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

in 1995. The 1995 law put in simple "boiler plate" language requiring that prosecutors make a finding that the gun or parts of the gun had been involved in interstate commerce.

38. To illustrate, let the probability that a single individual is carrying a concealed handgun equal .10. Assume further that there are 10 individuals in a public place. Then the probability that at least one of them is armed is 1 — .9 10 , or about .65.

39. Baltimore Sun, Apr. 30, 1999.

40. Greg Pierce, "Professional Viewpoint," Washington Times, Sept. 3, 1999, p. A5.

41. Even so-called smart locks, which are activated by one's fingerprint or by a special ring with a computer, pose several types of risks. With locks activated by fingerprints, a spouse would be unable to use the gun to come to the other person's rescue if the gun were coded for the other person. The person must also correctly position the finger on the fingerprint reader. Small differences in the angle of the finger may leave the gun inoperable even for the designated user.

42. This discussion is based upon research that I am currently doing with John Whitley.

43. Peter Cummings, David C. Grossman, Frederick P. Rivara, and Thomas D. Koep-sell, "State Gun Safe Storage Laws and Child Mortality Due to Firearms," Journal of the American Medical Association 278 (Oct. 1, 1997): 1084-86.

44. U.S. General Accounting Office, "Accidental Shootings: Many Deaths and Injuries Caused by Firearms Could Be Prevented" (Washington, DC: U.S. General Accounting Office, Mar. 1991).

298 / NOTES TO PAGES 201-203

45. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association does not control for any other factors but claims that 23 percent of the accidental gun deaths for children under fifteen would have been prevented by these storage rules. In 1996, this would have amounted to thirty-two lives if the laws had been in effect for the entire country. One obvious mistake that this article made was that it made no attempt to account for the normal downward trend in accidental gun deaths that would have continued to at least some extent even without these safe-storage laws. Since no other variables were being controlled for, all of the drop was being attributed to the new law (Cummings et al., "State Gun Safe Storage Laws").

46. As of this writing, the Violence Policy Center still has a section of its Web site entitled "Funder of the Lott CCW Study Has Links to the Gun Industry" at http:// www.vpc.org/fact__sht/lottlink.htm.

47. M. W. Guzy, "Soft Logic on Hard Facts on Guns," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 22, 1998, p. B7.

48. Shelley Kiel [state senator in Nebraska], "Some Gun Restrictions Needed," Omaha World-Herald, July 11, 1998, p. 11.

49. Kevin Beck, "Conceal Carry," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Aug. 12, 1998.

50. Minnesota Representative Wesley Skoglund on PBS's Almanac, Sept. 26, 1998.

51. Take for example a June 21, 1999, discussion between two people on talk, politics.guns:

"Dutch Courage": hey, did you know Lott's study was funded by a gun manufacturer? I did. That's a little suspicious, don't you think?

"Shawn Wilson": You're right, it was a foundation founded by the owner of a gun company, which is now an ammunition company, and further the foundation has large holdings in this company, and several of the directors of this foundation are men with standing within the company which shares the name. So much for his reputation as an honest scholar and academic reputation, eh?

52. Linnet Myers, " Go Ahead ... Make Her Day," Chicago Tribune, May 2, 1999, p. C12. See also Diane Carman, "Gun-Bill Premise Is Bogus," Denver Post, Mar. 23, 1999, p. Bl: "While gun-control activists have criticized Lott's work because it is funded in part through a grant from the Olin Foundation, which was founded by the largest manufacturer of ammunition in the U.S., [Jens] Ludwig argues that the debate about the grant money 'only distracts people. The study fails on its merits.'"

53. This quote is from the Web site of Handgun Control, Inc. (http://www.handgun-control.org/lott.htm). The Violence Policy Center's claim that I believe that "increases in the percent of minority police officers increase crime rates" can be found at http:// www.vpc.org/fact__sht/wholott.htm. Of course, the Violence Policy Center fails to mention the rest of the abstract in question, which points out that the paper (Lott, "Does a Helping Hand Put Others at Risk?") will investigate "whether these increases in crime are due to changes in the quality of all new police officers or just minority officers."

54. The previous footnote provides references for this claim on gun-control Web sites. Similar statements were made by Luis Tolley, the western regional director for Handgun Control, Inc., at a debate that I participated in at Claremont College, and Tom Diaz, an analyst for the Violence Policy Center, has made this claim a couple of times when we appeared on radio shows together.

55. Lott, "Does a Helping Hand Put Others at Risk?"

56. The selective quoting was obviously a well-orchestrated campaign, with newspaper editorials also getting involved in repeating the statements by Handgun Control. Consider the following editorial attack on me: "In May 1998, for instance, he published the following in a police research journal: 'Increasing black officers' share of the police force by one percentage point increases murders by four percent, the violent crimes by

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seven percent, and property crimes by eight percent.... More black and female officers are also associated with declines in both the arrest and conviction rates'" (Editorial, "A Lott More Guns," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mar. 23, 1999, p. B6).