Lott (gun control)
 

National Review, May 31, 1999 v51 i10 p32(1)

              Gun Show. (why gun laws will not prevent public shootings)
                by JOHN R. LOTT, Jr..

          Abstract: Politicians and citizens have seized upon the role of guns in the Columbine
          High School massacre, and many feel that new gun control laws are the answer to
          preventing such crimes. However, there has been little coverage about how guns have
          been used by adults in other school shootings to disarm shooters and prevent more
          deaths. In the shootings in Pearl, MS, and Edinboro, PA, gunmen were stopped by
          adults with guns. Studying statistics shows that neither gun laws nor frequency or
          severity of punishment have any significant effect on public shootings.

          Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1999 National Review Inc.

          Why new gun laws won't work.

          The airwaves have been full of arguments over the lessons, if any, of the massacre at
          Columbine High School. But what about the lessons of those school massacres that were
          stopped in their tracks? In October 1997, after a shooter had killed two students at a high
          school in Pearl, Miss., assistant principal Joel Myrick retrieved a gun from his car and
          immobilized him until the police arrived. An April 1998 school- related shooting in
          Edinboro, Pa., which left a teacher dead, was stopped by nearby restaurant owner James
          Strand, who pointed a shotgun at the shooter as he was reloading his gun. The police did
          not arrive until eleven minutes later.

          Most news coverage of these incidents ignored the role of guns in ending the bloodshed.
          In the month following the Mississippi shooting, only 19 of the 687 stories on the
          episode mentioned Myrick. Some of those said only that he had "disarmed the shooter."
          In a later story on CBS, Dan Rather noted only that "Myrick eventually subdued the
          young gunman." Similarly, only 35 of the 596 stories on the Pennsylvania crime
          mentioned Strand, with the New York Daily News explaining that he had "persuaded [the
          shooter] to surrender" and the Atlanta Journal- Constitution claiming that he had "chased
          [the shooter] down and held him until police came."

          Five school-related shootings occurred in the 1997-98 school year. One might have
          thought that the fact that two of them were stopped by guns would register in the public
          debate over such shootings. Instead, and particularly since the Columbine tragedy, that
          debate has focused on irrelevancies. Consider President Clinton's proposed gun
          regulations, repackaged after Columbine. He would, among other things, mandate that
          guns have safety locks, require three-day waiting periods before guns could be
          purchased, and hold adults criminally liable for allowing minors access to guns.

          Of course, one might question the effectiveness of any gun controls, given that
          Columbine is one of the few places in Colorado where possessing a gun is illegal and that
          federal law has since 1995 generally prohibited guns within 1,000 feet of a school. But
          assume these new proposals could be perfectly enforced. A three-day waiting period
          would have made no difference in an attack planned at least a year in advance. Past
          school shooters have used guns with safety locks. And none of the proposals would
          have restricted Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold from having access to the propane and
          plastics used to make many of the bombs.

          Nor does it make sense to attach much significance to the particular features of the
          Tech-9, the so-called "assault pistol" used at Columbine. The media have shown pictures
          of a Tech-9 containing a much larger ammunition clip than was actually used in order to
          make it look more frightening. But oversized clips can be added to virtually all
          semiautomatic guns, and this "assault weapon" functions no differently from other
          semiautomatic pistols sold in the United States. It is no more powerful, it doesn't shoot
          any faster, and it doesn't shoot any more rounds. One pull of the trigger fires one bullet.
          Few reports have even mentioned that at most one person was killed with the Tech-9.

          Media coverage of guns would be distorted even without bias or ignorance. School
          massacres are inherently more newsworthy than the over 2 million incidents each year in
          which people use guns defensively-including incidents where the gun is merely
          brandished and attacks on schools where the shooter is stopped before claiming victims.
          But the fact remains: Guns are used for defensive purposes about five times as often as
          they are used for crimes. Ignoring that fact can have unfortunate consequences for public
          safety. Victims behaving passively are much more likely to face serious injury than those
          who use a gun when they are confronted by a criminal.

          My colleague William Landes and I have compiled data on all the multiple-victim public
          shootings that took place in the United States from 1977 to 1995. We included incidents
          where at least two people were killed or injured in a public place; and to focus on the
          type of shooting seen in the Colorado rampage, we excluded gang wars or shootings that
          were the byproduct of another crime, such as robbery. The U.S. averaged 21 such
          shootings annually, with an average of 1.8 people killed and 2.7 wounded in each one.

          We examined a range of different policies, including sentencing laws and gun laws (such
          as waiting periods), to see what might stop or deter these killings. We found that higher
          arrest and conviction rates, longer prison sentences, and the death penalty reduce
          murders generally. But neither the gun laws nor the frequency or severity of punishment
          turned out to have any significant effect on public shootings.

          We found only one policy that does have such an effect: letting adults without criminal
          records or a history of significant mental illness carry concealed handguns. The impact
          of these "right to carry" laws, now on the books in 31 states, has been dramatic. During
          the 19 years covered in our study, states that passed such laws saw the number of
          multiple-victim public shootings decline by an average of 84 percent. Deaths from these
          shootings plummeted on average by 90 percent, injuries by 82 percent. To the extent that
          attacks still occur in states that have enacted these laws, they disproportionately occur in
          those areas in which concealed handguns are forbidden.

          The likely explanation for these results lies in the peculiarly deranged nature of these
          crimes. The perpetrators usually die in the course of their rampages: Either they are killed
          in the attack or, as in the Colorado shooting, commit suicide. The normal penalties, then,
          simply do not apply. Whatever the other merits of proposed laws such as a lifetime ban
          on gun ownership for people who commit violent crimes as a juvenile, they won't deter
          this particular crime.

          What motivates most of these criminals seems to be the desire for publicity. They want
          to kill as many people as possible. The possible presence of concealed weapons can
          limit the carnage, and thus the incentive to begin the attack. With concealed-handgun
          laws, it is not even necessary that many people actually carry a weapon. If only 5 percent
          of the general population has a permit, the probability that someone will be able to defend
          himself against attack in a crowded restaurant or on a train, or in some other place where
          a large number of adults are present, is essentially 100 percent.

          Concealed-handgun laws also have an important advantage over uniformed police in that
          would-be attackers can in the latter case either aim their initial assault at the officer or wait
          until he departs the area. The Columbine High attack helps illustrate this point. Neil
          Gardner, the armed sheriff's deputy stationed at the school, was in uniform and well
          known to the students, thus placing him at a disadvantage. (His job was also made vastly
          more difficult by the threat of pipe bombs, which the killers essentially used as grenades.)

          Right-to-carry laws are effective in stopping multiple shootings not only in this country.
          Well over 20 years ago in Israel, there were many instances of terrorists' pulling out
          machine guns and firing away at civilians in public. But with expanded
          concealed-handgun use by Israeli citizens, terrorists soon found ordinary people pulling
          pistols on them. Suffice it to say, terrorists in Israel tend no longer to engage in such
          public shootings.

          There was, however, one recent shooting of schoolchildren in Israel. On March 13, 1997,
          a crazed Jordanian soldier shot seven Israeli girls to death while they visited Jordan's
          "Island of Peace." The Los Angeles Times reported that the Israelis had "complied with
          Jordanian requests to leave their weapons behind when they entered the border enclave.
          Otherwise, they might have been able to stop the shooting, several parents said." Indeed.

          Mr. Lott is a fellow at the University of Chicago law school and the author of More
          Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws.