In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.
Experts Disagree on Effectiveness of Anti-Gun Tool
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Experts Disagree on Effectiveness of Anti-Gun Tools
8/28/2003
Email
Print
Subscribe
Feature Story
from the Criminal Justice Funding Report
The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) recently held its Annual Conference on Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation, which convened experts from around the country and abroad to review the latest research on crime control and prevention, drug markets, violence theory and other topics. In the following article, CJFR covers an early conference session on firearms violence.
A recent discussion about gun policy, including the use of gun controls and the employment of tracing and ballistic imaging to investigate gun crime, underscored disagreements among researchers and gun rights advocates about what works to control firearms violence. A congressional staffer, speaking to the panel about upcoming legislative work, echoed the overall ambivalence by offering few predictions on how lawmakers will address the gun issue this year.
The research of Philip J. Cook, professor of the Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University in North Carolina, has sought to paint a picture of how many guns are in circulation, the evolution of gun sales over time and the characteristics of gun owners. He estimates that there are roughly 254 million guns in circulation, perhaps up to one-third of which are handguns, a figure that doesn't include off-the-books exports or imports. Sales of new guns have averaged around 5 million per year since the mid-1960s, Cook said, and the gun stock is relatively new.
While Cook noted that the 254 million figure could translate into one gun per U.S. adult, that's a "terribly misleading" way to look at gun ownership in America. "In fact, the pattern is that people who own one gun typically own several," Cook said. "And that handgun owners are usually people who have a broader interest in that they don't just have a gun for self-defense," but "typically have had some sporting interest in guns as well."
The most "remarkable" statistic, Cook said, is that 10 percent of the population owns four or more guns and they account for 77 percent of all the guns in circulation in private hands. "So the gun ownership, actually like the ownership of most consumer durable products, tends to be quite highly concentrated," he said.
Gun ownership also has trended downward over the last 30 years, from about 48 percent of household ownership to roughly 35 percent now, while individual ownership has not changed much, Cook said. That is mainly due to the fact that the average household is getting smaller, is less likely to be headed by a male and the male is the most likely person to have a gun, the researcher said. In fact, 42 percent of men and only 9 percent of women report gun ownership. "Gun ownership is a male business to a vastly disproportionate extent," Cook said.
Other factors that lead to gun ownership include a rural or small-town residence, growing up with a gun in the home, increased socio-economic status and men born in the 1930s. However, gun ownership is not forever; 25 percent are current owners but 41 percent owned one at some time in their lives.
Cook also studied the regional patterns of gun ownership, with the highest rates -- 48 percent -- reported in the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. And although New England had very low rates at 20 percent, the states of Vermont and Maine have high rates. The geographic pattern, he noted, is very stable over time and is closely tied to rural tradition.
Does the Data Justify Gun Control?
Getting to the meat of the issue, Cook asserted that gun prevalence does not necessarily relate to the amount of violence or to the amount of assaults. "And so, whatever we can say about guns, it doesn't appear that they either are deterring violent crime or that they are exacerbating it but rather that it's pretty much a wash," he said. "But that gun prevalence does appear to have a substantial impact on weapon choice in crimes" in a particular area, whereas a robbery or assault in high-gun rate areas are more apt to involve a firearm, he said.
"And one consequence of that is that homicides increase with gun prevalence," because the fatality rate goes up, Cook said. "There's [also] a very high relationship between weapon choice and suicide and general prevalence of guns." The net result, Cook argued in making his case that gun ownership should be regulated, is that gun prevalence matters because it increases the death rate and intensifies violence; 64 percent of homicides are with guns. "Guns don't kill people," he said, "but they make it real easy."
Public Health Perspective
Another supporter of gun control and also of gun tracing techniques is Garen J. Wintemute, director of Violence Prevention Research programs with the University of California Davis, who argued his case from a public health perspective. He said that based on research involving gun "life cycles," tracing data, location of crime gun sales and other factors, law enforcement techniques should focus on stemming high-risk multiple purchases, policy-makers should enact stronger state laws to control high-risk gun buys and researchers should investigate gun shows, the Internet and the secondary market for their contributions to gun crime.
Wintemute said that gun tracing data has shown that straw purchasers -- persons who buy firearms on behalf of a convicted felon, juvenile or other prohibited purchaser -- are frequent first purchasers of traced crime guns. He argued that investigations of these people can be of "concrete" benefit to law enforcement. Buyers with prior misdemeanors also are at greater risk than those with no arrest record for later violent offenses, he added. Men who have more than two priors for violent misdemeanors have a relative risk of 15.1 for later violent crime vs. only 4.8 relative risk for those with one prior conviction for a non-gun, non-violent offense.
High-risk sellers, Wintemute said, also should be tracked and shuttered. For instance, a very small fraction of federal firearms licensees -- 1.2 percent -- are linked to 57 percent of guns traced to crimes, he said. These sales are highly concentrated.
