homes, and that is anywhere near as potentially dangerous, yet is responsible for as low an accidental death rate. With around 80 million people owning a total of 200—240 million guns, the vast majority of gun owners must be extremely careful or such gun accidents would be much more frequent.
I have asked some reporters why they think accidental gun deaths receive so much coverage, and the only answer seems to be that these events get coverage because they are so rare. Dog bites man is simply not newsworthy because it is so common, but man bites dog, well, that is news. Yet this explanation still troubles me, for there are other equally rare deaths involving children that get very little news coverage.
Another puzzle is the lack of coverage given to cases in which citizens with guns have prevented multiple-victim public shootings from occurring. Given the intense concern generated by these attacks, one would think that people would be interested in knowing how these attacks were stopped.
For a simple comparison, take the justified news coverage accorded the heroic actions of Dave Sanders, the Columbine High School teacher who helped protect some of the students and was killed in the process. By the Sunday morning five days after the incident, a Lexis-Nexis search (a type of on-line computer search that includes news media databases) indicates that over 250 of the slightly over 1,000 news stories around the country on this tragedy had mentioned this hero.
Contrast this with other school attacks in which the crimes were stopped well before the police were able to arrive. Take, for example, the October 1997 shooting spree at a high school in Pearl, Mississippi, described at the beginning of this section, which left two students dead. It was stopped by Joel Myrick, an assistant principal. He retrieved his permitted concealed handgun from his car and physically immobilized the shooter for about five minutes before police arrived.
A Lexis-Nexis search indicates that 687 articles appeared in the first month after the attack. Only 19 stories mentioned Myrick in any way. Only a little more than half of these mentioned he used a gun to stop the attack. Some stories simply stated Myrick was "credited by police with helping capture the boy" or that "Myrick disarmed the shooter." A later story reported by Dan Rather on CBS noted that "Myrick eventually subdued the young gunman." Such stories provide no explanation of how Myrick accomplished this feat.
The school-related shooting in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, which left one teacher dead, was stopped only after James Strand, the owner of a nearby restaurant, pointed a shotgun at the shooter when he was finishing reloading his gun. The police did not arrive until eleven minutes later. At
least 596 news stories discussed this crime during the next month, yet only 35 mentioned Strand. Once again, the media ignored that a gun was used to stop the crime. The New York Daily News explained that Strand "persuaded [the killer] to surrender," while the Atlanta Journal wrote how he "chased [the killer] down and held him until police came." Saying that Strand "persuaded" the attacker makes it sound as if Strand were simply an effective speaker.
Neither Myrick nor Strand was killed during their heroics. That might explain why they were ignored to a greater degree than Dave Sanders in the Columbine attack. Yet one suspects a more politically correct explanation—especially when the media generally ignore defensive gun use. With five public-school-related shootings occurring during the 1997—1998 school year, one might have thought that the fact that two of them were stopped by guns would register in the public debate over such shootings.
The press's bias can be amply illustrated by other examples as well. Take the example of the July attack in Atlanta that left nine people dead. Mark Barton killed people working at two stock brokerages. 122 It did deserve the extensive news coverage that it received. Yet within the next week and a half there were three cases around Atlanta in which citizens with guns stopped similar attacks from occurring, and these incidents were given virtually no news coverage. They were an attack at a Lavonia, Georgia, store by a fired worker, an attack by a mental patient at an Atlanta hospital, and an Atlanta truckjacking. 123 The last two incidents were stopped by citizens with permitted concealed handguns, while the first was stopped by someone who had only been allowed to buy a gun hours before the attack because of Georgia's instant background check system. Meanwhile, a week after the Atlanta massacre, another attack, which left three people dead at a Birmingham, Alabama, business, again generated national television news coverage on all the networks and was the lead story on the CBS and NBC evening news. 124
Again, I can see that bad events that never occur are not nearly as newsworthy as actual bad events. Yet multiple-victim attacks using methods other than guns are frequently ignored. On May 3, 1999, Steve Abrams drove his Cadillac into a crowded preschool playground because he "wanted to execute innocent children." 125 Two children died horrible deaths as one was mangled under the wheels and the other pinned to a tree by the car, and another five were badly injured. One woman's son was so badly mauled that "teachers and other parents stepped between [her] and the Cadillac to prevent her from seeing her son's battered body" even though he was still alive. Yet only one television network provided even a passing reference to this attack. 126 One very obvious news angle, it seems to me, would be to link this attack to the various public school
attacks. Compare this news coverage with the attention generated by Bu-ford Furrow's August 10, 1999, assault on a Jewish community center, which left five people wounded, three of them young boys. 127 Multiple-victim knife attacks have been ignored by the national media, and few people would realize that there were 1,884 bombing incidents in the United States in 1996, which left a total of 34 people dead and 365 people injured. 128
The news coverage is also constantly framed as, Is more gun control the answer? 129 The question is never asked, Have increased regulations encouraged these attacks by making potential victims more vulnerable? Do these attacks demonstrate the importance of letting people be able to defend themselves?
