Martin Blank's Journal: Notes on the favorability of gun ownership

I've been around guns all of my life. I first fired a gun at age 5, under the close supervision of my father. That weekend in the desert, I fired a .22 rifle and a .38 pistol. Right now, I do not own any guns, but that is mostly because other purchases have had priority over the Sig Pro in .40S&W and the Benelli semi-automatic shotgun that I want to get.

Most of the problems with guns come from people who are too emotionally involved (i.e., abusers and murderers) and the ignorant. If one is shown how to properly handle a gun, 99% of the potential problems are removed. 75% of the problems stem from people not knowing or following through on one rule: Always treat a gun as if it were loaded. Even with a disassembled firearm, I find it nearly impossible to look down the barrel from the muzzle.

There are 250 million firearms in the United States. The FBI attributed about 10,241 deaths out of 15,517 murders and manslaughters in 2000 to firearms. Assuming a rate of one firearm per death (higher than actual rate), that means that .004% of all firearms are responsible for a non-accidental death each year. Contrast this to estimates by the University of Chicago that each year, a gun is used two million times to prevent a crime simply by brandishing; even the FBI estimates one million times a year. How many murders are stopped by these?

The FBI crime survey for 2001 reports 13,752 murders for that year (not counting the events of September 11), of which 8,719 were by firearm.

I advise checking into the history of firearm ownership and the actual results of firearm laws across the nation. A copy of UofC economics professor John Lott's book More Guns, Less Crime can be had in most libraries. I also advise staying away from Professor Michael Bellesiles's book Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, which has been shown through a thorough investigation by Emory University's staff to have breached most standards of research thoroughly enough (including citing material that doesn't exist) that he was forced to resign.

I agree with much of the criticism of the many books written for and against gun control. I much prefer independent analyses, as well as those that are not on the extreme ends of a debate. This is one of the reasons that I always start by suggesting Lott's book, because it's a breakdown of twenty years of crime and suicide data for every single county in the country by an economist who is among the most respected in his field. The story goes (and I need to find an authoritative reference for this) that he was anti-gun at one point, and performed this study to prove that more guns made for more crime; the results of his own work supposedly made him change his mind.

As to the suggestion I occasionally see of keeping the firearms in a locker at a police station, how much good does that do when someone is breaking into your house and the police are three to five minutes away? What about a home invasion robbery where the phone lines are sometimes cut, meaning no police are going to come? I guarantee you that there is no sound scarier to someone wandering around a strange house than that of a shell being racked into the chamber of a shotgun.

In Switzerland (approximate population 7.3 million), every member of the armed forces (which is a militia-style force) keeps their weapon at home with them when not on active duty, and then often keep their weapon after they have left the military. They are currently issued the Sig-550, an assault rifle using 7.62mm ammunition capable of fully-automatic fire, though it also has selector options for single and three-round burst fire. Essentially, this means that there are at least several hundred thousand and perhaps as many as a couple million fully-automatic weapons in Switzerland, many of them in completely private hands. Despite this, in 1998, there were only 66 cases of attempted or successful murder by firearm; an equivalent rate in the United States would have resulted in about 2,531 attempted and successful murders, far below the actual count. This is more evidence that more guns != more crime. (!= is programming speak for "does not equal". You'll see it used here often, especially by me.)

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The following is a post made by an opponent from
Canada in a debate on another site. I'm including
it here, unedited and unabridged, because it affects
some of the following discussion.
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There were two things I did not expect when I posted my post: 1) to recieve zero support from my fellow posters besides some guy who liked the song in the trailer and 2) I had no idea that all the jokes up here about Americans luvin' their guns were so terrifyingly true. But as the Chinese say, Truth wears many faces, and in this matter, Truth is indeed on my side, so I'll dig around and write my counter essay to the essay flung towards me, but as far as the switzerland arguement, that can be wholly dismissed on the grounds of common sense. I'm not argueing that trained, proffessional soldiers, schooled in discipline and restraint for the purpose of the defence of a nation, have no right to bare arms. I'm against the crack head mugging me having the right to bare arms. Furthermore, I was unaware that the value of human life was so terribly low. 11,000 dead vs I don't care how many crimes were prevented. 11,000 DEAD! and that's just the murders, not the more than twice as many suicides that might have been prevented were there not a readily availible tool which has the sole purpose of killing and near killing been present. I'm a Canadian. I'll go get some numbers if you want, but it's pretty common knowledge that Canada has lower crime rates than America. Do you think that's because we're viciously snowballing the guys who want our wallets?
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So..... You'd trade the 11,000 dead and let the other one million crimes happen? How many of those one million crimes would have been murders? I'll field that question right now. Based on 15,980 murders out of 1,436,611 violent crimes, we reach a rate of about 1.1% of all violent crimes in the United States being murders. This number has been fairly stable for the last five years. This would suggest that out of one million prevented crimes, 11,000 would be murders. I don't think I need to state the number of dead if the higher estimate is correct. These numbers, of course, don't include the 5,033 murders that were not committed by firearm last year, nor the 2,228 manslaughters, many of which did not involve firearms.

Incidentally, assuming an historical average of 65% of the murders and manslaughters in the United States by firearm, the last time we would have seen 11,000 firearm deaths in murder and manslaughter cases would have been 1998. In addition, gun ownership rates in the United States have been stable or rising for most of the last decade at least, and yet the violent crime rate has dropped by 25.7% in the last ten years, and the murder rate by 32.7%. I'll leave you to explain this.

You bring up suicide rates, which I admit is a salient point. I offer the following rates of homicide, homicide by firearm, suicide, suicide by firearm, and gun ownership for varying countries, sorted in descending order of ownership rates; homicide and suicide rates are per 100,000 population. Suicide rates are per 100,000 population, and ownership rates are the percentage of homes owning at least one firearm.