By looking at these highly individualized factors, society can explore new opportunities for keeping guns out of the wrong hands, he argued.
Researchers, Government Have Biased Agenda
Vociferous disagreement, however, was lodged by Paul H. Blackman, research coordinator for the Institute for Legislative Action at the National Rifle Association in Fairfax, Va.
He said that taxpayer dollars -- specifically funding from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) -- has been expended so that researchers like Cook and others can prove their theories and thus can influence anti-gun policy-making. Cook, said Blackman, is "nationally renown" as a "justice grant applicant."
"Policy analysts provide rhetorical cover for politicians to justify doing whatever it is they want or feel pressure to do," he said. "If Justice wants more research for policy-makers, it might want to study how the federal and state protections of gun rights, honestly analyzed, would limit gun laws. Or, since NIJ thinks research should be limited to that which is quantifiable, count the number of civil rights violated and liberties curbed in the name of gun control ... ."
He said gun surrendering programs are "worthless," but continue to be popular. The assault weapons ban -- up for renewal this year -- likewise has had little effect on attacks or injuries, said Blackman. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), he asserted, is very impressed with itself and its tracing programs, but that the agency too is biased against gun owners.
He said the primary data-gathering technique -- crime gun traces -- is largely "worthless" because too few guns are traced and most traces are unrelated to violent crime. "At any rate, while tracing might sometimes be useful, tracing data are utterly worthless as a means for analyzing crime guns, crime or gun trafficking," Blackman said. "And traces are all too subject to political activities."
Ballistic imaging, he said, might have utility but at this point is not cost-effective for fighting gun crime. "If there are too many images to compare, it's just not cost-effective since the computers don't match images but approximate matches for human tool-marker examiners to evaluate one-by-one," Blackman argued.
What's Next for Congress?
Jay Apperson, chief counsel for the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, largely side-stepped questions both about whether there should be more or less gun control and if Congress would act on certain key topics.
"I just don't know," if Congress will reinstate the Assault Weapons Ban, he said. He said in many ways the law, enacted in 1994, is unique in that it expires. While President Bush is on record supporting the ban, Rep. Tom Delay (R-Texas), House Majority Leader, vowed that it's not coming up. There's also been a "sudden silence" on the part of Democrats who in an election year may fear being labeled anti-gun, he said.
Debate on the issue of cracking down on gun shows has been "remarkably quiet," he said, and also depends on "how the gun issue plays out politically" for Democrats this year. A Democratic staffer was not on the panel.
Another legislative issue, allowing police officers to carry concealed weapons across state lines, is opposed by the committee chairman, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.), who is "taking heat" for his stance, Apperson said.
The Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act of 2003 (S. 253/H.R. 218), which has been reported in the Senate and is pending at the committee level in the House, would exempt qualified current and former law enforcement officers from state laws prohibiting the carrying of concealed handguns. Apperson said there are concerns on both sides of this issue.
Apperson did say that with regard to a highly controversial proposal suggested by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to reverse Washington, D.C.'s strict gun laws, that there are "more pressing issues in the Congress."
He noted, however, that many law enforcement agencies who have been involved in ATF's Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative (YCGII) have welcomed and pursued tracing and found it useful not worthless.
This article has been reprinted with permission from Capitol City Publishers.
http://www.jointogether.org/gv/news/features/reader/0,2061,566463,00.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878<P>
8/28/2003
Subscribe
Feature Story
from the Criminal Justice Funding Report
The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) recently held its Annual Conference on Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation, which convened experts from around the country and abroad to review the latest research on crime control and prevention, drug markets, violence theory and other topics. In the following article, CJFR covers an early conference session on firearms violence.
A recent discussion about gun policy, including the use of gun controls and the employment of tracing and ballistic imaging to investigate gun crime, underscored disagreements among researchers and gun rights advocates about what works to control firearms violence. A congressional staffer, speaking to the panel about upcoming legislative work, echoed the overall ambivalence by offering few predictions on how lawmakers will address the gun issue this year.
The research of Philip J. Cook, professor of the Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University in North Carolina, has sought to paint a picture of how many guns are in circulation, the evolution of gun sales over time and the characteristics of gun owners. He estimates that there are roughly 254 million guns in circulation, perhaps up to one-third of which are handguns, a figure that doesn't include off-the-books exports or imports. Sales of new guns have averaged around 5 million per year since the mid-1960s, Cook said, and the gun stock is relatively new.
While Cook noted that the 254 million figure could translate into one gun per U.S. adult, that's a "terribly misleading" way to look at gun ownership in America. "In fact, the pattern is that people who own one gun typically own several," Cook said. "And that handgun owners are usually people who have a broader interest in that they don't just have a gun for self-defense," but "typically have had some sporting interest in guns as well."