We are constantly bombarded with pro-gun-control claims. While my research, when it is referred to in the press, is labeled as "controversial" or worse, the claims from the Clinton administration and Handgun Control, Inc., are reported without reference to any academics who might object to them. For years the Clinton administration has been placing public service ads claiming that "thirteen children die every day from guns," linking this claim with elementary school children's voices or pictures. But few of these thirteen deaths fit the image of innocent young children. Nine of these deaths per day involve "children" between seventeen and nineteen years old, primarily homicides involving gang members. Eleven of the deaths per day involved fifteen- to nineteen-year olds. This does not alleviate the sorrow created by these deaths or the 1.9 children under age fifteen that die from guns every day, but it strains credulity to have this number mentioned as evidence justifying the importance of trigger locks.
The Clinton administration has also been attempting to help out the city lawsuits against the gun makers by producing other research that will back up their claims that guns are being sold recklessly to criminals. 130 The administration claimed that around a third of the guns used in crimes were purchased legally with the intent of reselling them to criminals—so-called straw purchases. Yet the evidence was very indirect and purposely excluded most gun crimes from the sample to ensure a particular answer. The administration did not measure straw purchases, but simply assumed that guns legally purchased from a dealer and then used in the commission of a crime within three years must have involved straw purchases. These guns could have been stolen between the original sale and their use in a crime, but they would still be classified as straw purchases. To arrive at the percentages the administration reports, only guns that were both sold and used in the commission of a crime between the beginning of 1990 and the end of 1996 are examined.
Yet using this method the administration could have produced virtually any percentage it wanted. For example, accept its definition of a straw purchase as guns that are both purchased
and used within a three-year period of time. If the administration had simply limited the sample to guns that were purchased and used in the commission of a crime in a three-year period from 1994 through 1996, it could have claimed that 100 percent of guns used in crimes were obtained through straw purchases. In this case, all the guns they would have studied would fit their definition of a straw purchase.
Much of the debate today is framed so as to blame the greater accessibility of guns in America for the recent school violence. Gun-control groups claim that today "guns are less regulated than toasters or teddy bears." 131 The solutions range from banning gun possession for those under twenty-one to imprisoning adults whose guns are misused by minors under eighteen.
Yet, to the contrary, gun availability has never before been as restricted as it is now. As late as 1967, it was possible for a thirteen-year-old virtually anywhere in the United States to walk into a hardware store and buy a rifle. Relatively few states even had age restrictions for buying handguns from a store. Buying a rifle through the mail was easy. Private transfers of guns to juveniles were also unrestricted.
It was common for schools to have shooting clubs. Even in New York City, virtually every public high school had a shooting club up until 1969. It was common for high school students to take their guns with them to school on the subways in the morning and turn them over to their homeroom teacher or the gym coach so the heavy guns would simply be out of the way. After school, students would pick up their guns when it was time for practice. The federal government would even give students rifles and pay for their ammunition. Students regularly competed in citywide shooting contests, with the winners being awarded university scholarships.
Contrast those days with regulations today. College or elementary students are now expelled from school for even accidentally bringing a water pistol. Schools prohibit images of guns, knives, or other weapons on shirts, on hats, or in pictures. Elementary school students have been suspended for carrying around a mere picture of a gun. High schools have refused to publish yearbook pictures of students sitting on howitzers, even when the picture shows graduating students who are joining the military. School superintendents have lost their jobs for even raising the question of whether someone at a school should have a gun for protection. 132
Since the 1960s, the growth of federal gun control has been dramatic.
Before the Brady law in 1994, background checks and waiting periods were not required in most states. It was not a federal crime for those under eighteen to possess a handgun until 1994. The 1990s saw dramatically higher fees for registered dealers as well as many added paperwork requirements. Federal gun laws in 1930 amounted to only 3,571 words. They expanded to 19,907 words in 1960 and then more than quadrupled to 88,413 words today. 133
The growth in state laws has kept pace. By 1997, California's gun-control statutes contained an incredible 158,643 words, nearly the length of the King James Version of the New Testament. And in 1999, at least four new gun laws have already been signed into law by the governor. Even a "gun-friendly" state government such as Texas has gun-control provisions containing over 41,000 words. None of this even begins to include the burgeoning local regulations on everything from licensing to mandatory gun locks.
But whose access has really been restricted by these laws? There is no academic study showing that waiting periods and background checks have reduced criminal access or resulted in less crime or youth violence. Indeed, for the Brady law, I have found that rape rates have increased. While the object is obviously to disarm criminals, the laws are primarily obeyed by good people. If the research in this book convinces me of anything, it is that disarming potential victims relative to criminals makes crime more attractive and more likely.
To restrict firearm access further and promote "safe zones" for our children, a 1995 federal law now bans guns within 1,000 feet of a school. Unfortunately, again, it is the law-abiding citizens who obey the law— not the criminals who are intent on harming our children. With the recent school attacks, even the most die-hard proponents of this law will be hard pressed to claim that this law has worked out the way that it was intended.
