Another Request

Reader David Smith sent me a link to a Harvard Magazine article by Craig Lambert entitled Death by the Barrel with the suggestion:

Being a scientist myself, I take particular offense to the editor's claim of using the scientific method. Anyway, I thought you might enjoy fisking a Harvard PhD for all he's worth.

I guess I should be flattered for a reader to suggest that I'm qualified to fisk a Harvard PhD, so I read the article. It's a review of David Hemenway's book Private Guns, Public Health: A Dramatic New Plan for Ending America's Epidemic of Gun Violence. Very skillfully done with virtuoso talent at misdirection, spin, suggestion and exaggeration mixed with just enough accuracy to make it all seem perfectly reasonable. In all, very fiskworthy, so I shall, David. So I shall.

Let us begin:

This particular gun story took place, ironically enough, at the 1997 convention of the American Public Health Association in Indianapolis. There, among a group of white-collar professionals and academics, a seemingly minor incident quickly led to mayhem. While eating dinner at the Planet Hollywood restaurant, a patron bent to pick something up from the floor. A small pistol fell from his pocket, hit the floor, and went off. The bullet struck and injured two convention delegates waiting to be seated; both women went to the hospital.

"Why manufacture guns that go off when you drop them?" asks professor of health policy David Hemenway '66, Ph.D. '74. "Kids play with guns. We put childproof safety caps on aspirin bottles because if kids take too many aspirin, they get sick. You could blame the parents for gun accidents but, as with aspirin, manufacturers could help. It's very easy to make childproof guns."

Logic like this pervades Hemenway's new book, Private Guns, Public Health (University of Michigan Press), which takes an original approach to an old problem by applying a scientific perspective to firearms. Hemenway, who directs the Harvard Injury Control Research Center at the School of Public Health (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc ), summarizes and interprets findings from hundreds of surveys and from epidemiological and field studies to deliver on the book's subtitle: A Dramatic New Plan for Ending America's Epidemic of Gun Violence. The empirical groundwork enables Hemenway, whose doctorate is in economics, to sidestep decades of political arm-wrestling over gun control. "The gun-control debate often makes it look like there are only two options: either take away people's guns, or not," he says. "That's not it at all. This is more like a harm-reduction strategy. Recognize that there are a lot of guns out there, and that reasonable gun policies can minimize the harm that comes from them."

Let's start with the first obvious misdirection. Hemenway goes from the question "why manufacture guns that go off when you drop them" - a reasonable question, by the way - to the contention "It's very easy to make childproof guns."

This is called "bait and switch." They're entirely separate and unrelated questions, and the second one is largely bogus, but because it involves "the Children™" it immediately draws a sympathetic reaction from the average reader. Could "manufacturers help" make guns "childproof"? Probably, but the comparison isn't a reasonable one. The "childproof cap" law was first passed in 1972 as the Poison Prevention Packaging Act. It mandated that not only drugs, but any poisonous substance be provided in a package

...that is designed or constructed to be significantly difficult for children under five years of age to open or obtain a toxic or harmful amount of the substance contained therein within a reasonable time and not difficult for normal adults to use properly, but does not mean packaging which all such children cannot open or obtain a toxic or harmful amount within a reasonable time."

First problem? Well, according to this article reviewing the 1995 revision of the act,

While the old caps kept children out, many older people had so much trouble opening them that they either left the caps off or put their medication in non-childproof containers, posing even more of a danger to children, says Jo Reed, senior coordinator of consumer issues for AARP.

That's known as "The Law of Unintended Consequences." If I recall correctly, after passage of that law, the number of child poisonings went up for a while. People reasoned "it's not dangerous, it's childproof. I don't have to keep it in the medicine cabinet or store it on a high shelf."

With guns, the same "unintended consequence" might very well occur. Because the gun is "childproof," might the owner/parent leave it more accessible? And in a defense gun, what if the gun cannot be made fireable at time of need? Smith & Wesson, for instance, now manufactures their revolvers with an internal lock that requires a key. When locked, the hammer cannot be moved and the cylinder cannot be rotated. That makes the gun "child safe," (if you actually do lock it) but what if you cannot find the key in the dark when an intruder is attempting to break down your bedroom door? That's a situation not encountered when discussing the normal use of household poisons.

The next question becomes, "how long would it take for design changes to affect child safety?" Chemicals are consumeables and their containers are disposable. It didn't take very long after child-protective caps were mandated for them to supplant non-safety caps in circulation. Yet there are over 60 million handguns in private hands today, and they aren't going to end up in landfills as soon as the owner empties the magazine or fires all the shots in the cylinder. Any law requiring new handguns to be equipped with "child safety" features would be essentially ineffective for decades because of those 60+ million handguns already out there.

And finally, "how big is the problem of children being accidentally shot, anyway?" From this March 19, 2000 Whitehouse press release,

In 1962, almost 450 children died of poisoning after swallowing medicines or household chemicals. By 1996, that tragic statistic had been reduced to 47.

Well, the Centers for Disease Control's WISQARS tool says the total in 1996 was 60 for children 5 years old and younger, but let's not quibble. What was the injury mortality for children in that same age bracket by accidental gunshot? According to WISQARS, 19.

Obviously poisoning was a significant problem for very young children that was addressed with some effectiveness by the Poison Prevention Packaging Act, but could we expect a similar reduction in accidental deaths by a "Childproof Gun Act"? There is no reason to believe so. As noted, older guns would still be in circulation, and since an an there are only an additional one million or so new handguns added each year it would take quite a while for them to represent a significant percentage of available guns. Second, people irresponsible enough to leave loaded firearms around where children can access them cannot be expected to be responsible enough to engage the "child safety" feature, can they? Third, "child safety" caps were designed to protect toddlers. Remember, the law was directed to make it "significantly difficult for children under five years of age" to access poisonous substances. Older children were recognized to have the necessary skills to defeat them, but were expected to have the necessary knowledge of the dangers of doing so. The same would be true of firearms. (Anybody remember the joke that "Only kids can open the damned Childproof caps"?)

So Dr. Hemenway has attempted to deceive you by suggesting that "childproof caps" and "childproof guns" would be equivalents, and would prevent many unfortunate accidental deaths. What he doesn't expect you to understand is that "childproof caps" were only designed to address the accidental poisoning of very young children, and that "childproof guns," under the same criteria, still wouldn't "solve" what is, in fact, a statistically very small problem. What Dr. Hemenway also does not tell you is that without "childproof" features, the number of accidental deaths by gunshot has been decreasing ever since we've kept track. The WISQARS tool only goes back as far as 1981, but that year there were 51 accidental gunshot deaths of children 0-4 years old. In 1985 there were 43. In 1990, 34. In 1995, 20. In 2001, 17.

Author Craig Lambert tells us that "logic like this pervades Hemenway's new book". Of that I have no doubt.

This is long enough as an opening piece. I'll continue the deconstruction later, if I get enough interested feedback.

Dr. Hemenway Responds. And So Do I.

On Sunday, Sept. 26, reader sent Dr. David Hemenway a link to this blog with the following comment:

The subtitle of your book is "A Dramatic New Plan for Ending America's Epidemic of Gun Violence."

The definition of epidemic is 1 widespread occurrence of a disease at a particular time. 2 such a disease.(The Oxford Desk Dictionary, 1997).
Why do you say "gun violence" is an epidemic when it is not? It is not a disease one can catch by being in the presence of a gun.

Have you read a critique of your book by Kevin Smith(sic) at "The Smallest Minority." web site?

I, and a lot of people, would be very interested in your response to him.

Dr. Hemenway responded, and here it is, in its entirety, with some comments interspersed, and a longer response following:

September 27, 2004

I was asked to respond to what is claimed to be a critique of my book appearing on the website, the Smallest Minority. I have neither the time nor inclination to have a detailed response to the many assertions and arguments there, many of which are wrong or misleading.

It turns out that the Smallest Minority isn’t really discussing my book “Private Guns Public Health”, but a magazine article about it. Unfortunately it seems that the Smallest Minority may not have read my book (or the hundreds of journal articles that the book summarizes). It does seem silly for him to accuse the journalist who tried to reduce a 300+ page book and 3 hours of interviews into 3 interesting pages of text, as engaging in “bait-and-switch” tactics or not sufficiently discussing what the Smallest Minority would have liked discussed.

Just for the record, I didn’t claim that my three pieces were a critique of Dr. Hemenway’s book. I was quite explicit that I was asked to fisk a Harvard Magazine review of the book, and I did, at least the first page or so of it. It was the reader who emailed Dr. Hemenway who characterized my pieces as a critique of his book (and got my name wrong, too.)

However, my accusations of “bait and switch” are, IMHO, not “silly.” You’ll note that Dr. Hemenway didn’t rebut, but simply dismissed. For someone who doesn’t have time for a “detailed response,”a two-page reply with a chart certainly seems to be one.

I will talk about one issue, to illustrate the type of problem found in the Smallest Minority’s discussion.