The most "remarkable" statistic, Cook said, is that 10 percent of the population owns four or more guns and they account for 77 percent of all the guns in circulation in private hands. "So the gun ownership, actually like the ownership of most consumer durable products, tends to be quite highly concentrated," he said.
Gun ownership also has trended downward over the last 30 years, from about 48 percent of household ownership to roughly 35 percent now, while individual ownership has not changed much, Cook said. That is mainly due to the fact that the average household is getting smaller, is less likely to be headed by a male and the male is the most likely person to have a gun, the researcher said. In fact, 42 percent of men and only 9 percent of women report gun ownership. "Gun ownership is a male business to a vastly disproportionate extent," Cook said.
Other factors that lead to gun ownership include a rural or small-town residence, growing up with a gun in the home, increased socio-economic status and men born in the 1930s. However, gun ownership is not forever; 25 percent are current owners but 41 percent owned one at some time in their lives.
Cook also studied the regional patterns of gun ownership, with the highest rates -- 48 percent -- reported in the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. And although New England had very low rates at 20 percent, the states of Vermont and Maine have high rates. The geographic pattern, he noted, is very stable over time and is closely tied to rural tradition.
Does the Data Justify Gun Control?
Getting to the meat of the issue, Cook asserted that gun prevalence does not necessarily relate to the amount of violence or to the amount of assaults. "And so, whatever we can say about guns, it doesn't appear that they either are deterring violent crime or that they are exacerbating it but rather that it's pretty much a wash," he said. "But that gun prevalence does appear to have a substantial impact on weapon choice in crimes" in a particular area, whereas a robbery or assault in high-gun rate areas are more apt to involve a firearm, he said.
"And one consequence of that is that homicides increase with gun prevalence," because the fatality rate goes up, Cook said. "There's [also] a very high relationship between weapon choice and suicide and general prevalence of guns." The net result, Cook argued in making his case that gun ownership should be regulated, is that gun prevalence matters because it increases the death rate and intensifies violence; 64 percent of homicides are with guns. "Guns don't kill people," he said, "but they make it real easy."
Public Health Perspective
Another supporter of gun control and also of gun tracing techniques is Garen J. Wintemute, director of Violence Prevention Research programs with the University of California Davis, who argued his case from a public health perspective. He said that based on research involving gun "life cycles," tracing data, location of crime gun sales and other factors, law enforcement techniques should focus on stemming high-risk multiple purchases, policy-makers should enact stronger state laws to control high-risk gun buys and researchers should investigate gun shows, the Internet and the secondary market for their contributions to gun crime.
Wintemute said that gun tracing data has shown that straw purchasers -- persons who buy firearms on behalf of a convicted felon, juvenile or other prohibited purchaser -- are frequent first purchasers of traced crime guns. He argued that investigations of these people can be of "concrete" benefit to law enforcement. Buyers with prior misdemeanors also are at greater risk than those with no arrest record for later violent offenses, he added. Men who have more than two priors for violent misdemeanors have a relative risk of 15.1 for later violent crime vs. only 4.8 relative risk for those with one prior conviction for a non-gun, non-violent offense.
High-risk sellers, Wintemute said, also should be tracked and shuttered. For instance, a very small fraction of federal firearms licensees -- 1.2 percent -- are linked to 57 percent of guns traced to crimes, he said. These sales are highly concentrated.
By looking at these highly individualized factors, society can explore new opportunities for keeping guns out of the wrong hands, he argued.
Researchers, Government Have Biased Agenda
Vociferous disagreement, however, was lodged by Paul H. Blackman, research coordinator for the Institute for Legislative Action at the National Rifle Association in Fairfax, Va.
He said that taxpayer dollars -- specifically funding from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) -- has been expended so that researchers like Cook and others can prove their theories and thus can influence anti-gun policy-making. Cook, said Blackman, is "nationally renown" as a "justice grant applicant."
"Policy analysts provide rhetorical cover for politicians to justify doing whatever it is they want or feel pressure to do," he said. "If Justice wants more research for policy-makers, it might want to study how the federal and state protections of gun rights, honestly analyzed, would limit gun laws. Or, since NIJ thinks research should be limited to that which is quantifiable, count the number of civil rights violated and liberties curbed in the name of gun control ... ."
He said gun surrendering programs are "worthless," but continue to be popular. The assault weapons ban -- up for renewal this year -- likewise has had little effect on attacks or injuries, said Blackman. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), he asserted, is very impressed with itself and its tracing programs, but that the agency too is biased against gun owners.
He said the primary data-gathering technique -- crime gun traces -- is largely "worthless" because too few guns are traced and most traces are unrelated to violent crime. "At any rate, while tracing might sometimes be useful, tracing data are utterly worthless as a means for analyzing crime guns, crime or gun trafficking," Blackman said. "And traces are all too subject to political activities."