In Virginia, where rural areas have a long tradition of high school students going hunting in the morning, before school, the governor tried but failed to get the state legislature in 1999 to enact an exemption to the federal law allowing high school students to store their guns in their cars in the school parking lot. Indeed, one reason few students have been prosecuted for possessing a gun on school grounds is that many violations involve these very types of cases. Prosecutors find it crazy to send good kids to jail simply because they had a rifle locked in the trunk of their car while the car was parked in the school parking lot. The recent attempts in Congress to "put teeth" into the current laws through mandating prosecutions will take away this prosecutorial discretion and produce unintended results.
The horror with which people react to guns is inversely related to how accessible they are. It would appear that, at the very least, gun-control advocates face something of a dilemma. If guns are the problem, why was it that when guns were really accessible, even inside schools by students, we didn't have the problems that plague us now including the mass school shootings?
Rules that are passed to solve a problem can make the problem worse, which in turn generates calls for yet more regulations. The biggest problem with gun-control laws is that those who are intent on harming others, and especially those who plan to commit suicide, are the least likely to obey them. The issue is often disparagingly phrased as whether hunters are willing to be "inconvenienced," but this misses the real question: Will well-intended laws disarm potential victims and thus make it easier for criminals?
The experiences of other countries with gun control should also raise real concerns. For example, Australia banned a wide range of guns after Tasmania's horrible multiple-victim public shooting in 1996. But neither total crime nor total crime with guns has declined. In the first two years after the law, armed robberies had risen by 73 percent, unarmed robberies by 28 percent, assaults by 17 percent, and kidnappings by 38 percent. 134 Murders declined by 9 percent, but manslaughter rose by 32 percent. Another country that has recently banned guns is England, yet it now leads the United States by a wide margin in robberies and aggravated assaults, and although murder and rape is still higher in the United States, that difference has been shrinking. 135 It is seldom mentioned that other countries, like Brazil and Russia, with some of the toughest gun bans and restrictions in the world, have murder rates four times higher than what we have in the United States.
Another important source of regulation is the constant threat of legal action now faced by gun makers and those in anyway involved in handling guns. Colt has terminated a thousand field representatives and virtually stopped selling handguns to the civilian market. 136 Other gun makers have filed for bankruptcy protection. 137 Other businesses have also been affected. The Wall Street Journal notes that "In part to avoid becoming a target of new lawsuits," United Parcel Service is "tightening its rules for shipping handguns" and effectively tripling its prices. 138
What seems missing from so much of the public debate is that regulations have both costs and benefits. Consider, then, the costs and benefits of some other recent gun-control proposals that have not already been addressed directly in this book:
Prison sentences for adults whose guns are misused by someone under 18. Parents are already civilly liable for any wrongful actions committed by their chil-
dren, but these recent federal proposals would institute a three-year minimum prison term for anyone whose gun is used improperly by any minor (not necessarily their own child), regardless of whether the gun owner consented to or knew of the use. The rules are being created for just one product when we would never think of applying them to other products. This is draconian, to say the least—the equivalent of sending Mom and Dad to prison because an auto thief kills someone while driving the family car. What about othe
r household products like the propane tanks from barbecues or trailer homes used to make bombs? If the motivation is to prevent accidental deaths, why not apply this rule to items that pose a much greater risk to children in the home? Criminal penalties would surely motivate parents to store everything from medicines to knives to water buckets more carefully. Most would consider such an idea extreme, and it would only add to the grief or agony already suffered by parents when their children are killed or hurt.
Age limits. Mr. Clinton proposes a federal ban on the possession of handguns by anyone under twenty-one. Under a 1968 federal law, twenty-one is already the minimum age to purchase a handgun, but setting the age to possess a handgun has been a state matter. While some people between eighteen and twenty-one use guns improperly, others face the risk of crime and would benefit from defending themselves. As discussed earlier in this book (p. 86), laws allowing eighteen- to twenty-one-year-olds to carry a concealed handgun reduce violent crime, just as they do for citizens over twenty-one.
New rules for gun shows. The Clinton administration has provided no evidence that such shows are important in supplying criminals with guns. Furthermore, it is simply false to claim that the rules for purchasing guns at a gun show are any different from purchases elsewhere. Dealers at a show must perform the same background checks and obey all the other rules that they follow when they make sales at their stores. Private sales are always unregulated whether they occur at a gun show or not.
If, as Mr. Clinton proposes, the government enacts new laws regulating private sales at gun shows, all someone would have to do is walk outside the show and sell the gun there. To regulate private sales, the government would have to register all guns. This is where the discussion will soon be headed, as it is certain that gun-control advocates will quickly point to the unenforceability of these new laws. Advocates of the new rules must know that the proposed rules are doomed to failure and should acknowledge openly whether they would advocate registration to close the new "loopholes" they are creating. The other goal here is set up fees and bureaucracy that will drive most gun shows out of business.
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