A dozen case-control studies all find that, in the U.S., a gun in the home is a risk factor for “violent death” (i.e., homicide, suicide or unintentional gun death). Some of the other risk factors accounted for in one or more of these studies include age, gender, community, living alone, education, alcohol illicit drug use, depression medication, and psychiatric diagnosis. Ecological studies also find that, across U.S. states and regions, higher levels of household gun ownership are associated with higher rates of homicide (due to higher gun homicide rates), higher rates of suicide (due to higher gun suicide rates) and more unintentional gun deaths. Some of the other risk factors accounted for in one or more of these studies include poverty, alcohol consumption, unemployment, urbanization, divorce, education, violent crime, major depression, and suicidal thoughts.

Massachusetts, where I live, is a state with (relatively) low levels of household gun ownership, strict gun control laws, and low rates of violent death. I remarked to the journalist, who lives in Massachusetts, that I was glad I lived in Massachusetts and that “It’s nice to have raised my son in Massachusetts, where he is so much safer” than most other states. The Smallest Minority took this quote, asserted that I live in Boston, which I do not, and made comparisons to violent death in parts of Arizona, a state that has more permissive gun laws than Massachusetts.

I apologize here. I did indeed assert that Dr. Hemenway lived in Boston, and that is not the case. My most abject apologies. I made an incorrect assumption based on the belief that since he worked at Harvard University, he therefore lived in the Boston metropolitan area. My error. I do hereby withdraw that assertion.

That does not, however, change the comparison data between Boston, Tucson, and Phoenix.

So, let's compare Massachusetts and Arizona. Here are data from 1999-2001, the most recent time period available, easily obtained from the CDC WISQARS website.

Number of Deaths and Mortality Rate Ratio, 1999-2001

	Arizona pop: 5.154 million	Massachusetts pop: 6.356 million	Mortality Rate Ratio, Arizona v. Massachusetts
Homicides	1,374	501	3.4
Gun	909	218	5.2
Non-gun	465	283	2.0
Suicides	2,317	1,244	2.3
Gun	1,433	330	5.4
Non-Gun	884	914	1.2
Unintentional Gun	47	6	10.0
Total Gun Deaths	2,460	565	5.4

In other words, a resident of Arizona is over 5 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, commit suicide with a gun, and be unintentionally killed with a gun than a resident of Massachusetts. Arizona may be nicer than Massachusetts in many ways (e.g. climate) but it’s difficult to understand how the Smallest Minority can suggest that Arizona is a safer state in terms of gun deaths, or violent deaths.

I didn’t. I asserted that Tucson and Phoenix were safer in terms of homicide than Boston during the time period I referenced, gun laws notwithstanding. I also noted that Arizona was a border state with a high level of drug trafficking. Apparently there’s a lot of homicide and suicide going on outside those metropolitan areas here that don't occur in Massachussetts. Given the fact that a lot of drugs do move through this state, I'm not surprised. This does not, however, refute the data for Boston, Phoenix, and Tucson. Massachussett's gun laws have apparently not made Boston significantly safer.

Dr. Hemeway writes that "Massachusetts, where I live, is a state with (relatively) low levels of household gun ownership, strict gun control laws, and low rates of violent death." Yes, indeed it has. It also has a tremendously lower level of drug trafficking. According to the U.S. Dept. of Justice in Massachusetts, in 2003, the following drug seizures occurred:

Cocaine: 374.7 kgs.
Heroin: 29.7 kgs.
Methamphetamine: 1.2 kgs.
Marijuana: 177.4 kgs.
Ecstasy: 5,717
Methamphetamine Laboratories: 1

Via the same source, in Arizona in 2003 the following was seized:

Cocaine: 2,373 kgs.
Heroin: 3.2 kgs.
Methamphetamine: 538 kgs.
Marijuana: 322,374 kgs.
Ecstasy: 107 tablets
Methamphetamine Laboratories: 119
Heroin and Ecstasy seem to be more popular in Massachusetts, but nothing else. Arizona appears to be the central pipeline for Marijuana, and a major thoroughfare for cocaine - and drug trafficking is a major risk factor for violent death. Add to that the traffic in illegal aliens. The people involved in both of these are members of a culture that survives by personal violence. Guns are a byproduct of this culture, not a cause of it, and gun control laws will not disarm them.

In general, the Smallest Minority seems to believe if he can find an anomaly, then the general associations scientists find between guns and death is disproved. It is analogous to his finding that Abel smokes but Cain doesn’t, and Cain has heart disease but Abel doesn’t, and believing that this proves that smoking does not really cause heart disease. Or believing that the fact that Japanese smoke more than Americans and have less cancer shows not only that cigarettes don’t cause cancer, but may well be protective. But such anecdotal evidence shows only what everyone knows, that there are many factors affecting the likelihood of heart disease or cancer, and smoking is only one of those factors. It is not the only factor. Nor is gun availability the only factor affecting homicide or suicide—but the evidence is quite strong that it is one important factor.

I will not argue that gun availability is one important factor affecting criminal homicide, but I will argue that I believe no such causality has been proven when it comes to suicide. I will argue that guns are not the cause of homicide or suicide or even accidental death by gunshot. Culture is. This is the critical difference between my position on “gun control” and that of the gun control movement.

What makes the Smallest Minority’s arguments even more questionable is that his claimed anomalies are often specious. One can find states with more guns and a lower homicide rate than Massachusetts (HINT: look for very rural states, since virtually all crime, including homicide, is much higher in urban areas), but Arizona is not one of them. There are many other examples. The Smallest Minority also says that about half the households in Finland contain guns. While a UN report did say that, the information appears to be incorrect. Probably the best source for comparative gun ownership is the International Crime Surveys that found that in 1989 23% of Finnish households contained a gun, in 1992 it was 25%, and in 1996 it was about 26%.

I’ve used International Crime Survey data before, and been burned by it. The ICS claimed that Scotland in 2000 had a homicide rate of 13.3/100,000. Scotland’s government reports the level is 2.0. Sweden’s homicide rate was given as 10.01. Sweden reports 1.2. (Apparently sometime since I did the research for that piece, the “International Crime Statistics” pages of Interpol have been made accessible only to "authorized police users.") Pardon me if I don't feel the ICS data is all that reliable, and used a different, assumably accurate source. (If you can't trust the UN, who can you trust?)

Which brings us to,

Discussions of firearms in the Smallest Minority, and many other internet sites, seem primarily to be debates, where each party tries to find evidence to support his already held point of view. These are interesting exercises, but they add little to science, and I am not very interested in them. There seems to be a surprisingly lack of curiosity as to what really is happening in the lives of 300 million American, or the 5-6 billion people on the planet. We can’t rely on news to tell us much. We should rely, not on anecdotes, but on good scientific studies, where the goal is to find the truth rather than support for what one already believes.

David Hemenway

Thank you, Dr. Hemenway, for your reply. (You could have cc’d me a copy, but the original respondent was kind enough to forward it.)

I agree with you on your characterization of my site and others on the internet. In general we are, and I unashamedly proclaim to be, advocates of our personal positions. I concur that we do not “add to science.” I concur that we “can’t rely on the news to tell us much,” and much of what they do tell us is wrong, either out of ignorance or bias. I agree that we should rely on good scientific studies, but I have seen that in much of the study of firearms that “good science” isn’t used a great deal.

You state that "A dozen case-control studies all find that, in the U.S., a gun in the home is a risk factor for “violent death” (i.e., homicide, suicide or unintentional gun death).” I have no doubt that firearms were present, but were they the risk factor, or were they merely an indicator of the real risk factor? You state, “Some of the other risk factors accounted for in one or more of these studies include age, gender, community, living alone, education, alcohol illicit drug use, depression medication, and psychiatric diagnosis.” I have to wonder why no one who does these studies considers that people who die violently overwhelmingly belong to a culture that practices personal violence, and that guns and other weapons are the accoutrements of this culture, not its cause. Millions of people own firearms who won't die by gunshot because they are not part of that culture, yet your efforts seem aimed at treating the United States as if it were homogeneous where it comes to firearms possession.

The research that you and your colleagues do, all the data that you collect, are all directed in the belief that “the number of guns” in our society is responsible for the level of violence, and that if we could somehow get rid of them our problems would abate. I disagree. The problem is that a small minority of the country embraces an extreme culture of violence, and the people who do so will be the very last to be disarmed. I therefore believe that attempting to solve our gun-violence problem by attacking guns is a path to disaster.

You (the gun control advocates) have identified a violent crime problem. You think you’ve identified the disease vector, and that gun violence can be solved by eliminating or at least reducing that vector, but you ignore the example of England that indicates that path is a failure. Worse, you gloss over the fact that our homicide rates are horribly distorted by a small, identifiable minority that is destroying itself by violence. Instead of attempting to address that glaring and tragic problem, your colleagues would rather look away and instead attempt to attack that “iron pipeline” as though efforts to control the illegal flow of any material has ever been effective. You ignore the first rule of economics: that supply will always meet demand by dismissal.

Hemenway scoffs at the rote objection, "A determined criminal will always get a gun," responding, "Yes, but a lot of people aren't that determined. I'm sure there are some determined yacht buyers out there, but when you raise the price high enough, a lot of them stop buying yachts."