Ballistic imaging, he said, might have utility but at this point is not cost-effective for fighting gun crime. "If there are too many images to compare, it's just not cost-effective since the computers don't match images but approximate matches for human tool-marker examiners to evaluate one-by-one," Blackman argued.
What's Next for Congress?
Jay Apperson, chief counsel for the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, largely side-stepped questions both about whether there should be more or less gun control and if Congress would act on certain key topics.
"I just don't know," if Congress will reinstate the Assault Weapons Ban, he said. He said in many ways the law, enacted in 1994, is unique in that it expires. While President Bush is on record supporting the ban, Rep. Tom Delay (R-Texas), House Majority Leader, vowed that it's not coming up. There's also been a "sudden silence" on the part of Democrats who in an election year may fear being labeled anti-gun, he said.
Debate on the issue of cracking down on gun shows has been "remarkably quiet," he said, and also depends on "how the gun issue plays out politically" for Democrats this year. A Democratic staffer was not on the panel.
Another legislative issue, allowing police officers to carry concealed weapons across state lines, is opposed by the committee chairman, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.), who is "taking heat" for his stance, Apperson said.
The Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act of 2003 (S. 253/H.R. 218), which has been reported in the Senate and is pending at the committee level in the House, would exempt qualified current and former law enforcement officers from state laws prohibiting the carrying of concealed handguns. Apperson said there are concerns on both sides of this issue.
Apperson did say that with regard to a highly controversial proposal suggested by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to reverse Washington, D.C.'s strict gun laws, that there are "more pressing issues in the Congress."
He noted, however, that many law enforcement agencies who have been involved in ATF's Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative (YCGII) have welcomed and pursued tracing and found it useful not worthless.
This article has been reprinted with permission from Capitol City Publishers.
http://www.jointogether.org/gv/news/features/reader/0,2061,566463,00.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878<P>
Comments
8/28/2003
Email
Print
Subscribe
Commentary
By Pat Gallagher
It should not be this easy.
It should not be this easy to get a gun -- a handgun, automatic or semi-automatic weapon, pre-ban weapon, rifle or shotgun, a gun that can be kept in a briefcase, pocket, or purse, or hidden in a trenchcoat, a gun for hunting deer or turkey or, God forbid, human beings.
A perusal of the classified ads in newspapers across the country reveals just how easy it is to acquire such weapons. Anyone can purchase a gun and do so legally, without background check, waiting period, or record of the sale. Anyone. The angry teenager, the political opponent, the disgruntled colleague the acquaintance with schizophrenia, the paroled felon, the terrorist. Anyone. It should not be this easy.
It was easy in 1999 for Ben Smith, a white supremacist who bought guns through a newspaper classifieds in the Peoria Journal Star, and then used them to kill two people and injure nine others. Smith bought his weapons through the classifieds after he tried and failed to get them from a licensed dealer. It was easy forty years ago for Lee Harvey Oswald, who got his mail-order rifle through a magazine advertisement. After President Kennedy's assassination, concern about such easy access to guns resulted in legislation making them generally unavailable through the mail. Through the years, we have enacted laws such as the eponymous Brady Bill and laws that mandate specific prison terms for felons caught using firearms in the commission of a crime, all with the goal of making our violent culture a bit safer, and all with suitable respect for gun ownership on the part of law-abiding citizens.
But over the years we missed something.
In the newspaper classifieds, guns are advertised at estate sales, garage sales, and from private individuals. Through none of these channels is the seller required to be licensed, or concerned in any way about the purchaser's background, honesty, motivation or intentions. But these factors matter. To ignore them -- or to pretend it is somehow acceptable to sell guns to anyone simply because it is not against the law -- invites suffering and tragedy. If we have learned anything from the assassinations of political leaders in Dallas, Los Angeles, and Memphis, the school shootings at Columbine, and other horrific episodes of public violence, it is that guns are too easy to obtain and that some avenues for buying and selling them should be rigorously tightened, or eliminated. To suggest that controls could not be put in place without infringing on our Constitutional rights is to deliberately obfuscate a simple issue.
Several prominent newspapers have amended their policies about advertising guns. The Houston Chronicle, the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, and most recently the Dallas Morning News (as well as papers in Detroit, Miami and other cities) have adopted new policies against advertising handguns and other guns from unlicensed dealers.
I encourage publishers of newspapers across America, in small towns and big cities, to reconsider policies that allow the sale of handguns, pre-ban guns, assault weapons and guns from anyone not federally licensed to sell firearms. Readers, I urge you to write to publishers and editors about this issue. This is a matter of public health and safety, and a flaw in the law has made it far too easy for anyone -- anyone -- to get a gun. It shouldn't be this easy.
Pat Gallagher lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she is Assistant to Mayor Kay Barnes.
http://www.jointogether.org/gv/news/features/reader/0,2061,566492,00.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878<P>