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KIDS &
GUNS: EXPLOITING TRAGEDY Reprinted with permission from Guns & Ammo Magazine, July
2000. Copyright 2000 by Petersen Publishing Co.; All rights reserved. In England, it's taken nearly a century to convince the Brits that
self-defense is no longer their right, and that firearms have no place among
"civilized" people, not even for "sporting purposes". But
here in America, they've figured out a short cut. The newest scheme of the
anti-self-defense lobby targets our children, the key to the future. If our
children can be deprived of firearms, the cycle of firearm ownership from parent
to child can be broken, and the "final solution" accomplished in one
generation. This article will expose some of the ways in which politically motivated
criminologists have created the media-fueled myth of a "proliferation of
guns among children", and have used it to manipulate a gullible public into
demanding "reasonable", "common-sense" gun laws. "HOT-SPOT" Between 1984 and 1993, the rate at which homicides were committed by
adolescents aged 13-17 quadrupled. And that increase is accounted for - almost
exactly - by the increase in homicides committed with guns. These statistics have spawned the latest factoid being shoved down the
throats of Americans: their country is in the midst of a juvenile violent crime
"epidemic", and at the heart of it is the gun. What we are not told are the demographics. WHO, exactly, is committing all
the crime. And where? If one bothers to check the numbers, it becomes apparent that today's
youthful offenders are mostly inner-city, minority gang members. In a rare lapse
into honesty, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) researchers James Mercy and Mark
Rosenberg confirmed this well-kept secret: "... the current understanding
of exposure to and use of firearms by school-age children is based on studies of
inner-city children." Acknowledging in a 1998 article that "at present there are fewer than
five studies in this area" - and each with "significant
limitations" - Mercy and Rosenberg lamented the lack of information about
firearm violence and "children who live in suburban and rural
communities". What they failed to tell us was the reason for the absence of
that information. WE will. No such problem exists outside these inner-city areas. It's the
crime confined to geographically narrow inner-city neighborhoods that's driving
the entire youth homicide rate! A February 1999 U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)
monograph entitled "Promising Strategies to Reduce Gun Violence"
pin-pointed the locations of juvenile "gun-violence": "One of the key research findings of the last 10 to 15 years has been
the discovery of the importance of hotspots of crime...even within high-crime
areas there are specific locales that generate the majority of calls for
police..." In fact, according to the DOJ report, these "hotspots" are often
limited to just "a small number of city blocks". One of the tenets of scientific research is that, in order to legitimately
generalize a study's conclusions to a population beyond the sample of that study
- in this case, to the rest of the United States - the study's sample must be
representative of that larger population. Using "hotspot analysis" to
draw conclusions about juvenile homicide in America turns the scientific method
on end. But that's exactly what some unscrupulous criminologists have been doing. And
they're asking us to formulate public policy for an entire nation based on those
conclusions. For example, in a 1998 DOJ compendium of articles entitled
"Youth Violence", paid for with taxpayer funding, Jeffrey Fagan and
Deanna Wilkinson repeatedly acknowledge the problem of crime hotspots in a
section entitled "Guns, Youth Violence, and Social Identity" - and
then proceed to lay the blame at the feet of this country's overwhelmingly
non-violent juvenile population: "Guns play an important role in the recent epidemic of lethal youth
violence...These effects appear to be large enough to justify intensive efforts
to reduce availability, possession, and use of guns by American
adolescents." That message uncritically accepted by America's biased mainstream media and
corrupt politicians. CATCHY SOUND BITES After fabricating a "gun problem" with "the children",
the firearm-prohibitionists lost no time in creating a new catch phrase to go
along with it: "proliferation of guns". Nice sound-bite. But as usual, 180-degrees away from the truth, because Janet
Reno's "hotspot" neighborhoods just happen to be located in areas
which, for decades, have been the recipients of the most restrictive gun laws in
the nation. These are places where lawful firearm possession is virtually
forbidden. Yet while they may be "unlawful", guns are far from impossible to
obtain, and their procurement involves "black markets". The illegality of black markets makes it difficult to quantify their scope,
and their clandestine nature allows dishonest researchers like Mercy and
Rosenberg to minimize their importance. But what we do know about the black
market is that it is a direct consequence of restrictions that deny lawful
access to firearms - policies which people like Mercy and Rosenberg have helped
implement. Mercy and Rosenberg tell us another fact: "Many adolescents,
particularly (but not exclusively) those who reside in inner cities, can easily
and inexpensively obtain high-quality and powerful firearms." The mental picture we're expected to form is one of wildly proliferating -
but lawful - firearm possession among our children, providing the
firearm-prohibitionists with a pretext to "close all the loopholes".
