demonstrable increase in criminal violence or harm.

2. MORAL: MATTERS OF VALUE / INTEREST-BALANCING

For example: Self-preservation, self-protection, and – in the gravest extreme—self-defense against imminent and lethal criminal threat are our most fundamental human interests and moral rights –without which all others are –for all practical purposes-- meaningless.

Having available the most effective means of self-defense is –by parity— as fundamental a human interest and moral right as any.

This is especially true because --while it is the mission of our police to protect and serve—we cannot expect the impossible of our police. Let’s briefly consider:

The Question of Police Protection

Statutory and historic case law recognize this brute fact of social life, harking to the commonsense moral maxim: ‘OUGHT’ IMPLIES ‘CAN’

This means that we shall not hold agents responsible –or liable to penalty—for failing to perform a dutiful action when it is demonstrably beyond their ability.

The Superior Court in the notorious case of Warren v. District of Columbia (1981) reflected the law of the land:

"'[T]he fundamental principle [is] that a government and its agents are under no duty to provide . . . police protection, to any particular individual citizen.'

. . . The duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists."

As individuals, we cannot –practically or legally—rely on police protection because our police cannot –practically or fairly—be expected to be everywhere they’re needed at once or in the nick of time.

The same moral maxim that exculpates the government for not always being ABLE to protect each and every one of us, demurs as follows:

Since we cannot –as a matter of fact and law—individually rely on police protection, the government must allow us –each and individually-- effective means for defense against criminal violence.

Note that I am NOT invoking:

The Second Amendment Right ‘To Keep and Bear Arms.’

I’m not going to respond to the ninny-natting against the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right –which the vast preponderance of authoritative scholarship has long shown it to be. See, for example:

Barnett & Kates, Under Fire: The New Consensus on the Second Amendment. Emory Law Journal (Fall 1996).

Granting that the Second Amendment protects an individual right will not by itself settle the issue of its scope or what restrictions it does or does not forbid. See:

Appendix C in the NRC’s report, The Implications of an Individual Right Interpretation of the Second Amendment.

We don’t need to get into Constitutional-legalistic disputes to recognize the more fundamental moral right to self-defense and to effective means for self-defense . . .

. . . because this moral imperative precedes –and supervenes-- positive law.

England –which now, with its blanket gun ban, enjoys the very highest rate of violent crime among western industrial nations— no longer recognizes the right to self-defense as a basis for allowing guns for defense.

This is ironic, because it defies England’s own William Blackstone –also an inspiration to our Founding Fathers—who (in his Commentaries on the Laws of England) insisted that the law recognize two kinds of ‘natural’ rights

“Primary rights” like “the free enjoyment of personal security”
and
“Auxilliary rights,” inseparable from the protection of primary rights

--“like access to 'courts of law,' and, so, too . . . 'the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defence.'”

(See William Van Alstyne, The Second Amendment and the Personal Right to Arms.
Duke Law Journal. 43 (April 1994): 1247-1248 [italics added].)

Some will always carp that this stuff about guns for self-protection is outdated, “anachronistic,” not fitting in today’s world, even “uncivilized” and worse.

I prefer evidence to opinion --what the best research says about:

The Effectiveness of Guns for Self-Defense Against Criminal Violence
&
The Impact of Permissive Carry Laws on Violent Crime

I’ll make this story short in the form of factoids and argument from authority.

(For the interesting details, see the National Research Council’s review of the research; Kates & Kleck, Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control, Amherst NY: Prometheus Books, 2001; Lott,, MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME: Understanding Crime & Gun-Control Laws, Second Edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. For my own, briefer, supportive analysis --which there’s not time for here-- you can email me at covey@andrew.cmu.edu.)
• The National Crime Victimization Survey has indicated that some 80 percent of Americans, at some time in their lifetimes, will be a victim of violent crime.

What about the frequency & effectiveness of defensive gun use?

Kleck’s pre-eminent research on guns and violence has shown that:

• Guns are used 99 percent of the time to stop a criminal threat without killing or wounding the criminal (Kleck, Targeting Guns, 1997: 164). WHY? Common sense: defensive gun use –like offensive gun use-- most often compels compliance.

• Gun-armed defenders fare up to 2.5 times better than victims who do not resist or victims who resist in other ways or victims who resist with other weapons.

• There are an estimated 2 million+ defenses a year with 300,000 lives saved. But other estimates posit a tenth of Kleck’s. That would be ‘only’ 30,000 lives saved!

