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The Dartmouth Review
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Arm Thyself
By Steven Menashi | Monday, February 26, 2001
Shortly after the recent murder of Dartmouth professors Half and Suzanne Zantop, the Boston Globe reported the following: 'Ruth and Bob Adams Sr. have lived in their Etna farmhouse 56 years. The Zantops' house is built on some of their old pastureland. They answer their door with a hearty 'come on in' and are not worried. A friend called and asked whether they were ready to move off the hill. 'I said no!' said Ruth Adams. 'I got a shotgun here,' 84-year-old Robert Adams Sr. said with a laugh, 'and it holds enough shells to keep 'em away.''
Bob Adams isn't a nut. The fact is that guns save lives. According to crime victim studies, people who resist violent attacks with guns are injured less frequently than those who submit to attackers or who resist with other weapons. And gun ownership acts as a powerful deterrent of crime in the first place. Cities and counties with high rates of gun ownership experience a lower incidence of violent crime than demographically similar areas with fewer guns; municipalities invariably witness a decline in the crime rate after legalizing concealed carry permits (see page 6).
A survey commissioned by the National Institute of Justice found that 57 percent of convicted felons agreed with the statement, 'Most criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police.' 34 percent 'said that they were scared off, shot at, or wounded, or captured by an armed victim'; two-thirds knew someone who had been foiled by an armed victim.
We don't often hear news reports about crime not happening, but those stories are compelling. In attempt to combat an upward trend in rape cases, for example, Orlando, Florida police launched an initiative to train 2,500 women in gun use in 1966. Consequently, Orlando was the only major American city to experience a reduction in rape in 1967; incidents of rape fell by 88 percent.
The town of Kennesaw, Georgia actually adopted a law requiring residents to keep a gun at home in 1982—and burglaries plummeted from an annual rate of 65 to 11 the following year.
What we do find reported in the media are stories like the recent high school shooting in Santee, California, where a 15-year-old shot and killed two students and wounded 13 others. Calls for more anti-gun laws are sure to follow, even though a gun may have ended the incident sooner. (Santana High School employs a security guard—who was shot in the back—but apparently he isn't armed.) After all, it was a principal with a handgun who resolved a similar school shooting in Pearl, Mississippi.
'Keep in mind the number and range of California guns laws already on the books that may have been broken,' cautioned National Review after the Santee shooting, 'A ban on minors possessing handguns except under parental supervision or with written permission; a similar ban on minors under the age of 16 possessing live ammunition; a ban on transferring guns to juveniles; a ban on concealing firearms without a license; a ban on storing loaded guns where children under the age of 16 can access them outside of parental supervision; a ban on carrying guns on school grounds without the permission of school authorities; plus laws on registration, training, and waiting periods.'
Somewhere, the gun control laws failed to prevent the crime, as such legislation typically does. You can't disarm all criminals. There are between 100 and 140 million firearms in the United States; one third of them are handguns. For every handgun crime that occurs each year, there are 400 handguns in circulation (there are 3,600 for every handgun homicide). With such a high ratio, the criminal supply would persist even if the government could somehow eliminate upwards of 90 percent of handguns.
In 1997, 4,223 people 0-19 years old were killed by gunfire. 70 percent of those deaths were among those between 17 and 19 years of age—of those, almost all was the product of gang violence. Of course, gangs don't usually walk into stores and buy their weapons.
In every state, it's illegal for convicts to purchase firearms; yet 90 percent of prisoners questioned in the NIJ study—including repeat offenders—were able to obtain their last firearm within a few days. Three-quarters of the convicts agreed that they would have 'no trouble' or 'only a little trouble' obtaining a gun after release—illegally, of course. 'When guns are outlawed,' Stanford law professor John Kaplan has said, 'all those who have guns will be outlaws.'
Eliminating guns, while unworkable, is also pointless. It's self-defeating, because guns reduce crime, but it also proceeds from a mistaken conviction that guns somehow create crime. There's no reason to believe that. In 1973, there were 122 million firearms in the U.S., including 37 million handguns, and the homicide rate stood at 9.4 per 100 thousand population.
By 1992, the number of guns had increased 81 percent (to 221 million)—handguns more than doubled (to 77 million)—and the homicide rate had fallen to 8.5, 10 percent lower than it had been in 1973.
Even measured in guns per thousand population, there were 71 percent more handguns in 1992. To be sure, it wasn't a straight-line drop in crime, but the data show that an increase in handguns doesn't correlate with the crime rate. Guns don't somehow drive people to violence.
When Florida decided to issue concealed carry permits, the state legislature passed a law requiring an annual report of crimes committed by permit-holders. In the first six years of Florida's concealed carry law, the state issued 186 thousand permits—and exactly one homicide was perpetrated by a permit holder. It's not a notion the Million Moms like to entertain, but maybe it's not the guns that cause crime; it's the people.