However, there are nearly 300 million guns already inside our borders. Guns are not nearly as difficult or expensive to produce as a yacht. Sixty-five million handguns. At most two million violent felons. The current supply will easily keep the price down to a low level for any foreseeable future.

And you claim that my arguments are specious?

Gun control advocates ignore the fact that all gun control attempted so far here has been, at best, inconclusive in its effect (For those interested, read Under the Gun: Weapons, Crime, and Violence in America for more on this). You ignore the fact that there has been over a decade of decreasing violent crime here that cannot be linked to any gun control law. You ignore the fact that during that same period between two and three million new guns have been added to the private market each year, but insist that there need to be more gun control laws passed in order to reduce gun crime.

There is no evidence that "gun control" has been beneficial, but the response to this has been, as I have repeatedly noted, that the philosophy cannot be wrong! We must do it again, only HARDER! Dr. Hemenway, the GUNS aren’t causing the problem, a culture of violence is. But it's easier to attack a steel and lead vector than a behavior. Yet the behavior has been affected, and because of this, not gun control laws, gun violence has been reduced.

You see that the U.S. has a high level of suicide by firearm, but ignore or at least downplay the fact that our suicide rates are pretty average for the world, regardless of gun availability. You want “safer guns” so that accidental gunshot is less likely, but ignore the fact that accidental gunshot - absolute numbers, not just the rates - have been declining ever since we’ve been keeping record - and that "gun control" doesn't affect that except where it keeps people from actually possessing guns. Gun control advocates hype the problem of accidental gunshot among children, but fail to note that such shootings are relatively rare given the huge number of firearms in private hands. You distort this by making claims that ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen children a day die by gunshot, but fail to note that the overwhelming majority of these "children" are young men between the ages of 17 and 20 who are involved in criminal activities. This leads to erroneous conclusions - never dispelled by the gun controllers - such as Jean Hanff Korelitz's claim that "more than 4,000 children... die in gun-related accidents each year."

Is that good science?

You suggest methods by which guns can be made “safer” to reduce the possibility of such shootings, but don’t seem to want to study how such changes will actually effect a reduction, since there are already 60-70 million handguns and possibly over 200 million long arms already in circulation that such changes cannot affect. You recommend additional gun laws, but when such laws are passed and no benefit is seen the cry is, again, that we need MORE gun control because the previous effort wasn't implemented properly.

In short, your solution (and I’m still using the general “you” here), your path to “create a society in which it is harder to make fatal blunders” is to severely restrict public access to the means with which those “fatal blunders” can be made, and you want the U.S. to implement more and stricter gun control laws to accomplish this end.

And this is the part I object to most strongly: You have identified the problem as one of "too many guns," yet you, the gun control advocates, generally claim to not want to confiscate anything. Change designs to make them safer, yes (while not addressing nearly 300 million guns already out there). Confiscate, no. Register, yes (though the only people who would register are the ones you don't need to worry about) but never confiscate (though that's the only function a registration system actually has.) License, yes (ditto.) Confiscate, never.

However, the only way to affect what you yourself have identified as the problem - the number of guns - is to take those guns, and not let the public have any more.

We're capable of logic. We can see where "gun control" is inevitably headed.

The goal of reducing death by gunshot is noble. The path to it is wrong, and I’ll fight that path as strongly as I possibly can because it’s wrong. It’s wrong because it doesn’t address the actual underlying causes. It’s wrong because it’s been proven a failure. And most importantly, it’s wrong because it violates the fundamental law of the United States.

And I will use this and other forums to fight it just as you use your forum to advocate it. You may be a lab-coated PhD, and I may be just a pajama-clad ankle-biter, but there are a lot more people like me than people like you, and our numbers are growing. In a democratic form of government, that means something.

They Never Ask ME

Jointogether.org reports that Children in South (are) More Likely to Die from Gun Violence, commenting on a newspaper story in the Florence Times Daily (annoying registration required). Let's fisk:

Gun violence more likely to kill kids in Alabama

By Emily Eisenberg
Medill News Service

WASHINGTON - In Alabama, a child is three times more likely to die from gun violence than a child in the Northeast, an expert at the Harvard School of Public Health says.

Decreasing this grim statistic is not just a matter of getting rid of guns, but it is treating them as a public health issue, said David Hemenway, director of Harvard's Injury Control Research Center.

Oh, how nice. Not just a matter of getting rid of guns. No, instead we must innoculate against gun violence?

The Centers for Disease Control reported in January that most deaths under the age of 40 are caused by an accident.

The most common cause of accidental death in the United States is automobile accidents. The second most common cause of these deaths is firearms.

Really? And the name of the report is? A link to the report is provided, where? And now we're defining "children" as "under the age of 40?"

Let's check the CDC, shall we? They have this wonderful tool called WISQARS that allows anybody access to the CDC statistics in really useful ways. So, let's check the most recent data, year 2001 for unintentional death, under the age of 40, entire U.S, all races, both sexes: 39,365. Now, what was the portion due to automobile? 23,663. Now, what was the portion of unintentional death by firearm? 470.

BUT, to be fair, the report does say "gun violence," however I don't think you're supposed to really grasp the difference. (Edit: Screw it. I don't want to be "fair." This writer certainly didn't intend to be.

Study carefully the construction of this story. You're supposed to assume that the "second most common cause of death" is firearm accident. HORSESHIT! Note how carefully the writer juxtaposes "accident", "automobile accident" and "firearms" - this time without the modifier, "accident." End Edit.)

This is, after all, a story about children, remember? I'll come back to this.

"Where there's more guns, there's more gun homicides; where there's more guns, there's more gun suicides," said Hemenway.

Well! There's a tautology for you. I guess it takes a Harvard doctorate to state something as obvious as that.

"I wouldn't expect it any other way," said Florence Police Chief Rick Singleton. He said the problem with weapons is the way "people handle and treat them."

Hemenway, while presenting the findings of his new book, "Private Guns, Public Health," said government should regulate guns the way it regulates traffic. Guns differ from almost all other consumer products because there is no regulatory agency in charge of managing their manufacture and distribution, he added.

Uhh.... What? "Government should regulate guns the way it regulates traffic??" I wasn't aware that the Consumer Product Safety Commission was in charge of traffic control. Harvard, eh?

Just out of curiosity, what government agency is responsible for managing "manufacture and distribution" of automobiles? Isn't that the purview of the manufacturers themselves? There's a government agent in each manufacturing facility controlling the production lines and approving the distribution plans?

Since the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration was established several decades ago to make automobiles safer, automobile fatalities have decreased 80 percent. The Harvard School of Public Health reported a regulatory agency would have a similar impact on firearm deaths.

One problem with that. Automobiles are designed to transport passengers from point A to point B. Firearms are designed to hurl small metal projectiles at high velocity in the general direction they're pointed when the trigger is pulled. How do you make them safe? Make them fire Nerf balls? Make them not fire when the trigger is pulled? Kinda defeats the purpose, no?

Another point: There are maybe 250 million vehicles on the roads today (I didn't go look it up, it's a wild-ass guess.) Most of them are less than 20 years old. They wear out. They're replaced on a fairly regular basis. The safety improvements applied to vehicles were not statutorily required of older vehicles on the road. If you own a 1955 Chevy, it has seatbelts only if YOU put them in. There's no law requiring it. No airbags, either. No third brake light. But there are (by several estimates) 250,000,000 firearms in private hands. New "safety requirements" would affect only the additional two million long guns and one million new handguns that enter the market each year. And those older guns aren't built with "planned obsolescence" in the design. My 1917 Enfield still works perfectly. So does my 1896 Swedish Mauser, built in 1916. A Colt 1911 made in 1927 probably works just as well as the one I bought new in 1999.

The argument that guns need to be regulated so that they will be "made safer" is asinine. It is false on its face, yet reports like this one keep putting the idea out in front of the public as a "common-sense" proposal.

But keep reading, because this piece is just like all the others in inflating just what that "federal oversight" needs to encompass.

Because the trafficking of illegal firearms between states is such a large problem, Hemenway said that such a regulatory agency should be at the federal level rather than with the states.

Another bait-and-switch. First, the agency is supposed to regulate the design of firearms to ostensibly make them safer, but now the agency is supposed to be responsible for illegal trafficking? Isn't that just a bit of a leap from the original "regulatory" function? I wasn't aware that the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration was in charge of "regulating" automobile theft and chop shops.

"There are lots of things we could do, lots of policies that wouldn't affect people's ability to own guns for hunting," Hemenway said.

However, the Second Amendment isn't about hunting. I own at least a dozen firearms, and I don't hunt. What about my guns?

Oh, right. "Decreasing this grim statistic is not just a matter of getting rid of guns."

Gotta ban and confiscate those "non-hunting" weapons.

He said federal regulation of firearms licensing and childproofing are some possible ways to address gun danger from a public health standpoint.

More mission-creep, and we haven't even established the regulatory agency! NOW the agency is responsible for: "safer" gun designs, illegal trafficking, and licensing!