And for those taken in by the vision of truckloads of Uzis rolling down the
streets of America in plain sight, and guns being handed out like water to
marathon runners on a hot summer's day, the scam worked as planned. But Yale researcher and law professor Dr. John Lott addressed the myth of
easy, lawful juvenile access to guns in the June 19, 1999 edition of the Wall
Street Journal: "Everyone from President Clinton to the hosts of the Today Show
attributes the recent wave of school violence to the greater accessibility of
guns...Yet the truth is precisely the opposite. Gun availability has never
before been as restricted as it is now... The fact is, today's juvenile crime "epidemic" arises not from
easy, lawful access to guns, but from the co-existence of
"killer-kids" and black markets. While the two may be sociologically
linked by virtue of ill-conceived policies of liberalism, there is no scientific
connection between them. And what's the solution from Janet Reno's Department of Justice? "[Our] programs...seek to reduce firearm possession and carrying by
juveniles...To accomplish this goal, some communities have limited the number of
Federal firearms licensees (FFL's) that are allowed to sell firearms". Do America's politicians really think that underage gang members get their
guns from licensed gun dealers, when the Department of Justice's own research
shows this not to be the case? Are they really unaware of the universal fact
that more restrictions mean more business for the black market, and even easier
access for criminals? And are they really that stupendously incompetent when it comes to setting
"reasonable", "common sense" public policy? Not a chance! They're just feigning ignorance - and lying through their teeth
- in order to camouflage their real intent: total civilian disarmament. KILLER KIDS The emotional clincher for the firearm-prohibitionists in demonizing firearm
use among children has been the recent spate of high-profile - but statistically
insignificant - school shootings. However, just like government intervention is
the cause of a robust black market in guns, the evidence points to government
intervention as the cause here, too. In 1990, Federal legislation banning guns within 1,000 feet of a school was
signed into law by then-President George Bush. Although ruled unconstitutional
by the Supreme Court on April 25, 1995, the legislation was re-worked,
resurrected by Congress, then signed back into law by Bill Clinton that same
year. To date, 40 states have enacted similar laws. In an April 1999 working paper entitled "Multiple Victim Public
Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws", Dr. Lott
and colleague Dr. William Landes explored the phenomenon of mass public
shootings in relation to the absence or presence of restrictive concealed
handgun laws, enacted at the state level. Between 1977 and 1995, Lott and Landes
found that 15 shootings took place in schools located in states with restrictive
firearm laws, resulting in a total of 19 deaths and 97 injuries. In contrast, only one shooting took place in a state where ordinary citizens
had easy legal access to firearms, including concealed handguns. The result: one
death, and two injuries. The difference was the factor of deterrence, brought about by armed,
law-abiding citizens, and the possibility that would-be perpetrators might just
run into one of these, instead of unarmed, defenseless victims. This was brought home by a shooting that took place in Pearl, Mississippi, in
October 1997. Armed with a hunting rifle, 16-year-old Luke Woodham killed his
ex-girlfriend and her friend, and then proceeded to wound 7 other students at
Pearl High School. After hearing shots fired and seeing a teenager with a gun,
Assistant Principal Joel Myrick ran to his car, retrieved a handgun he had
forgotten to remove during the preceding weekend, and interrupted Woodham's
shooting spree, holding him at bay until police arrived. Although Mississippi had enacted a nonrestrictive concealed handgun law in
1990, Federal law prohibited Myrick from having the gun in his car because of
its proximity to the school. But he did, and, in the process, saved an unknown
number of lives. The story, like many others, has been conveniently ignored by the mainstream
media. But Drs. Lott and Landes commented on the ramifications of banning guns
in and around schools: "...these incidents [public school shootings] raise questions about the
unintentional consequences of laws...The possibility exists that attempts to
outlaw guns from schools, no matter how well meaning, may have produced perverse
effects." Dr. Lott pointed out that, 30 years ago, "nowhere were guns more common
than at schools. Until 1969, virtually every public high school in New York City
had a shooting club. High-school students carried their guns to school on the
subways..." If "easy access to guns" and their "proliferation" are
the problem, why no Littletons then? And how is it that first-graders didn't go
around shooting classmates back then? THE POWER TO KILL Consider this. Suppose we were to carry out a survey among American adults,
and pose the following scenario: The problem of juvenile delinquency was
examined in a study of 7th- and 8th-grade boys and girls. Some of them were
given one or more guns by their parents. More adolescents from high-crime than
from low-crime areas were included in the study in order to maximize the number
of serious, chronic offenders. And then, suppose we asked the following question: By the time these
adolescents had reached 11th and 12th grade, respectively, of those adolescents
whose parents had given them a gun, what percentage would you guess would have
committed a firearm-related crime? Just such a study was carried out by the U.S. Department of Justice in
Rochester, NY, and published in March 1994. And we would wager that few, if any,
of our hypothetical survey respondents would come even remotely close to the
answer arrived at in the Rochester study. Because hidden within the mass of data of that DOJ study entitled "Urban
Delinquency and Substance Abuse" was the finding that, of all children who
had received a gun from a parent, zero percent had used a gun in committing a
crime! The cycle of gun ownership from parent to child has, in the past, always
produced children capable of handling potentially deadly objects without harm to
themselves - or to others. All available evidence shows that this hasn't
changed. But Americans have been brainwashed into believing that their children
are incapable of handling firearms in a responsible manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. Children given guns, and the
education to handle them safely and with respect for all they can do, are the
most non-violent of all groups studied. THE BOTTOM LINE On February 29, 2000, Kayla Rolland was shot to death by a 6-year-old boy at
Buell Elementary School, Mount Morris Township, Michigan. America's
anti-self-defense lobby reveled in the tragedy. Clinton took advantage of the opportunity, exploiting Kayla's death to urge
passage of his latest firearm proposals, which included the mandatory sale of
"trigger-locks" with all new handgun purchases. Said Clinton with a
straight face: "I'm not at all sure that even a callous, irresponsible drug
dealer with a 6-year old in the house wouldn't leave a child trigger lock on a
gun". To those Americans eager to fill the prescription firearm-prohibitionists
promise will bring us a safer society - a prescription of "reasonable"
gun laws designed to stop the "proliferation of guns among children" -
please answer this one question: Are you willing to bet the lives of your
children on a philosophy which requires tragedy, deceit, and the death of
innocent persons for its successful implementation? Firearm ownership is integral to liberty. And unless we teach our children
how to handle that liberty, what some Americans still value will quickly slip
beyond reach. REFERENCES Dr. Paul Gallant practices Optometry in Wesley Hills, New York. Dr. Joanne
Eisen practices dentistry in Old Bethpage, New York. Both are research
associates with the Independence Institute, a civil liberties think tank in
Golden Colorado, http://i2i.org.
We are happy to welcome them as contributing members of our team. |
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