Country..........Hom.....HBF....Suic.....SBF.....GOR.....Year
United States....5.70....3.72...12.06....7.35....39.0....1993
Norway...........0.97....0.30...13.64....3.95....32.0....1993
Canada...........2.16....0.76...13.19....3.72....29.1....1992
Switzerland......1.32....0.58...21.28....5.61....27.2....1994
Finland..........3.24....0.86...27.26....5.78....23.2....1994
France...........1.12....0.44...20.79....5.14....22.6....1994
New Zealand......1.47....0.17...12.81....2.14....22.3....1993
Australia........1.86....0.44...12.65....2.35....19.4....1994
Belgium..........1.41....0.60...19.04....2.56....16.6....1990
Italy............2.25....1.66....8.00....1.11....16.0....1992
Sweden...........1.30....0.18...15.75....2.09....15.1....1993
Spain............0.95....0.21....7.77....0.43....13.1....1993
Germany..........1.17....0.22...15.64....1.17.....8.9....1994
Scotland.........2.24....0.19...12.16....0.31.....4.7....1994
England/Wales....1.41....0.11....7.68....0.33.....4.7....1992
Netherlands......1.11....0.36...10.10....0.31.....1.9....1994
Japan............0.62....0.02...16.72....0.04.....n/a....1994

Hom = Homicide; HBF = Homicide by Firearm; Suic = Suicide; SBF = Suicide by Firearm; GOR = Gun Ownership Rate

Source: GunCite.com International Homicide and Suicide Rates. The data is sourced from the International Journal of Epidemiology and the Canadian Medical Association, except for the US firearm ownership percentage which is sourced from Harris and Gallup polls. Apologies for the use of periods to separate the columns. EZBoard strips excess spaces.

It's not a perfect comparison, but it's close enough. As you can see, firearm ownership rates cannot be tied to suicide rates, or even to suicide by firearm rates. Germany has a similar suicide rate as Italy, despite the ownership levels being about half of Italy's. Canada had a 9.4% higher overall suicide rate than the United States, despite having an ownership level 25% lower than its southern neighbor. In Japan, it's virtually impossible to legally own a functional firearm, yet the suicide rate is astronomical by North American standards. Switzerland, Finland, and France all have even higher overall rates, with significant portions of those by firearm. It would be most interesting to see the current crime rates for Australia, England, and Scotland, since the numbers in the chart above represent statistics from long before the current near-ban on guns in those countries took place.

Since some are likely to focus on the high suicide by firearms rate in the United States, I'd like to ask consideration that more interesting are the countries with high overall rates and low firearm rates, and suggest that this backs up the common warning from mental health professionals that those that truly want to commit suicide will find a way.

A bit of anecdotal evidence on Norway: I was speaking with a Norwegian in IRC, and he mentioned that the firearm ownership rates quoted in this table sound correct to him. He also mentioned that the biggest gun crime in recent memory was a triple-homicide a few years back, which is still discussed in the papers. He said it was done with an illegally-obtained Luger pistol, and despite the shock did not lead to any serious suggestions for more stringent gun laws.

Crime rates are also a salient point. Let's look at the violent crime categories and rates per 100,000 population for the United States over the last five years from the FBI Uniform Crime Report, Index of Crime, Table 1:

Crime....................1997....1998....1999....2000....2001
Murder....................6.8.....6.3.....5.7.....5.5.....5.6
Forcible rape*...........35.9....34.5....32.8....31.8....31.8
Robbery.................186.2...165.5...150.1...145.0...148.5
Aggravated assault......382.1...361.4...334.3...324.0...318.5
Total...................611.0...567.6...523.0...506.5...504.4

* "Forcible rape, as defined in the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, is the carnal knowledge of
a female forcibly and against her will. Assaults or attempts to commit rape by force or threat of
force are also included; however, statutory rape (without force) and other sex offenses are excluded."
    -- FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 2001, Section II: Forcible Rape

Now, let's look at the violent crime categories and rates per 100,000 population for Canada over the last five years from Canada Statistic (or if you're from Quebec, Statistique Canada):

Crime....................1997....1998....1999....2000....2001
Homicide..................2.0.....1.8.....1.8.....1.8.....1.8
Attempted murder..........2.9.....2.5.....2.3.....2.5.....2.3
Sexual assault...........90.1....84.5....78.2....78.0....78.6
Other sexual offences....12.2....11.4....10.8....10.1.....9.7
Robbery..................98.7....95.8....94.2....87.9....88.2
Assaults (Lvl 1 to 3)...741.6...740.3...725.8...759.6...769.5
Other crimes.............42.7....42.9....42.2....42.0....44.4
Total...................990.1...979.1...955.2...981.8...994.5

Honestly, and without sarcasm, this opened my eyes. I used to think that Canada's crime rate couldn't be that far off of the United States' crime rate. The Canadian murder and robbery rates are lower, but the sexual assault rate frankly scares the hell out of me. Anyway, the overall Canadian violent crime rates are 62%, 72%, 83%, 94%, and 97% higher than that of the United States, running year by year from 1997 to 2001. Property crimes aren't as bad, but Canada still had 13%, 12%, 14%, 12%, and 11% higher rates; I'll leave it to you to see the exact numbers in the interest of space.

If you don't like guns, that's fine. My mother won't touch them, though she won't stop anyone else. One of my best friends doesn't believe they should be legal, either, but she was kind enough to come along to a firing range at my invitation and put about 50 rounds through an automatic pistol as part of her research into guns and her interest in seeing my side of the argument, and learned that firing a gun for sport can be fun.

The most dangerous thing around a gun is a person who fears it, because fear makes a person unpredictable. A person who respects a gun is far less likely to make trouble, and less likely to distract a responsible weapon handler.