And this is for public health, remember.

Alabama, like many other states in the South, is among the states with the highest levels of gun ownership in the country. The Rocky Mountain region also has high levels of gun ownership, while the northeastern part of the nation has a relatively small amount of guns.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence's annual report card gave Alabama an "F" in keeping kids safe from guns.

"Alabama does not require child-safety locks to be sold with guns, does not hold adults responsible for leaving loaded guns around children and does not have any safety standards for handguns," the Brady Campaign said recently. A spokesman at the organization said it strongly supports Hemenway's suggestion for a federal handgun regulation agency.

And now we're back to the supposed heart of the article: The Children™

You remember: "Gun violence more likely to kill kids in Alabama"? "In Alabama, a child is three times more likely to die from gun violence than a child in the Northeast"? Where "kids" is apparently defined as "under 40." Read that paragraph carefully: Child-safety locks. Loaded guns around children.

So, how many accidental deaths of children were there in Alabama to justify a new federal regulatory agency with sweeping powers to control firearm design, illegal firearm trafficking, and gun owner licensing?

Well, if you define "children" as those 17 or younger, there were six in 2001.

Of course there's the obligatory mention of the writer's attempt to be "balanced:"

Organizations like the National Rifle Association argue that the regulations the Brady Campaign proposes would decrease gun-owners constitutional rights, but a spokesperson at the NRA was not available for comment about Hemenway's findings.

Here you go, Ms. Eisenberg. All the commentary you'd ever want.

Not that you'd ever print it.

OK, I WILL Comment on this "Study".

Ben from Carnaby Fudge sent me a copy of the Social Science & Medicine report entitled "State-level homicide victimization rates in the US in relation to survey measures of household firearm ownership, 2001-2003" authored by Matthew Miller, David Hemenway, and Deborah Azrael of the Harvard School of Public Health. I've perused it. It is your typical statistician's wet-dream with phrases like "multivariate analysis" and "negative binomial regression models." I am not a statistician. I admit up front that I don't follow most of the discussion in the nine-page report, so this is my layman's understanding of the report's findings and my commentary on it.

Studies like this tend to do a combination of things. One, they state the blindingly obvious, e.g.:

Consistent with previous work, we found that homicide rates were higher in areas with higher rates of urbanization and resource deprivation; like others we also find that homicide rates are higher in the South.

Two, they draw conclusions, but don't admit to actually drawing those conclusions:

Our study does not establish a causal relationship between guns and homicide. It is possible that a non-causal relationship explains our findings or that the association we observe might have arisen because individuals in states with historically high homicide rates acquired more guns (than did individuals in low-homicide states), as a defensive response to actual high homicide rates in their communities (i.e. "reverse causation").

Have to cover all the bases, you know. But this won't be mentioned in any reports in the press. Third, they tend to not mention anything that doesn't reinforce the message being pushed: "More Guns = More Gun Crime." In this case, homicide.

I've already had a go-around with Dr. Hemenway, but let me see if I can put this report in a little context. The study covers homicide from 2001-2003. Here's a DOJ chart showing nationwide homicide rates from 1900-2002:

Click on the image for a link to the source data. Note that after 1994, homicide dropped precipitously. The data shows that in 2002 - the middle of the study period - the national homicide rate was 6.1/100,000 population. That is roughly the same rate we had in 1966, 1947, 1940, and 1913. The fact of the matter is homicide rates vary widely with time. However, the number of guns in circulation over time does one thing and one thing only: It increases.

But the argument put forth by this paper is that it is the level of household firearm ownership that is the critical correlation factor, and according to this report "approximately one in three US household contained firearms". But if household ownership was the critical factor in homicide rates, then why the tremendous swings from 1900 to the present? And why has the homicide rate in the U.S. declined from 1994 until just last year? Surely Dr. Hemenway et al. don't expect us to believe that the number of households containing firearms nationwide has decreased each and every year in the past decade? The report states:

Case-control studies suggest that the presence of a gun in the home is a risk factor for homicide in the home, that the risk is higher for women than for men, and that when any family member purchases a handgun all members of the household are at increased risk of homicide victimization.

During the past decade we've added a minimum of 30 million new firearms in public hands - at least 10 million of which were handguns. Since 1993 we've gone from 21 states with "shall-issue" or unrestricted concealed-carry legislation to 39. We've had an influx of "assault weapons" and "pocket rockets" - supposed engines of death and destruction far more lethal than the weapons available in the 60's.

Yet homicides declined. Non-fatal firearm related crime declined.

But we're supposed to believe that if you or someone in your household buys a gun, it is somehow the overriding risk factor in the probability of your becoming a victim of homicide. The report doesn't say that, but that is most certainly how it is being reported:

Study: More Guns Equal More Murders in U.S.

Higher rates of gun ownership correlate with higher homicide rates

Homicide Rates Higher in States with More Guns at Home

Never mind the fact that if you're not a young black male living in an inner city, your likelihood of dying by homicide (regardless of weapon) is about equal to that of someone living in Europe.

Nope. A gun in the home is the thing to be feared!

Do you understand why this kind of thing pisses me off?

Edited to add: And do I even have to point out that the "study" makes no distinction between criminal murders and justifiable homicides? As the Albuquerque Tribune recently noted, last year 10% of reported homicides there were of a defensive nature. Three were shootings of home intruders - with guns kept in the home one would assume.

UPDATE: Hey, I got quoted (secondhand) by Instapundit! Thanks, Uncle.

More Harvard PhD Fisking....

Well, there was some pretty enthusiastic response from the last piece, so I'll continue my dissection of Harvard Magazine's recent piece, Death by the Barrel, a review of Harvard PhD. David Hemmenway's most recent book, Private Guns, Public Health: A Dramatic New Plan for Ending America's Epidemic of Gun Violence. In the last installment I dissected Dr. Hemenway's bait-and-switch between a legitimate question, "Why manufacture guns that go off when you drop them?", and a bogus diversion to the topic of "childproof guns." Now we'll continue where I left off.

The next paragraph of the piece is

Hemenway's work on guns and violence is a natural evolution of his research on injuries of various kinds, which he has pursued for decades. (In fact, it could be traced as far back as the 1960s, when, working for Ralph Nader, LL.B. '58, he investigated product safety as one of "Nader's Raiders.") Hemenway says he doesn't have a personal issue with guns; he has shot firearms, but found the experience "loud and dirty—and there's no exercise"—as opposed to the "paintball" survival games he enjoys, which involve not only shooting but "a lot of running." He also happens to live in a state with strong gun laws. "It's nice," he says, "to have raised my son in Massachusetts, where he is so much safer."

Oh, please. First, we establish Dr. Hemenway's bona fides by revealing that he's a Naderite, out for the selfless defense of the little guy against rapacious and irresponsible corporations (like gun manufacturers, natch.) But! Hemenway doesn't have a "personal issue" with guns, he's shot them, so he's shown himself to be an unbiased observer! He even plays paintball!

Ladies and gentlemen, the presidential nominee for the Democrat party shoots trap. That doesn't make him impartial when it comes to firearms. A rose by any other name...

All of this prelude is predictably ruined by the last two lines: "He also happens to live in a state with strong gun laws. 'It's nice,' he says, 'to have raised my son in Massachusetts, where he is so much safer.'" Safer than where? He lives in BOSTON. Safer than Chicago, with its even more restrictive gun laws. Safer than D.C. with its near-absolute prohibition on firearms, certainly. But Dr. Hemenway, or at least the article author, seems to credit that safety to Massachussetts' "strong gun laws." Well, according to this article, apparently not.

Slayings raise fears that more will follow

Boston officials wary of return of '90s gang wars
By John McElhenny
and Ron DePasquale, Globe Correspondents, 2/16/2004

The brazen killings of two Boston teenagers in crowded public settings over the last three days have ignited concerns about a return to the street violence that plagued the city a decade ago.

Nine homicides have occurred in Boston in the first six weeks of the year, a rate that far exceeds last year, when three people were killed by mid-February. Boston did not see its ninth homicide last year until mid-April.

--

Specialists said that violent crime across the country has remained flat in recent years, with a notable exception: Gang-related violence is on the rise.

James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University, said gang-related violence had increased in particular in Chicago and Los Angeles, where gang activity grew in the late 1980s and early 1990s before spreading to other cities.

Many gang leaders in Boston and other cities were imprisoned on federal charges in the late 1980s and early 1990s but have now been released, Fox said.

"They're coming back to their old neighborhoods, and their old pals, and their old ways," said Fox. "There's reason for concern that gang killings could be on the rise."

Gangs fueled the violence that pushed Boston to a record-high 152 murders in 1990. The violence that year continued into the next year, and by Feb. 15, 1991, the city reported 18 homicides.

In the early 1990s, the city's public safety officials fought back with a variety of efforts and homicides fell sharply throughout the decade.

Some attributed the drop to law enforcement programs such as the police department's community policing approach and the "antigang violence unit," which confiscated guns and sent hundreds of violent young people to prison. Others credited the delivery of more social services and the expansion of programs such as the Safe Neighborhoods Plan, which encouraged people to serve as role models in their neighborhoods.

