Firearms in America: The Facts

Martin L. Fackler, MD
Monday, Dec. 25, 2000

I must confess to being a member of a very dangerous group. I am a
physician: We cause more than 100,000 deaths per year in the USA by
mistakes and various degrees of carelessness in treating our patients.
Why does society tolerate us?

Because we save far more patients than we kill. Firearms are entirely
analogous. Although used in far fewer deaths* - they are used to
prevent about 75 crimes for each death. Firearms, like physicians,
prevent far more deaths than they cause. (Gary Kleck, "Point Blank:
Guns and Violence in America," Hawthorne, N.Y., Aldine de Gruyter
Publisher, 1991)

Consider the implications of the fact that firearms save many more
lives than they take. That means decreasing the number of firearms
would actually cause an increase in violent crime and deaths from
firearms.

This inverse relationship between the number of firearms in the hands
of the public and the amount of violent crime has, in fact, been
proven beyond any reasonable doubt. (John R. Lott Jr., "More Guns Less
Crime," University of Chicago Press, 1998)

History supports the inverse firearm-crime relationship. In "Firearms
Control - A Study of Armed Crime and Firearms Control" in England and
Wales (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, p. 243), Chief Inspector
Colin Greenwood found that:

No matter how one approaches the figures, one is forced to the
rather startling conclusion that the use of firearms in crime was very
much less when there were no controls of any sort. Half a century of
strict controls on pistols has ended, perversely, with a far greater use
of this class of weapons in crime than ever before.

In Tasmania, Australia, on 28 April 1996, a lone gunman killed 35 and
wounded 21 at the Port Arthur Historic Site. The Australian
legislature reacted by outlawing self-loading rifles and pump as well
as self-loading shotguns. One year after the massive confiscation of
guns the effects of this action became clear. Every category of
violent crime had increased; the most striking was a 300 percent
increase in assaults against the elderly.

Those demented persons who have expressed their frustration by a
shooting spree have apparently retained enough good sense to choose
places where those shot would almost certainly be unarmed: a
schoolyard in Stockton, Calif., the Columbine High School, a Jewish
day care center in Los Angeles, a Long Island Rail Road car (due to
the highly restrictive ban on handgun carry permits in New York).

The emotional reaction to these incidents, attempting to make certain
places "gun free" zones, for example, revealed a striking lack of
rational thought. Apparently those pushing for "gun free" zones failed
to recognize that the perpetrators of these incidents chose their
sites specifically because they were already essentially "gun free"
areas - practically guaranteeing no armed resistance to foil their
plans.

Such gun-restrictive proposals are a certain recipe for making the
situation worse. Lott's studies have shown that such mass shootings
essentially disappear in states that pass laws allowing qualified
citizens to carry concealed handguns (The American Enterprise,
July-August, 1998).

Consider the steadily decreasing rate of violent crime over the past
eight years. An article in USA Today (K Johnson, 9 Oct 00, 3A)
reported "Gun injuries in crimes fall 40% in 5 years." This stark
decline has occurred concomitantly with a constant rise in the number
of firearms in the hands of the American public.

This strongly supports the "more guns less crime" relationship
verified by Kleck, Lott, history, and common sense. This steady
decrease has brought the current percentage of gun violence in the USA
to its lowest rate in the past three to four decades. One would expect
the anti-gun groups to be pleased and to moderate their goals.

Instead, apparently rankled by the facts proving their theories dead
wrong, they are promoting increasingly prohibitive gun laws with
ever-increasing zeal. Could it be that the media attention bestowed
upon their cause has become addictive? Certainly, legislators have
found the free TV time given to their anti-gun tirades something they
cannot live without.

I suggest that a reason for the decreasing crime rate, caused in part
by the increasing number of guns, lies, perversely and ironically, in
the counterproductive exaggerations and incessant repetitions, by the
TV media, of each and every bloody shooting they can find.

This has frightened and misled the public into believing the threat
from guns is ever increasing, rather than decreasing sharply, and has
whetted their appetites for firearms to defend themselves. Thus the
public has bought more firearms - which has further decreased the
violence from firearms. There is a perception among gun owners that
they are being treated irrationally as legislators pander to the
misinformed majority who are being swayed by emotional appeals that
fly in the face of the studies cited above, history, and basic common
sense. They feel that legislators should be obliged to soberly
consider the facts and not have their votes dictated by blind,
unthinking, and most often counterproductive, emotion.

Consider firearm registration: being increasingly promoted by nearly
all anti-gun groups - and politicians. These promoters neglect to
explain why or how they expect firearm registration to prevent future
violence; especially since, historically, such restrictive laws have
always proven ineffective or counterproductive - most often causing a
marked increase in violent crime, as shown in the examples given
above. We already know how honest, formerly law-abiding, citizens will
react to irrational laws requiring them to register their firearms.

California has taught us. After Purdy's shooting spree on the Stockton
schoolyard in 1989, the Californian legislature passed a law requiring
the registration of all "assault rifles." In the emotional frenzy
following that shooting incident, everybody expected legislators to
pass such a restrictive law.

What happened? The price of "assault rifles" tripled in California.
Many tens of thousands of these rifles poured into California before
the law went into effect. Then came the time for registration. Very
few "assault rifle" owners chose to obey the law.

It is uncertain how many criminals were created by this irrational
law, but most estimate that fewer than 10 percent of the "assault
rifles" in California were registered. If an estimated several hundred
thousand "assault rifle" owners in California chose to become
criminals rather than obey an irrational law, how many gun owners
nationwide can we expect to do the same if required to register their
guns?

Most of the facts explained above are unknown to the majority of the
American public. The pro-gun political activists spend so much time
harping on the Second Amendment that they tend to overlook the factual
proof that decreasing the number of guns increases violence, and
vice-versa.

Additionally, I believe that most Americans consider their right to
protect themselves and their families a far more fundamental right
than the Second Amendment.

Many honest gun owners are now frightened. They have every reason to
be. Few of the facts outlined above have been revealed by a media
that, instead, gives full play to the emotionally based appeals and
flagrant exaggerations of the anti-gun groups.

These gun owners fear that they will be forced into a difficult moral
decision: Do they obey a law requiring them to register their
firearms, when they are fully aware of the irrationality and
counterproductive nature of such a law? Or are they morally obligated
to disobey such an unjust law - and thus become a criminal? Our
forefathers faced a similar moral dilemma. Had most of them chosen to
obey, we would still be a colony of England.

We must separate, dispassionately, the clearly established facts about
firearms in the USA from emotionally based opinions, exaggerations,
and falsehoods. No rational approach to any problem is possible until
this is done.

I worry that irrational restrictive measures, such as mandated gun
registration, will result in a massive backlash of civil disobedience
- not by drug-dazed teenagers, but by sober, honest, and mature adults
who are well-armed and proficient in the use of their weapons. That
could tear this country apart.

*Footnote. When anti-gun activists list the number of deaths per year
from firearms, they neglect to mention that 60 percent of the 30,000
figure they often use are suicides. They also fail to mention that at
least three-quarters of the 12,000 homicides are criminals killing
other criminals in disputes over illicit drugs, or police shooting
criminals engaged in felonies. Subtracting those, we are left with no
more than 3,000 deaths that I think most would consider truly
lamentable.

Dr. Martin Fackler is America's most foremost forensic expert on
ballistic injuries.