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

percent of those being prosecuted. See Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Reports, "Murder in Large Urban Counties, 1988," (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 1993), and "Murder in Families" (Washington, DC: US. Department of Justice, 1994); see also Don B. Kates and Dan Polsby, "The Background of Murders," Northwestern University Law School working paper (1997).

32. The average victim had 9.5 prior arraignments, while the average offender had 9.7. David M. Kennedy, Anne M. Piehl, and Anthony A. Braga, "Youth Violence in Boston: Gun Markets, Serious Youth Offenders, and a Use-Reduction Strategy," Law and Contemporary Problems 59 (Winter 1996): 147-96.

33. The relationship between age and sex and who commits murders holds across other countries such as Canada; see Daly and Wilson, Homicide, pp. 168—70.

34. James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnstein, Crime and Human Nature, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), p. 177. Wilson and Herrnstein also discuss in chapter 3 evidence linking criminality to physical characteristics. The surveys that they summarize find evidence that criminality is more likely among those who are shorter and more muscular.

35. Ibid., pp. 204—7; see also Michael K. Block and Vernon E. Gerety, "Some Experimental Evidence on the Differences between Student and Prisoner Reactions to Monetary Penalties," Journal of Legal Studies 24 (Jan. 1995): 123-138.

36. John J. Dilulio, Jr., "The Question of Black Crime" The Public Interest 117 (Fall 1994): 3-24; and "White Lies About Black Crime," The Public Interest 118 (Winter 1995): 30-44.

37. While there are many sources of misinformation on the deaths that arise from handguns, some stories attempt to clarify claims. For example, a Nando Times (www.nando. com) news story (Oct. 26, 1996) reported that "during a campaign visit here this week, President Clinton met with the widow of a police officer killed in the line of duty and later during a political rally cited his death as a reason to outlaw armor-piercing bullets. What he did not tell his audience, however, was that the officer died in an auto accident, not from gunfire.... Neither a bulletproof vest nor a ban on 'cop-killer bullets,' however, would have saved Officer Jerome Harrison Seaberry Sr., 35. He was responding to a radio call for backup on Christmas night last year when 'he lost control of his vehicle, going too fast ... hit a tree head-on, and the vehicle burst into flames,' said Lake Charles Police Chief Sam Ivey. Armor-piercing bullets, Ivey said, 'had nothing to do with it.'"

38. National Center for Injury Prevention, Injury Mortality Statistics (Atlanta: Centers for Disease Control, 1999).

39. Editorial, "The Story of a Gun and a Kid," Washington Times, May 22, 1997, p. A18.

40. Joyce Price, "Heston Attacks Trigger-Lock Proposal: Actor Begins Role as NRA Executive," Washington Times, May 19, 1997, p. A4.

41. Currently, the impact of gun locks is difficult to test simply because no state requires them. Seven states (California, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Minnesota, New Jersey, and North Carolina) and the District of Columbia have laws regarding proper storage, but these laws do not mandate a particular method of storage.

42. W Kip Viscusi, "The Lulling Effect: The Impact of Child-Resistant Packaging on Aspirin and Analgesic Ingestions," American Economic Review (May, 1984): 324—27.

43. The Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice recently released a

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government-funded study entitled "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms," by Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig. The study used poll evidence from 2,568 adults in 1994 to claim that "20 percent of all gun-owning households had an unlocked, loaded gun at the time of the survey. The report cited the accidental deaths of 185 children under the age of 14, and many times that number of accidental shootings. For each death, there are several accidental shootings that cause serious injuries." Fifty percent of respondents were said to have stored an unloaded gun that was unlocked. The Justice Department's press release quoted Attorney General Janet Reno as claiming that "these results show how dangerous unlocked guns are to children. That's why we must pass the child-safety-lock provision in the President's Anti-Gang and Youth Violence Act of 1997, now before Congress. A locked gun can avoid a family tragedy." Ignoring problems with the survey itself, several problems exist with these conclusions. First, the report does not show that those 20 percent of gun-owning households with "unlocked, loaded" guns were responsible for the 185 firearm deaths of children. We would be interested to know if the 20 percent of households included children. Second, the report only concentrates on the costs, while ignoring any possible benefits. One question that might be useful in considering benefits is this: Where did those with unlocked, loaded guns tend to live? For example, were they more likely to live in urban, high-crime areas? (See Department of Justice, PRNewswire, May 5, 1997.)

Unfortunately, despite issuing press releases and talking to the press about their findings, neither the Department of Justice, nor professors Cook or Ludwig, nor the Police Foundation, which oversaw the government grant, have made any attempt to release their data at least by August 1997.

44. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995). A common claim I will discuss later is that "more than half of all firearm deaths occur in the home where the firearm is kept." As noted in the text, since one-half of all firearm deaths are suicides, this should come as no surprise.

45. Editorial, Cincinnati Enquirer, Jan. 23, 1996, p. A8. Others share this belief. "It's common sense," says Doug Weil, research director at the Center to Prevent Handgun