By 2001 the city's homicide rate had fallen to 66. It fell to 60 in 2002 and 41 last year.

Philip J. Carver, president of the Pope's Hill Neighborhood Association in Dorchester, said the "Boston miracle" that saw violent crime plummet in the second half of the 1990s was due to effective cooperation among various law enforcement agencies, from police to parole officers to the Suffolk District Attorney's Office.

But a few years ago, Carver said, the money that had gone to some neighborhood anticrime efforts dried up and children began filling the vacuum in gang leadership created when the older generation went to prison.

"I'm not saying we got lazy, but we lost focus," said Carver. "Once we took the higher echelon of gang leaders out, we became lax."

That's interesting. Note that they didn't give credit for the low rate of homicide to Massachussetts' gun laws, but to aggressive prosecution of gang leaders. And after "losing focus" that problem has reasserted itself as an increase in homicide.

Personally, I'd rather live in Tucson, where according to this National Institute of Justice report (PDF) we had a a mean homicide rate of 8.31/100,000 population over the period from 1985 to 1994, and an average population of a bit over 405,000. Boston during that same period had a mean homicide rate of 17.0 and a mean population of 571,000. Hell, Phoenix had a mean rate of 13.57 and a mean population of almost 974,000. Arizona is a border state and a major thoroughfare for drug traffic.

In case you weren't aware, Arizona also allows unlicensed open carry of firearms, no waiting period, and private transfers are perfectly legal. It's also a Class III state (full-auto and suppressors are legal here.) We got licensed concealed carry in 1994.

But Massachussetts' gun laws are responsible for it being safe. Check.

Next paragraph:

Statistically, the United States is not a particularly violent society. Although gun proponents like to compare this country with hot spots like Colombia, Mexico, and Estonia (making America appear a truly peaceable kingdom), a more relevant comparison is against other high-income, industrialized nations. The percentage of the U.S. population victimized in 2000 by crimes like assault, car theft, burglary, robbery, and sexual incidents is about average for 17 industrialized countries, and lower on many indices than Canada, Australia, or New Zealand.

This is that "just enough accuracy" part I spoke of in the first piece. However, this paragraph fails to note that the U.S. has far, FAR less "crimes like assault, car theft, burglary, robbery" than the UK - the industrialized European country with by far the most restrictive firearms laws. Why that particular omission, I wonder?

More:

"The only thing that jumps out is lethal violence," Hemenway says. Violence, pace H. Rap Brown, is not "as American as cherry pie," but American violence does tend to end in death. The reason, plain and simple, is guns. We own more guns per capita than any other high-income country—maybe even more than one gun for every man, woman, and child in the country. A 1994 survey numbered the U.S. gun supply at more than 200 million in a population then numbered at 262 million, and currently about 35 percent of American households have guns. (These figures count only civilian guns; Switzerland, for example, has plenty of military weapons per capita.)

Wait a minute...

What difference does it make if Switzerland has "plenty of military weapons per capita?" The bulk of those guns are kept in Swiss homes. All males of military age are required to keep an honest-to-jeebus assault rifle at home, and ammunition for it. Finland has a lot of guns and its lethal violence rate is quite low, too. According to Ryerson University of Ontario, about 36% of households in Switzerland contain a firearm, about 50% of households in Finland, and about 35% of households in the U.S. (which agrees with the Harvard article). What this means is that gun ownership is more widespread in Finland (a higher percentage own firearms) but American gun owners tend to own a lot more firearms per person. If there are more households containing guns, and the reason, "plain and simple" for America's higher level of lethal violence is gun availability, shouldn't Switzerland and Finland have higher or at least equivalent levels of lethal violence compared to the United States? That's what the next paragraph says:

"It's not as if a 19-year-old in the United States is more evil than a 19-year-old in Australia—there's no evidence for that," Hemenway explains. "But a 19-year-old in America can very easily get a pistol. That's very hard to do in Australia. So when there's a bar fight in Australia, somebody gets punched out or hit with a beer bottle. Here, they get shot."

Ah! Now it's not guns, but handguns that are the cause. Or are they?

In general, guns don't induce people to commit crimes. "What guns do is make crimes lethal," says Hemenway. They also make suicide attempts lethal: about 60 percent of suicides in America involve guns. "If you try to kill yourself with drugs, there's a 2 to 3 percent chance of dying," he explains. "With guns, the chance is 90 percent."

Hold your horses. You're doing another bait-and-switch. We were talking about criminal assaults, and now you've jumped to suicide. Apples and oranges, as I've illustrated before.

I'm quite willing to concede that firearms are more lethal than beer bottles or even knives. The level of violence among young males is also quite high. But I believe it really is culture that determines whether youth violence results in death or not. I covered part of this in the three Dangerous Victims essays (see the last three links under Best Posts in the left column of the blog). I covered it in more detail in a much older post, Racist!™

Homicide in the United States is tremendously concentrated in a very small portion of the population. If that portion of the population suffered homicide at the same rate as the rest of society, America's homicide rate would be near middle of the pack for industrialized Europe. Read the piece, at least the first half. It's not something you're likely to see in the mainstream media.

In the next piece, I'll deconstruct the "guns cause suicide" meme. Again.

Now, Where Was I?

When we last left our fisking of the Harvard Magazine article Death by the Barrel, I promised I'd take on the "guns cause suicide" meme. Again. Let's see where we were...

Oh, yes. We left off at the paragraph that stated,

In general, guns don't induce people to commit crimes. "What guns do is make crimes lethal," says Hemenway. They also make suicide attempts lethal: about 60 percent of suicides in America involve guns. "If you try to kill yourself with drugs, there's a 2 to 3 percent chance of dying," he explains. "With guns, the chance is 90 percent."

This is another incidence of "just enough fact" I mentioned in the first piece of this fisk. It is true that suicide attempts with firearms are far more likely to be "successful," thus ending in death, but the implication is that people who don't really intend to commit suicide choose a firearm simply because they're available, and thus an attempt that would have been a "cry for help" actually ends in death.

I'm sorry, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Let's continue with the next couple of paragraphs as author Craig Lambert lays it out for you:

Gun deaths fall into three categories: homicides, suicides, and accidental killings. In 2001, about 30,000 people died from gunfire in the United States. Set this against the 43,000 annual deaths from motor-vehicle accidents to recognize what startling carnage comes out of a barrel. The comparison is especially telling because cars "are a way of life," as Hemenway explains. "People use cars all day, every day—and 'motor vehicles' include trucks. How many of us use guns?"

Suicides accounted for about 58 percent of gun fatalities, or 17,000 to 18,000 deaths, in 2001; another 11,000 deaths, or 37 percent, were homicides, and the remaining 800 to 900 gun deaths were accidental. For rural areas, the big problem is suicide; in cities, it's homicide. ("In Wyoming it's hard to have big gang fights," Hemenway observes dryly. "Do you call up the other gang and drive 30 miles to meet up?") Homicides follow a curve similar to that of motor-vehicle fatalities: rising steeply between ages 15 and 21, staying fairly level from there until age 65, then rising again with advanced age. Men between 25 and 55 commit the bulk of suicides, and younger males account for an inflated share of both homicides and unintentional shootings. (Males suffer all injuries, including gunshots, at much higher rates than females.)

First, let's take a look at the study done for the (not gun friendly) Journal of the American Medical Association done by (not gun-friendly) Jens Ludwig of Georgetown University and (not gun friendly) Phillip J. Cook of Duke University. That study is entitled Homicide and Suicide Rates after the Brady Act (PDF file). The study was to determine what, if any, effect the five-day waiting period required by the Brady Act had on suicide and homicide when compared to areas that previously had such waiting periods in place. The conclusion drawn when it came to suicide was:

(W)e did not detect an association of the Brady Act with overall suicide rates.

We find some signs of an offsetting increase in nongun suicides to those aged 55 years or older, which makes the reduction in the total suicide rate smaller than the reduction in gun suicides. Neither the increase in nongun suicides nor the decrease in suicides from all causes are statistically significant at the conventional 95% level, though the overall pattern of findings is consistent with theories of "weapon substitution."

Note that. The only effect a waiting period apparently had - and the evidence is tenuous - is that those people 55 and older choosing suicide had a tendency to choose another method. It's called "weapon substitution."

Let's look at another example of such substitution, in another country. The rate of suicide for young men in Australia began climbing in the mid 1960's. It reached a peak in the early 1990's where it remains essentially unchanged, according to this site. What has changed, however, is the method of suicide, and for no apparent reason. According to this site

In 1972, the leading method of suicide for young men was using firearms or explosives (44%). However, by 1992, suicide by hanging, strangulation or suffocation had become their leading method of suicide (33%). The shift in method occurred in the mid to late 1980s. During this period the death rate for young male suicide by firearms and explosives decreased marginally, from 9 to 8 per 100,000, while the rate for suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation increased substantially, from 3 to 8 per 100,000. These data contradict much of the recent literature which has focused on the greater use of firearms as the cause of the increase in young male suicides.

