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Yale's John Lott Says...
“The bottom line should be not whether we strike a blow against the gun industry,
but what impact we are going to be having on people’s safety.”
John R. Lott Jr. is a senior research scholar at the Yale University Law School and the author of More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws
National Review: To a New
York Times reporter, one official from the Massachusetts attorney
general’s office said the new rules that went into effect in Massachusetts
on Monday "mark the sharpest blow yet to the gun industry." How pernicious
are these rules? Do you see states lining up to follow suit?
John Lott:
It’s sad that they phrase it in that way, as a "blow to the gun industry."
The bottom line should be not whether we strike a blow against the gun
industry, but what impact we are going to be having on people’s safety.
I have real concerns about these rules in Massachusetts. When they decide
to essentially ban so-called "Saturday Night Specials," inexpensive guns,
like they have here, it is the poor people in high-crime urban areas who
aren’t going to be able to defend themselves.
As for the impact this might have on other states, it’s interesting to note
that these restrictions weren’t part of a law that was passed. It was,
rather, an attorney general who issued these rules unilaterally. I don’t
think they could pass. In fact, there have been attempts to pass similar
types of safety rules in Massachusetts--and they haven’t been successful.
These rules generally — whether they be effectively banning certain types of
guns or mandating "childproof locks" — will create future problems. There’s
no such thing as a lock that’s impossible to tamper with. I’m concerned
that there will be a mandatory "tamper-proof" lock. Then, at some point
in the future, someone will discover that the lock can be tampered with,
so there will be legal action against companies that are selling the guns
with the locks. The [government] will say, "Did you realize that this
lock was not tamper-proof?" And the gun manufacturers will say, "Yes."
But they’ll face violations of the law for having sold the guns even though
they knew that their guns were not able to stand up to this "tamper-proof"
standard. I think that what’s largely going on here is an effort to raise
the price of guns, make it impossible to sell many types of guns — if
not handguns completely — and make it so that over time the number of
law-abiding citizens who own guns will decline, and make it easier for
more stringent rules to pass in the future.
NR Lott: Finally, the studies out there that have looked at either the accessibility of
guns or storage rules for guns don’t find an impact on accidental gun
deaths. The main reason for that — in particular with regard to the storage
law--is that the type of people that these laws would affect, law-abiding
citizens, are the ones for whom the risk of an accidental gunshot involving
a child is essentially zero to begin with. The types of families where
you are likely to see something bad occur are the ones which have drug
problems or other criminal activities going on. I don’t really think you
are going to be able to affect their behavior very much by passing these
laws. When you look at the safe-storage laws you have in 17 states now
in the United States, they had increases in violent crime occurring after
the passage of those laws--because they made it more difficult for people
to be able to defend themselves. It seemed to be of no benefit in terms
of reducing accidental gun deaths. My concern is, what is the net effect
on deaths? Even if one believes there might be some small impact — the
people that keep on arguing that are talking about just a few deaths a
year. NR: Lott: President Clinton has mentioned this claim over and over in the last month
after the Kayla Rowland death in Michigan, essentially using the number of deaths
per day as a justification for trigger locks. What he doesn’t point out,
and what is misleading about this, is that when you look at the public-service
ads that the Clinton administration has put out within the last couple
of years they have pictures or voices of young children, who are under
ten always, usually seven or eight years old. That’s the impression that
people get — that these are these young kids that are dying when they
talk about these 11 or 12 deaths per day. The problem is that that is
a complete misrepresentation, because about 70 percent of those deaths
involve 17,- 18-, and 19-year-olds. The deaths that they have are for
people under the age of 20. The 17-, 18-, and 19-year-olds are primarily
homicides in high-crime urban areas, primarily involving gangs. To go
and argue that trigger locks are going to be relevant in stopping 19-year-old
gang members from getting into a gang fight in an urban area seems bizarre
to me. When you break down the numbers to correspond to the images that
people are trying to make, you find that just a little bit over 2 percent
of the deaths involve children under the age of 10. That’s a significant
2 percent, but it’s probably a lot smaller than people are getting the
impression of when they hear these claims bandied about. I think it’s
sad that they have to go and distort these numbers. |
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