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last updated: 25 JUL 04

FROM: "Mises Institute News", INTERNET:news@mises.org
DATE: 11/11/98 11:03

Re: Facts About Guns


The Clinton administration is tightening regulations concerning gun
purchases, on the theory that gun ownership leads to crime. But today's Wall
Street Journal runs an eye-opening piece by John R. Lott, Jr., a fellow at
the University of Chicago Law School. He is author of "More Guns, Less
Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws" (University of Chicago
Press, 1998). Here are some excerpts:

"America may be obsessed with guns, but much of what passes as fact simply
isn't true. The news media focus on tragic outcomes, while ignoring tragic
events that were avoided. Rarely do we hear about the more than two million
times each year that people use guns defensively--including cases in which
public shootings are stopped before they happen. Dramatic stories of mothers
using guns to prevent their children from being kidnapped by car-jackers
seldom even make the local news.

"Myths about guns can threaten people's safety, by frightening them and
preventing them from using the most effective means to defend themselves.
Here are five of the most prevalent myths:

"When one is attacked, passive behavior is the safest approach. The
Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey reports that the
probability of serious injury from an attack is 2.5 times greater for women
offering no resistance than for women resisting with a gun. Men also benefit
from using a gun, but the benefits are smaller: Offering no resistance is
1.4 times more likely to result in serious injury than resisting with a gun.
Resistance with a gun is the safest course of action for victims to take.

"Friends or relatives are the most likely killers. This myth is usually
based on two claims: that 53% of murder victims are killed by either
relatives or acquaintances and that anyone could be a murderer.

"With the broad definition of 'acquaintances' used in the FBI's Uniform
Crime Reports, most victims are indeed classified as knowing their
killer.... Only one U.S. city, Chicago, reports a precise breakdown on the
nature of acquaintance killings, and the statistic gives a very different
impression: between 1990 and 1995, just 17% of murder victims were either
family members, friends, neighbors or roommates of their killers....

"The U.S. has a high murder rate because Americans own so many guns. There
is no international evidence backing this up....

"The family gun is more likely to kill you or someone you know than to kill
in self-defense. The 1993 study yielding such numbers, published in the New
England Journal of Medicine, never actually inquired as to whose gun was
used in the killing. Instead, if a household owned a gun and if a person in
that household or someone he knew was shot to death while in the home, the
gun in the household was blamed. In fact, virtually all the killings in the
study were committed with guns brought in by an intruder. No more than 4% of
the gun deaths in the study can be attributed to the homeowner's gun...

"We must not lose sight of the ultimate question: Does allowing citizens to
own guns on net save lives? The evidence strongly indicates that it does."