In contrast, the most prevalent method used by young women was poisoning by solid or liquid substances, accounting for 29% of cases in 1988-92. Although the incidence of suicide from hanging, strangulation and suffocation also increased among young women during the mid to late 1980s the corresponding rate was much lower than that of young men (less than 2 per 100,000). Firearms were used in 13% of cases and hanging, strangulation and suffocation in 24%.

It would appear that if you really want to die, the method is immaterial. There were no notable gun-control measures passed in the period where youth suicide in Australia tripled, but the leading method changed from firearm to suffocation anyway.

Further, the implication is that the United States has an astronomical suicide rate because of our astronomical number of guns. Remember, 58% of death from firearms is suicide here, 15,000 to 17,000 annually, right? Well, the U.S. is, in actuality, right in the middle of the pack internationally, as suicide rates go. Let me quote myself from an earlier piece:

Yes indeed, according to CDC statistics 16,599 Americans did kill themselves with firearms in 1999. Another 12,764 killed themselves by other means. The total number of suicides was 29,350, and the rate per 100,000 population was 10.66.

That puts the United States, with its 200,000,000+ firearms, over 65 MILLION of which are handguns, firmly in the MIDDLE OF THE PACK for suicide internationally. If firearms actually cause suicide, then our population should have offed itself a few generations ago.

Let's look at some comparitives, shall we? Japan, a nation with a population of about 126,600,000 in 1999, a little less than half our own, suffered 31,385 suicides - a rate of 24.8 per hundred thousand population. And there are essentially NO privately owned firearms in Japan. Even Japanese police officers leave their firearms at work when they go home. The Japanese kill themselves by asphyxiation (either by hanging or car exhaust) or by jumping off of buildings or in front of moving trains. To be fair, Japan's suicide rates have skyrocketed with their recent economic downturn (it would appear that a bad economy represents a much higher risk of suicide than individual ownership of a firearm.) On average, the suicide rate in Japan has run at about 17 per 100,000. Considerably higher than the U.S. but not more than double.

But most people are aware of the high rate of suicide in Japan, and dismiss it as being "cultural." Are they also aware, however, of the suicide rates in France? According to this CDC report from 1998, France had a suicide rate of 21 per 100,000. Leading method? Suffocation. France is followed closely by Denmark with a suicide rate of 18 per 100,000. Leading method? Pretty much evenly split between suffocation and poisoning.

According to this table, in 1997 of the eleven countries with the top per capita Gross National Products (the US ranks in the middle), the US has the second lowest suicide rate. Only the Netherlands was lower. See the chart:

Now, the author of the Harvard Magazine article states "If you try to kill yourself with drugs, there's a 2 to 3 percent chance of dying," he explains. "With guns, the chance is 90 percent." You are to assume from this that because guns are available they become the choice of people wanting to attempt suicide, and therefore more people actually die in the attempt than would otherwise. However, looking at international comparisons, especially in countries like France and Denmark where suicide rates are far higher than in the U.S., and suffocation and poisoning are the leading causes, the likelihood of "successful" suicide seems unaffected by "gun availability."

In the specific case of Finland, where I noted before that 50% of households contain a firearm as opposed to 35% of households here, 95% of deaths by firearm are suicides. That sounds horrible, and it sounds like it supports the proposition that "guns cause suicide" - but it doesn't. The fact is that criminal homicide in Finland is very, very low, so suicide represents a far greater proportion of deaths by firearm. (It also shoots in the *ss the idea that "guns cause homicide," but that's beside the point.) Suicide by firearm here represents 56% of the total number of suicides. In Finland, the majority of suicides are committed by suffocation - specifically, by hanging oneself.

Canada, our neighbor to the North, has a slightly higher rate of suicide that the U.S. The most common method there is suffocation, followed by poisoning. Firearms are used in only about 22% of Canada's suicides.

Like criminal homicide, the level of suicide is a cultural thing. The availability of method appears to be immaterial. If someone wants to die, they will accomplish that end. If guns are not available, other methods will be substituted and they will be effective. If a "cry for help" is intended, then the person will choose a less-lethal option, because everybody knows that if you put a loaded gun to your head and pull the trigger, chances are you won't survive the experience.

GUNS DON'T CAUSE SUICIDE, no matter how much the gun controllers want you to believe it. The availability of method is unimportant to someone intent on killing themselves, "gun control" won't affect the numbers no matter how they want to twist it, and Craig Lambert and David Hemenway are twisting pretty hard.

I've Gotta Live One!

Still playing over at Quora.com.  In response to the question "How do you solve the gun problem in the United States in a realistic way?" I answered:

America does not have a "gun problem." It has an inner-city violent crime problem. Yes, I understand that the majority of deaths attributable to firearms are suicides, but suicide rates seem to be unaffected by firearm availability. If firearms are not available, other methods are substituted and are equally effective. The U.S., for all of its guns, ranks rather low for suicide internationally.

Criminal homicide is heavily concentrated in large urban centers, in specific areas of those large urban centers, and among a very small, self-identifying group in those specific areas. Yet no one raises a hue-and-cry when one more inner-city youth is gunned down by another inner-city youth, especially when both of them have long criminal records of escalating violence.

It's been two years since Trayvon Martin died. During that period, more than 10,000 young black men 34 years of age or younger have died of criminal homicide by firearm.

Name three without using Google or another search engine.

Yet every time the media gets a victim they can run with, it's the rural gun owner in Ohio or Wyoming they want to slap new restrictions on. We've watched it happen for literally decades, a slow-motion hate crime against gun owners, because "the problem" is defined as (and only as) "too many guns."

Young black men are killed - overwhelmingly by other young black men - at a rate six times higher than the rest of the population. A demographic that consists of less than 7% of the population makes up over 40% of the victims, but no one wants to talk about it, or try to find a solution for it other than "midnight basketball" or greater welfare subsidies.

No, it's much easier (and politically safer) to blame "gun availability" and the "gun culture." Here's a newsflash: There are three distinct "gun cultures" - one recreational, one defensive, and one criminal. Guess which one "gun control" doesn't have any effect on?

That drew this response (in its entirety!!) from one Alex Nuginski:

Anyone who says that the U.S. doesn't have gun problem is so in denial, it's not even funny anymore.

Kevin, first, why, in the gun control debate, do gun lovers always ignore the "extended background checks" part of the debate and jump right to "They're trying to take our guns away, AHHHH!"

One reason is because talking about the real issues at hand doesn't serve their purpose.

In the last attempt that Dems made to extend background checks on gun purchases after the Sandyhook massacre, no one was talking about taking anyone's guns away, but that's what the NRA and gun snugglers kept falling back on.

Ted Cruz and other tea-baggers tried to use the argument that if they allowed any sensible gun control measures like extended background checks to get passed through Congress now, that would then open the doors for other gun control measures to be passed in the future. That is such a sleazy dodge to the real issues at hand and the actual law that was being debated at the time... they were talking about a CURRENT law for extended background checks, NOT a future law to take guns away from "law abiding citizens".

One of the many other flaws in anti gun control arguments, Kevin (the very same argument that anti-gun control people keep parroting) is this - you keep saying things like...

"Law-abiding citizens with guns is nothing to be afraid of."

But, do you know who all the law abiding citizens in your country are and how to differentiate them from non-law abiding citizens?

In other words, people with bad intentions can just buy a gun on the internet, on any one of thousands of websites and social media networks, without any background check. And the people with bad intentions can also buy guns without any background check at gun shows from other private individuals.

Both of those ocean size holes could be closed so easily, by requiring background checks on internet gun sales and private gun sales at gun shows... it seems pretty much like a no brainer, right? But that lack of brains, or total refusal to consider it in the Republican side of the debate, is the problem.

The fact is, some of your "fellow citizens" are buying guns legally on the internet and at guns shows and then selling them illegally to criminals (or using the guns themselves) who then use those guns in rapes, robberies, drive-bys, and murders. YOU DON'T KNOW all of your fellow citizens... that seems so obvious, but do you consider that in your argument? No.

I think, deep down, you've already thought about what I'm saying here, but it doesn't serve your side of the equation, so you try to ignore it.

And even if no one is talking about "taking guns away" from anyone (just talking about expanded background checks) the gun lovers always ignore that and start shouting about how Obama wants to take their guns away and how "the 2nd amendment is being trashed, la la la!"

That's just the first and biggest flaw in your argument.

The second big, laughable flaw in what anti-gun control people are touting on this thread here is the argument that swimming pools cause deaths, so why shouldn't we ban swimming pools?

Others try to comically use the same ridiculous argument by substituting cars in that same silliness, like the sophisticated Mr. Fair, below... so funny.

Guns are killing machines, and nothing else. They are made to kill living things, and that's all they do. Swimming pools or cars are not made only to kill.

No one is designing a new car or a new swimming pool so they can hold more bullets and so they can fire bullets at a higher rate per minute. So unless you are going to tell me about how great guns are for starting marathon races or for doing 21 gun salutes, there is nothing else to discuss when talking about a gun, except killing something.