The Dartmouth Review
The Dartmouth Review Dartlog Subscribe Indian Store Donate
Arm Thyself
By Steven Menashi | Monday, February 26, 2001
Shortly after the recent murder of Dartmouth professors Half and Suzanne Zantop, the Boston Globe reported the following: 'Ruth and Bob Adams Sr. have lived in their Etna farmhouse 56 years. The Zantops' house is built on some of their old pastureland. They answer their door with a hearty 'come on in' and are not worried. A friend called and asked whether they were ready to move off the hill. 'I said no!' said Ruth Adams. 'I got a shotgun here,' 84-year-old Robert Adams Sr. said with a laugh, 'and it holds enough shells to keep 'em away.''
Bob Adams isn't a nut. The fact is that guns save lives. According to crime victim studies, people who resist violent attacks with guns are injured less frequently than those who submit to attackers or who resist with other weapons. And gun ownership acts as a powerful deterrent of crime in the first place. Cities and counties with high rates of gun ownership experience a lower incidence of violent crime than demographically similar areas with fewer guns; municipalities invariably witness a decline in the crime rate after legalizing concealed carry permits (see page 6).
A survey commissioned by the National Institute of Justice found that 57 percent of convicted felons agreed with the statement, 'Most criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police.' 34 percent 'said that they were scared off, shot at, or wounded, or captured by an armed victim'; two-thirds knew someone who had been foiled by an armed victim.
We don't often hear news reports about crime not happening, but those stories are compelling. In attempt to combat an upward trend in rape cases, for example, Orlando, Florida police launched an initiative to train 2,500 women in gun use in 1966. Consequently, Orlando was the only major American city to experience a reduction in rape in 1967; incidents of rape fell by 88 percent.
The town of Kennesaw, Georgia actually adopted a law requiring residents to keep a gun at home in 1982—and burglaries plummeted from an annual rate of 65 to 11 the following year.
What we do find reported in the media are stories like the recent high school shooting in Santee, California, where a 15-year-old shot and killed two students and wounded 13 others. Calls for more anti-gun laws are sure to follow, even though a gun may have ended the incident sooner. (Santana High School employs a security guard—who was shot in the back—but apparently he isn't armed.) After all, it was a principal with a handgun who resolved a similar school shooting in Pearl, Mississippi.
'Keep in mind the number and range of California guns laws already on the books that may have been broken,' cautioned National Review after the Santee shooting, 'A ban on minors possessing handguns except under parental supervision or with written permission; a similar ban on minors under the age of 16 possessing live ammunition; a ban on transferring guns to juveniles; a ban on concealing firearms without a license; a ban on storing loaded guns where children under the age of 16 can access them outside of parental supervision; a ban on carrying guns on school grounds without the permission of school authorities; plus laws on registration, training, and waiting periods.'
Somewhere, the gun control laws failed to prevent the crime, as such legislation typically does. You can't disarm all criminals. There are between 100 and 140 million firearms in the United States; one third of them are handguns. For every handgun crime that occurs each year, there are 400 handguns in circulation (there are 3,600 for every handgun homicide). With such a high ratio, the criminal supply would persist even if the government could somehow eliminate upwards of 90 percent of handguns.
In 1997, 4,223 people 0-19 years old were killed by gunfire. 70 percent of those deaths were among those between 17 and 19 years of age—of those, almost all was the product of gang violence. Of course, gangs don't usually walk into stores and buy their weapons.
In every state, it's illegal for convicts to purchase firearms; yet 90 percent of prisoners questioned in the NIJ study—including repeat offenders—were able to obtain their last firearm within a few days. Three-quarters of the convicts agreed that they would have 'no trouble' or 'only a little trouble' obtaining a gun after release—illegally, of course. 'When guns are outlawed,' Stanford law professor John Kaplan has said, 'all those who have guns will be outlaws.'
Eliminating guns, while unworkable, is also pointless. It's self-defeating, because guns reduce crime, but it also proceeds from a mistaken conviction that guns somehow create crime. There's no reason to believe that. In 1973, there were 122 million firearms in the U.S., including 37 million handguns, and the homicide rate stood at 9.4 per 100 thousand population.
By 1992, the number of guns had increased 81 percent (to 221 million)—handguns more than doubled (to 77 million)—and the homicide rate had fallen to 8.5, 10 percent lower than it had been in 1973.
Even measured in guns per thousand population, there were 71 percent more handguns in 1992. To be sure, it wasn't a straight-line drop in crime, but the data show that an increase in handguns doesn't correlate with the crime rate. Guns don't somehow drive people to violence.
When Florida decided to issue concealed carry permits, the state legislature passed a law requiring an annual report of crimes committed by permit-holders. In the first six years of Florida's concealed carry law, the state issued 186 thousand permits—and exactly one homicide was perpetrated by a permit holder. It's not a notion the Million Moms like to entertain, but maybe it's not the guns that cause crime; it's the people.