What about the effect of permissive carry laws on criminal violence?

• John Lott’s pioneering study of the effects of shall-issue carry laws in all 3054 counties of the U.S. for 15 years (1977-92) found that rates fell as follows:

murder by 7.65%, rape by 5.2%, robbery by 2.2%, aggravated assault by 7%

• Lott’s sophisticated econometric research methodology has been criticized, but his study has been replicated by the NRC, which –with sanctimonious caution-- concludes that the contest among the research & methodologies is too close to call.

• The NRC report is excessively agnostic. See Appendix A, entitled Dissent, by Marvin Wolfgang –arguably our pre-eminent living criminologist.

• What’s indisputable: Permissive carry laws do not increase criminal violence.

• Permit revocations are recorded by law in Florida & Texas; in their first years:

-The violent crime rate of Florida licensees was 24 ten thousandths of a percent.
-The violent crime rate of Texas licensees was 9 ten thousandths of a percent.
(Offending rates exceedingly lower than those for the state populations at large.)

As the Aussies say, No worries, mate! Permissive carry laws are good policy:

1. They do no harm, interdict criminal violence, and save lives.

2. They enable the most fundamental of moral rights, self-defense.

APPENDIX A

At the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Philadelphia hearing, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Johnson proclaimed:

“I think the availability of guns is the real problem.”

Freedom of opinion is alive and well (for better and worse, even in my classroom).

BUT inquiring minds want to know what our government officials actually know.

(Off-hand opinions are a dime a dozen. More is expected from public officials.)

I’m sure that Police Commissioner Johnson was quoted out of context and that --in context and after due consideration-- he has helpful knowledge (beyond off-hand opinion) to share from his distinguished professional career, his invaluable experience in the law enforcement trenches, and his privileged position in government.

I would like to know what the Police Commissioner of our Commonwealth’s murder capital thinks about the following facts from the State Police website www.psp.state.pa.us/ --as well as what he knows about what these facts mean about any correlation between criminal violence and the ‘availability’ of guns in our Commonwealth (the most gun-rich-per-capita state in the USA). I selected sample stats on 8/9/06 for violent crimes that often involve criminal gun misuse:

City of Philadelphia 2005 PAUCR rates per 100,000 population

criminal homicide 25.6 [off the charts of the national average]
assault 2599.5
robbery 683.6

City of Pittsburgh 2005 PAUCR rates per 100,000

criminal homicide 6.9 [kissing distance of the national average]
assault 1035.6
robbery 177.4

Armed-to-the-teeth counties clear of our Commonwealth’s murder capital
enjoy criminal violence rates lower than most western European nations.

WHAT --PRECISELY-- DOES GUN ‘AVAILABILITY’ HAVE TO DO WITH THE RATES OF CRIMINAL VIOLENCE ANYWHERE?

APPENDIX B

I do not presume that busy state senators have the time to read all the research that avid constituents throw at them.

But, in case there are Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee staff persons with inquiring minds and the time to invest in some of the best scholarship on issues regarding what GUNS and GUN CONTROL have to do with CRIMINAL VIOLENCE, here’s a selective list of eminent resources:

• The National Research Council, Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. 2005. (National Academies Press at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10881.html).

• Samuel Walker, SENSE AND NONSENSE About Crime and Drugs – Fifth Edition (Belmont CA: Wadsworth, 2001).

• John R. Lott, Jr., MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME: Understanding Crime & Gun-Control Laws -Second Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). The most comprehensive and econometrically rigorous (yet readable as well as controversial) research on guns, crime and violence to date, with an overview of the field and Lott’s responses to his critics.

• Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms & Their Control (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1997). An update of Point Blank: Guns & Violence in America, which won the American Society of Criminology 1993 Hindelang Award for the best book in criminology within three years.

• Gary Kleck and Don B. Kates, Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control (Amherst NY: Prometheus Books, 2001).

• David B. Kopel, The Samurai, the Mountie, & the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies? (Buffalo NY: Prometheus Books, 1992). American Society of Criminology Book of the Year.

• Alfred Blumstein and Joel Wallman (Eds.), The Crime Drop in America. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.)

• Robert J. Cottrol (Ed.), Gun Control and the Constitution: Sources and Explorations of the Second Amendment (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994).

• Nicholas J. Johnson, Beyond the Second Amendment: An Individual Right to Arms Viewed Through the Ninth Amendment, Rutgers Law Journal (Fall 1992).