More Guns Less Crime by John Jr (ebook reader macos .txt) 📗

3. Other work that I have done indicates that while hiring certain types of police officers can be quite effective in reducing crime rates, the net benefit from hiring an additional police officer is about a quarter of the benefit from spending an equivalent amount on concealed handguns. See John R. Lott, Jr., "Does a Helping Hand Put Others At Risk? Affirmative Action, Police Departments, and Crime," University of Chicago working paper (July 1997).

4. The cost of public prisons runs about twice this rate; see Mike Flaherty, "Prisons for Profit; Can Texas System Work for Wisconsin's Overflowing System," Wisconsin State Journal, Feb. 16, 1997, p. Al.

5. Fox Butterfield, "Serious Crime Decreased for Fifth Year in a Row," New York Times, Jan. 5, 1997, p. 10.

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6. Michael Fumento, "Are We Winning the Fight Against Crime?" Investor's Business Daily, Feb. 5, 1997, p. A34.

7. Yet there never was much controversy over this issue: when Congress debated the law, no one, not even the National Rifle Association, opposed background checks. The dispute was over a five-day waiting period versus an "instant check."

8. Fumento, "Fight Against Crime," p. A34.

9. After the Supreme Court decision, Arkansas completely stopped the background checks, while Ohio has essentially gutted the rules by making background checks voluntary. In addition, as "Ohio Deputy Attorney General Mark Weaver said, the responsibility for conducting background checks rests with counties and cities in most states—rather than with statewide agencies—and ... 'hundreds of counties' stopped doing checks after the Supreme Court ruling." (Joe Stumpe, "Arkansas Won't Touch Gun Checks 'Unwarranted,' Chief Cop Says," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 29, 1997, p. 1A.

10. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, A Progress Report: Gun-Dealer Licensing and Illegal Gun Trafficking, Washington, D.C.: Department of the Treasury, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (Jan. 1997).

11. Many other restrictions on gun use have prevailed during the last couple of years, even some that appear fairly trivial. For example, in 1996 alone thirteen states voted on initiatives to restrict hunting. The initiatives were successful in eleven of the states. Congressman Steve Largent from Tulsa, Oklahoma, claims that the new rules are "part of a national effort to erode our ability to hunt. ... It wasn't a local effort. It was a national effort." Not only were the initiatives strongly supported by animal rights activists, but they also received strong support from gun-control advocates. It is probably not lost on gun-control advocates that support for gun control seems to be strongest among those who grew up in households without guns and that making hunting less attractive is one long-term way to alter support for these initiatives. See Janet Pearson, "A 'Fair Chase': Keep the Sport in Hunting," Tulsa World, Nov. 17, 1996, p. Gl.

12. For most government agencies that try to obtain higher funding, exaggerating the problems helps justify such higher funding. Michael Fitzgerald, a spokesman for the BATF in Chicago, is quoted as saying that 1 percent of federal license holders are estimated to be illegally running guns. "If that figure is accurate, the reduction of... dealers should eliminate a substantial number of traffickers." See Jim Adams, "Number of Licenses Falls Dramatically: Crime Law Puts Squeeze on Gun Dealers; Zoning Can Be Used to Keep Gun Sales Out of Private Homes," Louisville Courier-Journal, Mar. 20, 1997, p. Al.

13. During the last few years, the BATF has been much more aggressive in harassing law-abiding gun owners and retailers. A recent study using 1995 data, by Jim Couch and William Shughart, claims not only that the BATF refers dramatically more criminal firearm violations to prosecutors in states that have more National Rifle Association members, but that Clinton's own US. attorneys have declined to prosecute a much greater percentage of the cases referred to them in these states. They estimate that 54 percent of the variation across states in the BATF's criminal referrals is explained simply by the number of NRA members in a state, and that about a quarter of these higher requests for prosecutions are declined by US. attorneys. See Jim F. Couch and William F. Shughart I, "Crime, Gun Control, and the BATF: The Political Economy of Law Enforcement," University of Mississippi working paper presented at the March, 1997, Public Choice Meetings in San Francisco.

14. Alix M. Freedman, "Tinier, Deadlier Pocket Pistols Are in Vogue," Wall Street Journal, Sept. 12, 1996, p. Bl.

15. Three different types of devices are under development: X-rays, ultrasound, and radar. The first devices capable of functioning on the street are expected in 2001. See Fox Butterfield, "New Devices May Let Police Spot People on the Street Hiding Guns," New York Times, Apr. 7, 1997, p. Al.

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while allowing law-abiding citizens to keep their guns. In his view, they will provide us with the best of both worlds, allowing us to retain the benefits of private protection and to disarm criminals. See James Q. Wilson, "Just Take Away Their Guns," New York Times, Mar. 20, 1994, sec. 6, p. 47.

17. In airports or courts, for example, such searches would probably be allowed. Whether these devices will be deemed constitutional if used on the street is less clear.

18. I cannot end, however, without at least mentioning several excellent law-review articles on the issue of what was intended in the Second Amendment: see Nelson Lund, "The Second Amendment, Political Liberty, and the Right to Self-Preservation," Alabama Law Review 33 (1988): 103-47; Robert J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond, "The Fifth Auxiliary Right," Yale Law Journal 104 (1995): 309-42; Don B. Kates, "Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment,"