And swimming pools and cars don't fall in to the same category of home defense, they aren't used in rapes and robberies, and they aren't used to put against your head and threaten you with death.

GUNS ARE being used that way, and they are sold with reckless abandon because the NRA, who gets a cut from every legally sold gun, makes sure that guns are as easy to get as a car or a bag of potato chips in some places, and even easier in some states that don't even require gun owner registration.

Some people are completely freaked-out by some states trying to introduce new gun owner registration regulations, again, comically shouting, "They're trying to take away our guns! AHHHH!".

Yes, many gun deaths are accidental, but statistics prove that most accidental gun deaths wouldn't have happened if the gun had not been in the home to begin with. Statistics also show that a gun owner who has a gun for self defense is more likely to be shot with his own gun than him using that gun to shoot an intruder.

Below are some links, stats and facts on the subject of gun deaths in homes that have guns, as well as other gun death stats & links, including a comparison of the U.S. homicide rates against two countries who have proven that gun control reduces homicide rates and accidental gun deaths.

As far as a school shooting or theater shooting, or any other shooting with a high-capacity, semi-automatic gun, like Sandyhook... what do non-military people need with a gun like that? I heard one ridiculous argument from a woman who said she needed an AK-47 style semi-automatic rifle to shoot rabbits because they move so fast... come on!... you'd turn a rabbit in to instant pulp with a rifle like that.

The fact is, if semi-automatic guns were not available at all to the general public, then Adam Lanza's mother never would have been able to buy that killing machine, and then Adam Lanza would not have been able take that weapon out of his mother's gun safe and shoot her in the face with it and then go and massacre 27 people in less than three minutes. Yes, he had other guns, but he wouldn't have been able to cause nearly as much carnage as he did with that semi-automatic rifle.

And if James Holmes wasn't able to get his hands on that killing machine in the Aurora, Colorado theater massacre (one of your so called FELLOW CITIZENS who bought that gun legally) then he wouldn't have been able to kill nearly as many people.

It's funny, because anti-gun control people say "See, he bought that gun legally, so any gun control laws wouldn't have made any difference." But then if the gun was acquired illegally, then they say, "See, he got gun illegally, so gun control laws wouldn't have made any difference."

You can't have it both ways, or either of those ways, in the real world, because either way, extended background checks could have or would made a gun harder for a shooter to get to begin with.

And the topic of gun safes brings me to another statistical fact... if there are more guns in homes to be stolen from gun safes and other less protected hiding places, that just puts more guns in the hands of criminals. It's a logical fact that is also backed up by stats... look at your local gun theft stats from home burglaries, then multiply that by about 100,000 and that will give you an idea of how many stolen guns get in to the hands of criminals in this country every year.

It's a simple equation - more guns, more guns deaths... not hard to figure out, but so often ignored by your side of the argument.

And with that, one also needs to consider if everyone is armed, like so many dopes advocate, combined with racially charged laws like "Stand Your Ground", the idea that anyone can die in a wild west style execution at any moment, like in Florida, because some pissed off, self appointed vigilante profiled a black guy walking in his neighborhood, or because a guy who thought that white people aren't getting enough respect from black kids, so he started a fight over loud music, or because some guy was texting during the previews in a movie theater, and the shooter got some popcorn tossed at him.

Heat of the moment gun murders are becoming more and more common with every legal and illegal gun sold. But in Florida, the SYG laws don't seem to be serving black people so well, statistically.

The case were a black woman fired a warning shot in her garage to keep her abusive husband away (who had been arrested several times for beating her) and she claimed SYG, but she got sentenced to 20 years by a white jury for firing that warning shot. Thank goodness she's finally getting a retrial, but with Florida's track record, who knows what will happen in there.

Here are those links, stats and facts that I spoke of, below.
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The most telling excerpt, from the second linked article below, is this...
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"Two-thirds of all murders between 2003 and 2007 involved guns. The average number of Americans shot and killed daily during those years was 33. Of those, one was a child (0 to 14 years), five were teenagers (15 to 19 years) and seven were young adults (20 to 24 years), on average.

Children in the U.S. get murdered with guns at a rate that is 13 times higher than that of other developed nations. For our young people aged 15 to 24, the rate is 43 times higher.

“The presence of a gun makes quarrels, disputes, assaults, and robberies more deadly. Many murders are committed in a moment of rage,” writes Hemenway.

“For example, a large percentage of homicides — and especially homicides in the home — occur during altercations over matters such as love, money, and domestic problems, involving acquaintances, neighbors, lovers, and family members; often the assailant or victim has been drinking."

"Benefits?
The possible health benefits of gun ownership are twofold: deterring crime and stopping crimes in progress. But there are no credible studies, says Hemenway, that higher levels of gun ownership actually do these things."

"Real risks
“There are real and imaginary situations when it might be beneficial to have a gun in the home,” Hemenway concludes. “For example, in the Australian film Mad Max, where survivors of the apocalypse seem to have been predominantly psychopathic male bikers, having a loaded gun would seem to be very helpful for survival, and public health experts would probably advise people in that world to obtain guns.”
“However, for most contemporary Americans, the scientific studies suggest that the health risk of a gun in the home is greater than the benefit,” he adds. “There are no credible studies that indicate otherwise.”
Hemenway’s review appeared in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine and can be read in full online."
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Guns in the Home and Risk of a Violent Death in the Home: Findings from a National Study
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/co...

Here are some excerpts from this study...

"Approximately 60 percent of all homicides and suicides in the United States are committed with a firearm"

"Those persons with guns in the home were at greater risk than those without guns in the home of dying from a homicide in the home (adjusted odds ratio = 1.9, 95% confidence interval: 1.1, 3.4).

They were also at greater risk of dying from a firearm homicide, but risk varied by age and whether the person was living with others at the time of death.

The risk of dying from a suicide in the home was greater for males in homes with guns than for males without guns in the home (adjusted odds ratio = 10.4, 95% confidence interval: 5.8, 18.9).

Persons with guns in the home were also more likely to have died from suicide committed with a firearm than from one committed by using a different method (adjusted odds ratio = 31.1, 95% confidence interval: 19.5, 49.6).

Results show that regardless of storage practice, type of gun, or number of firearms in the home, having a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of firearm homicide and firearm suicide in the home."

"Nearly three quarters of suicide victims lived in a home where one or more firearms were present, compared with 42 percent of homicide victims and one third of those who died of other causes (table 2). A firearm was used in 68 percent of both homicides and suicides."

"Over three quarters (76.3 percent) of the homicide victims knew their assailant. Nearly one third (31.7 percent) of the homicides occurred during a family argument, 15.4 percent during a robbery, 4.1 percent during a drug deal, 0.2 percent during an abduction, and 44.1 percent for other unspecified reasons. In 4.5 percent of the homicides, multiple circumstances were reported."
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THE HEATH RISK OF HAVING A GUN IN THE HOME
http://www.minnpost.com/second-o...

Here are some excerpts from this study, and this first section is shocking...

"Homicides
Two-thirds of all murders between 2003 and 2007 involved guns. The average number of Americans shot and killed daily during those years was 33. Of those, one was a child (0 to 14 years), five were teenagers (15 to 19 years) and seven were young adults (20 to 24 years), on average.

Children in the U.S. get murdered with guns at a rate that is 13 times higher than that of other developed nations. For our young people aged 15 to 24, the rate is 43 times higher.

“The presence of a gun makes quarrels, disputes, assaults, and robberies more deadly. Many murders are committed in a moment of rage,” writes Hemenway.

“For example, a large percentage of homicides — and especially homicides in the home — occur during altercations over matters such as love, money, and domestic problems, involving acquaintances, neighbors, lovers, and family members; often the assailant or victim has been drinking.

Only a small minority of homicides appear to be the carefully planned acts of individuals with a single-minded intention to kill. Most gun killings are indistinguishable from nonfatal gun shootings; it is just a question of the caliber of the gun, whether a vital organ is hit, and how much time passes before medical treatment arrives.”

"Study after study has been conducted on the health risks associated with guns in the home. One of the latest was a meta-review published in 2011 by David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. He examined all the scientific literature to date on the health risks and benefits of gun ownership. What he found was sobering, to say the least."

"Having a gun in your home significantly increases your risk of death — and that of your spouse and children.

And it doesn’t matter how the guns are stored or what type or how many guns you own.

If you have a gun, everybody in your home is more likely than your non-gun-owning neighbors and their families to die in a gun-related accident, suicide or homicide.

Furthermore, there is no credible evidence that having a gun in your house reduces your risk of being a victim of a crime. Nor does it reduce your risk of being injured during a home break-in.

The health risks of owning a gun are so established and scientifically non-controvertible that the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement in 2000 recommending that pediatricians urge parents to remove all guns from their homes."
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Just for fun, here's a little video that addresses the whole silly "2nd Amendment" argument that Republicans chant whenever talking about gun control laws.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L...
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Wikipedia:
Gun violence in the United States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun...

