Saturday, August 04, 2012
The tragedy in Aurora, Colorado, has led to a lot of
unfortunate misinformation about firearms. Let's try to add some facts to the
justified emotion.
Are Some Guns More Dangerous than Others? The shooter in
Aurora had three firearms when he entered the theater: a pump action shotgun, a
semiautomatic rifle and a semiautomatic handgun.
In a closed, crowded setting like a movie theater, the
shotgun was probably the most lethal of the three. Every shotgun shell can
spray a half-dozen or more pellets, each capable of killing or maiming a
person. Twelve-gauge shotguns often fire five shells, and sometimes more,
before needing to be reloaded. And unlike semiautomatics, they don't typically
jam.
Yet in most American cities, just about anybody can buy a
shotgun at the drop of a hat. Antigun activists and politicians almost never
propose banning them.
Instead, the focus these days is on so-called
"assault weapons."
Should We Be Especially Worried About Assault Weapons?
Assault weapons are not usually the weapon of choice. Neither of the two worst
shooting sprees in U.S. history involved assault weapons. James Huberty, who
killed 20 people at a McDonald's restaurant in San Ysidro, California, in 1984,
used a shotgun, a pistol and a hunting rifle. George Hennard, who killed 22
people at a Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, used two ordinary
pistols.
Still, gun opponents seem obsessed about them. So what
exactly is an "assault weapon"?
What Are Assault Weapons? You would think that the
definition would hinge on a weapon's fire power or its capacity to maim or
kill. Not so. Assault weapons are mainly defined by their appearance. As Steve
Chapman explained the other day:
Assault weapons are functionally indistinguishable from
ordinary semiautomatic hunting rifles. They don't fire more rapidly, they don't
deliver more lethal rounds, and they don't spray bullets. They only look like
military arms.
The features that disqualified a gun under the federal
ban were ones that didn't affect destructiveness, such as pistol grips and
bayonet mounts. If accused [Aurora] killer James Holmes had been prevented from
buying this gun, he could have found plenty of others that would have served
his purpose just as well.
Basically, what disqualified a weapon when the
short-lived assault weapons ban was in effect was looking like a military
weapon. The offensive features included plastic stocks, extended ammunition clips,
collapsible butt-stocks, and other decorative devices that made them look like,
but not operate as, a fully functional assault rifle.
Contrary to the claims that military-looking weapons are
only designed to kill human beings, they are, in fact, the fastest growing
segment of the hunting rifle market!
What About Machine Guns? Most TV commentators who decry
assault weapons imply that they are automatic — that you just pull the trigger
and bullets start flying. Not so. It has been illegal to buy a machine gun on
the open market in the United States for more than 80 years. However, you can
obtain one under special permit and there are about 250,000 in private hands.
Now here is something interesting: despite all those guns
in private hands, there appears not to be a single instance of a legally owned
machine gun being used to commit a crime throughout the entire 80 year period.
This illustrates two things: (1) the bumper stickers have it right: guns don't
kill, people do; and (2) we can have reasonable restrictions on access to guns
without banning them altogether.
That brings us to another obsession: the insistence that
guns are useless as tools of self-defense.
Are Guns Useful for Self-Defense? As it turns out, they
are. According to research by renowned Florida State University criminologist
Gary Kleck, guns are used between 800,000 and 2.5 million times every year in
self-defense.
A study by John Lott and David Mustard found that
handguns appear to help women more than men. While murder rates drop when
either sex carries more guns, the effect is especially pronounced when women
carry. Each additional woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder
rate for women three to four times more than an additional armed man reduces
the murder rate for men.
Do More Guns Cause More Crime? In the typical Western
movie, everyone has a gun. When they go into a bar, they start drinking. Then,
they start insulting each other. Before long, they start shooting each other.
It may be good theater, but it's lousy history. Turns out, 19th century Dodge
City was more peaceful than most American cities are today! Robert Heinlein
explained why: "An armed society is a polite society," he wrote.
Overall, some of the most heavily-armed states have very
low violent crime rates and vice versa. Also, it appears that when the good
guys are armed there is less gun violence. Research by John Lott shows that
allowing citizens the right to carry concealed handguns reduces violent crime.
In those states that passed right-to-carry concealed handgun laws, the average
murder rate dropped from 6.3 per 100,000 to 5.2 per 100,000 nine to 10 years
later — about a 1.7% drop in the murder rate per year for 10 years.
In states that enacted right-to-carry laws between 1977
and 1999, the overall occurrence of multiple-victim shootings dropped by a
remarkable 67% with deaths and injuries from such shootings plummeting by 75%
and 81%, respectively. And since 1997, two of eight school shootings were both
stopped by citizens with guns (before police even arrived at the scene).
What Does the International Evidence Show? Switzerland
actually requires young males to keep weapons in their homes, as part of the
country's militia. Yet no one has ever accused Switzerland of being a host to
Wild West shootouts. Finland has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in
the world. Yet it too has a very low rate of violent crime.
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