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America may indeed be obsessed with guns, but much of what passes
as fact simply isn't true. The news media's focus on only tragic
outcomes, while ignoring tragic events that were avoided, may
be responsible for some misimpressions. Horrific events like the
recent shooting in Arkansas receive massive news coverage, as
they should, but the 2.5 million times each year that people
use guns defensively are never discussed--including cases where
public shootings are stopped before they happen.
Unfortunately, these misimpressions have real costs for people's
safety. Many myths needlessly frighten people and prevent them
from defending themselves most effectively.
Myth No. 1: When one is attacked, passive behavior is the safest
approach. The Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey
reports that the probability of serious injury from an attack
is 2.5 times greater for women offering no resistance than for
women resisting with a gun. Men also benefit from using a gun,
but the benefits are smaller: offering no resistance is 1.4 times
more likely to result in serious injury than resisting with a
gun.
Myth No. 2: Friends or relatives are the most likely killers.
The myth is usually based on two claims: 1) 58 percent of murder
victims are killed by either relatives or acquaintances and 2)
anyone could be a murderer.
With the broad definition of "acquaintances" used in
the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, most victims are indeed classified
as knowing their killer. However, what is not made clear is that
acquaintance murder primarily includes drug buyers killing drug
pushers, cabdrivers killed by first-time customers, gang members
killing other gang members, prostitutes killed by their clients,
and so on. Only one city, Chicago, reports a precise breakdown
on the nature of acquaintance killings: between 1990 and 1995
just 17 percent of murder victims were either family members,
friends, neighbors and/or roommates.
Murderers also are not your average citizen. For example, about
90 percent of adult murderers have already had a criminal record
as an adult. Murderers are overwhelmingly young males with low
IQs and who have difficult times getting along with others. Furthermore,
unfortunately, murder is disproportionately committed against
blacks and by blacks. Myth No. 3: The United States has such a high murder rate because
Americans own so many guns. There is no international evidence backing this up. The Swiss,
New Zealanders and Finns all own guns as frequently as Americans,
yet in 1995 Switzerland had a murder rate 40 percent lower than
Germany's, and New Zealand had one lower than Australia's. Finland
and Sweden have very different gun ownership rates, but very
similar murder rates. Israel, with a higher gun ownership rate
than the U.S., has a murder rate 40 percent below Canada's. When
one studies all countries rather than just a select few as is
usually done, there is absolutely no relationship between gun
ownership and murder. Myth No. 4: If law-abiding citizens are allowed to carry concealed
handguns, people will end up shooting each other after traffic
accidents as well as accidentally shooting police officers. Millions of people currently hold concealed handgun permits, and
some states have issued them for as long as 60 years. Yet, only
one permit holder has ever been arrested for using a concealed
handgun after a traffic accident and that case was ruled as self-defense.
The type of person willing to go through the permitting process
is extremely law-abiding. In Florida, almost 444,000 licenses
were granted from 1987 to 1997, but only 84 people have lost
their licenses for felonies involving firearms. Most violations
that lead to permits being revoked involve accidentally carrying
a gun into restricted areas, like airports or schools. In Virginia,
not a single permit holder has committed a violent crime. Similarly
encouraging results have been reported for Kentucky, Nevada, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Tennessee (the only other
states where information is available). Myth No. 5: The family gun is more likely to kill you or someone
you know than to kill in self-defense. The studies yielding such numbers never actually inquired as to
whose gun was used in the killing. Instead, if a household owned
a gun and if a person in that household or someone they knew
was shot to death while in the home, the gun in the household
was blamed. In fact, virtually all the killings in these studies
were committed by guns brought in by an intruder. No more than
four percent of the gun deaths can be attributed to the homeowner's
gun. The very fact that most people were killed by intruders
also surely raises questions about why they owned guns in the
first place and whether they had sufficient protection.
How many attacks have been deterred from ever occurring by the
potential victims owning a gun? My own research finds that more
concealed handguns, and increased gun ownership generally, unambiguously
deter murders, robbery, and aggravated assaults. This is also
in line with the well-known fact that criminals prefer attacking
victims that they consider weak.
These are only some of the myths about guns and crime that drive
the public policy debate. We must not lose sight of the ultimate
question: Will allowing law-abiding citizens to own guns save
lives? The evidence strongly indicates that it does.
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