"During the 1980s and early 1990s, homicide rates surged in cities across the United States (see graphs at right).[26] Handgun homicides accounted for nearly all of the overall increase in the homicide rate, from 1985 to 1993, while homicide rates involving other weapons declined during that time frame."
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Comparing the U.S. to Australia and the U.K., both of whom have enacted highly effective gun control laws.

Wikipedia: List of countries by firearm-related death rate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lis...

Homicides-2013:
AUSTRALIA: 13,000 gun homicides
UNITED KINGDOM: 4,000 gun homicides
UNITED STATES: 360,000 gun homicides

Adjusted for population size:
AUSTRALIA: 22.68 million people
UNITED KINGDOM: 63.23 million people
UNITED STATES: 313.9 million people

The U.S. population is 13.84 times the size of the Australian population, but it has a gun murder rate 27.69 times as high.

The U.S. population is 4.96 times the size of the U.K. population, but it has a gun murder rate 90 times as high.
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Gun crime statistics by US state
http://www.theguardian.com/news/...

"Gun ownership globally: US ranks first, ahead of Yemen"

"The United States has 88 firearms per 100 people. Yemen, the second highest gun ownership country in the world has 54.8."
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This Washington Post article has some telling facts on the subject of gun violence, and not all of it favors my argument, but much of it does, so in all fairness, I included it.

Twelve facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States
http://www.washingtonpost.com/bl...

1. Shooting sprees are not rare in the United States.

2. 15 of the 25 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States.

3. Lots of guns don't necessarily mean lots of shootings, as you can see in Israel and Switzerland.

(One would have to consider the culture and the history of violence that exists in the U.S. to explain the differences between Israel, Switzerland and the U.S.)

4. Of the 11 deadliest shootings in the US, five have happened from 2007 onward.

5. America is an unusually violent country. But we're not as violent as we used to be.

6. The South is the most violent region in the United States.

7. Gun ownership in the United States is declining overall.

(This article was written in late 2012, and since the Sandyhook shooting that same month, gun ownership in the U.S. has increased drastically due to somewhat of a mass-hysteria fear of changing gun control laws, which never materialized due to a minority of Republican and NRA efforts)

8. More guns tend to mean more homicide.

9. States with stricter gun control laws have fewer deaths from gun-related violence.

10. Gun control, in general, has not been politically popular.

11. But particular policies to control guns often are.

12. Shootings don't tend to substantially affect views on gun control.

Did you read all that? No, honestly I didn't either. My eyes started to glaze over at the "tea-baggers" comment, but I did respond. Here it is, archived at TSM because I wouldn't be surprised if someone at Quora yanked it.

Holy Wall-o-Text, Batman! I thought I was the last of the long-winded on the Interwebs!

You'll have to forgive me, but I simply CANNOT respond to Every. Single. Point. in your screed, but I'll hit on a few of 'em.

Please describe for me the "extended background checks" you brought up WAAAYY up there at the top. I need details. What was the bill number? Who introduced it? What did it cover? Or are you instead discussing some nebulous idea of "extended background checks" that was never proposed as, you know, an actual law? If that's the case, please be specific in what, PRECISELY these "extended background checks" consist of. Then, perhaps, we can discuss whether or not they might be useful, or just gun registration through the back door.

"One reason is because talking about the real issues at hand doesn't serve their purpose." Um, Pot? Meet Kettle.

"In the last attempt that Dems made to extend background checks on gun purchases after the Sandyhook massacre, no one was talking about taking anyone's guns away..." Did you READ the bill? I did. It's not at all surprising it failed.

"Ted Cruz and other tea-baggers..." Ah, yes, personal insults. Well, now I know without a doubt the type of person I'm dealing with, so we're on level ground there.

"But, do you know who all the law abiding citizens in your country are and how to differentiate them from non-law abiding citizens?"

Yeah, we're the ones who go to work, pay our taxes, and DON'T SHOOT PEOPLE WHO AREN'T THREATENING US. We're the ones who DON'T HAVE CRIMINAL RECORDS. Perhaps you'd like us to tattoo a big "L" on our cheeks, or sew a script "L" on our clothes so we look like Laverne from "Laverne & Shirley?"

"In other words, people with bad intentions can just buy a gun on the internet, on any one of thousands of websites and social media networks, without any background check. And the people with bad intentions can also buy guns without any background check at gun shows from other private individuals." Or they can get a friend or relative - who doesn't have a record, to buy them a gun from a gun shop. Or they can buy a stolen gun from the same guy they buy their weed or other drug-of-choice from. You know, drugs are illegal too, right?

You are aware that AFTER the handgun ban in Britain, handgun crime DOUBLED? And they don't have the excuse that "the state next door has lax gun laws!" Britain is an ISLAND.

An island where they apparently import and sell HAND GRENADES.

And if we can't keep drugs and "undocumented workers" from streaming across our Southern border, how hard do you think it would be for the smugglers to bring guns across? (Not that we need them, having 300 million of our own to begin with.)

"Both of those ocean size holes could be closed so easily, by requiring background checks on internet gun sales and private gun sales at gun shows..."

Just internet sales and gun shows? Can my wife buy me a gun for, say, Father's day and just give it to me, or would that require another "extended background check"? Can I give one to a friend for Christmas, or does that have to go through your "extended background check"? Can I sell one to a coworker or other acquaintance? And if I do, how do you know? After all, there's no massive GUN REGISTRY of who owns the 300+ million firearms in private hands now. How does your "extended background check" work in the face of this annoying fact?

"The fact is, some of your "fellow citizens" are buying guns legally on the internet and at guns shows and then selling them illegally to criminals..."

Which is ALREADY ILLEGAL. You believe making it illegaler (totally a word) will help? We have a WHOLE BUREACRACY (The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives - which should be a really cool convenience store instead of a government department, but I digress) to pursue people who do that. Well, they're supposed to, but lately they've been involved in smuggling guns to narcotraffickers in Mexico for some reason....

"I think, deep down, you've already thought about what I'm saying here, but it doesn't serve your side of the equation, so you try to ignore it."

Oh no! I'm fully aware of it. I've probably given it far more thought than you have, and I've just asked a few first-order questions concerning your proposed "solution."

"...because the NRA, who gets a cut from every legally sold gun...."

Really? Where did you hear this factoid? The U.S. GOVERNMENT gets a cut from every legally manufactured gun and every round of ammunition, but I was unaware that the NRA had the same kind of setup. Please enlighten me. Point me to the source!

"Yes, many gun deaths are accidental, but statistics prove that most accidental gun deaths wouldn't have happened if the gun had not been in the home to begin with."

This is what's known in logic as "a tautology." In fact, I'd go so far as to say "statistic prove that ALL accidental gun deaths would never occur if guns didn't exist!" People wouldn't die of snakebite if there were no snakes, either.

I'm going to skip a lot of the rest of your philippic and address one more point to illustrate your relative lack of grasp on the topic:

"The fact is, if semi-automatic guns were not available at all to the general public, then Adam Lanza's mother never would have been able to buy that killing machine, and then Adam Lanza would not have been able take that weapon out of his mother's gun safe and shoot her in the face with it and then go and massacre 27 people in less than three minutes."

Avoiding the obvious tautology that, had Lanza's mother not been ABLE to buy THAT particular weapon, Lanza couldn't have used THAT particular weapon, I challenge your assertion that he couldn't have used a DIFFERENT weapon (or weapons) to kill 27 people in "less than three minutes."


Twenty-three rounds in less than 25 seconds. The revolvers hold six each, he only loaded five. The shotgun holds three rounds, he single-loaded it. Had he started with full guns, there'd have been TWENTY-SEVEN AIMED SHOTS in less than 30 seconds. Not a semi-auto weapon to be found. That gives him two minutes to reload and go again. The kid is fourteen years old in this video.

Adam Lanza was unopposed, in a classroom full of children. Besides the AR-15, he had two handguns on him. He left his mother's shotgun in his car.

Extrapolate for James Holmes.

And I thought you guys didn't want to BAN anything and we were paranoid for thinking it?

And - for anyone who's slogged all the way through this - one final point:

"It's a simple equation - more guns, more guns deaths... not hard to figure out, but so often ignored by your side of the argument."

The estimated number of privately owned guns in this country has INCREASED (that's "more guns") from approximately 100 million in the 1980's to 300 million (that's THREE TIMES AS MANY) today.

"Gun deaths" (defined as "people killed by firearm" rather than "guns that died" - just trying to be perfectly clear here) have DECLINED (that's LESS DEATHS). According to the Centers for Disease Control WISQARS tool (look it up) in 1981 there were a total of 34,050 people who died by firearm for any reason - suicide, homicide, accident. In 2010, there were a total of 31,610 deaths by firearm. On a strictly mathematical basis, that's a DECREASE of 2,440, but the population in 1981 was 229,460,000. In 2010 (latest data available) it was 308,745,000. On a per capita basis, in 2010 the death rate by firearm was 10.26 per 100,000 population. In 1981 the rate was 14.84. (Check WISQARS if you don't believe me.)

That's a DECREASE of approximately 30%.

What was your argument again? Oh yes, "more guns, more gun deaths."

Who's ignoring what?