by Glenn Beck
2005
3.8
2006
3.9
2007
3.9
294 million
ATF
2008
3.6
2009
3.4
310 million
ATF
2010
3.2
2011
3.2
Notice anything strange about those numbers? The firearm murder rate keeps falling even as the number of total firearms in America keeps rising.
I understand enough about statistics to know that a table like this is prone to all sorts of problems. The Dershowitzes of the world would say that you can’t just look at overall trends like this because you have to control for all those variables he alluded to in his other quote. Fine, and that’s been done plenty of times in other peer-reviewed studies—but this data, covering eighteen years of history and using only the most respected federal sources, sure puts, to use a term that Dershowitz knows well, the burden of proof squarely back on those who make the claim that the correlation between these numbers is actually the complete opposite of what the FBI data shows.
This correlation can also be found in states, like Virginia, where the total number of firearms per 100,000 residents was up 63 percent over five years, but where total gun-related violent crimes fell 27 percent over that same period. Virginia Commonwealth University professor Thomas Baker, who ran the study, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the data, “seems to point away from the premise that more guns leads to more crime, at least in Virginia . . . . From my personal point of view, I would say the data is pretty overwhelming.”
Right-to-Carry Laws
One way that researchers determine the effectiveness of gun control is by looking at right-to-carry (also sometimes known as “concealed carry”) laws. These are basically laws that allow, with some exceptions, people to keep a weapon on them in public areas. There are several varieties of these laws, including “unrestricted” (no permitting required), “shall-issue” (you need a permit but it’s pretty much a formality—governing bodies are not allowed to use their own discretion), and “may-issue” (a permit is necessary and may be granted only if you meet certain requirements or conditions).
A lot of sophisticated studies have been done on this topic and they virtually all reached the same conclusion: violent crime falls after right-to-carry laws are adopted, with bigger drops the longer the right-to-carry laws are in effect.
While there is tons of evidence to support this conclusion, some of the most interesting is produced when you compare changes in crime rates in adjacent counties on opposite sides of state borders. In general, the county in the state that adopts a right-to-carry law sees a drop in violent crime, while the adjacent county in the state without the right-to-carry law sees a slight increase.
The evidence that right-to-carry laws work is so persuasive that someone attempting to identify some other factor that’s responsible for the results would have to answer these questions:
—Why does the impact of this new factor increase over time?
—Why is this new factor so well correlated with the rate at which right-to-carry permits are issued in different states?
—Why would this new factor have a greater impact on violent crime relative to property crime and on individual murders relative to mass (multiple-victim) public homicides?
—Why does this new factor affect adjacent counties on opposite sides of state borders differently?
Various academic scholars have studied the impact of letting citizens carry concealed handguns on crime rates. Eighteen recent studies have found that right-to-carry laws deter violent crime. Ten studies have claimed either small benefits or no effect.
Dershowitz, however, is not convinced. He apparently believes that the findings below, from those eighteen different studies (in addition to the opinion from James Q. Wilson that was previously quoted) performed by different scholars at different times, were all bought and paid for by the gun lobby.
• John Lott and John Whitley find that “the longer a right-to-carry law is in effect, the greater the drop in crime.”
• The third edition of John Lott’s More Guns, Less Crime found that the states which issued the most permits had the biggest drops in violent crime rates. Lott also found: “By any measure, concealed-handgun permit holders are extremely law abiding.”
• Economists Florenz Plassmann and Nicolaus Tideman found that “right-to-carry laws do help on average to reduce the number of these crimes.”
• Carl Moody, chair of the economics department at the College of William and Mary at the time of the study, said his findings “confirm and reinforce the basic findings of the original Lott and [David] Mustard study.”
• In another paper that studies county crime rates from 1977 until 2000, coauthored by Moody and attorney and sociologist Thomas Marvell, the authors write that “the evidence, such as it is, seems to support the hypothesis that the shall-issue law is generally beneficial with respect to its overall long run effect on crime.”
• Economists Eric Helland and Alex Tabarrok studied county crime rates from 1977 to 2000 and concluded that “shall-issue laws cause a large and significant drop in the murder trend rate” and that “there is considerable support for the hypothesis that shall-issue laws cause criminals to substitute away from crimes against persons and towards crimes against property.”
• David Olson, a professor of criminal justice at Loyola University Chicago, and Michael Maltz, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago, found “a decrease in total homicides” driven by a drop in gun killings.
• Bruce Benson, a Florida State economics professor, and social scientist Brent Mast found that their results “are virtually identical to those in [Lott and Mustard’s study].”
These researchers have used a variety of approaches: different statistical techniques, different data sets, different control variables, or a variety of specifications. Yet, despite all these alternative setups, the general conclusion is the same: right-to-carry laws reduce violent crime.
Some studies have reached the opposite conclusion. A 2011 paper published in American Law and Economics Review claimed, “the most consistent, albeit not uniform, finding to emerge from both the state and county panel data models conducted over the entire 1977–2006 period with and without state trends and using three different specifications is that aggravated assault rises when RTC laws are adopted. For every other crime category, there is little or no indication of any consistent RTC impact on crime.”
Sounds impressive, except that a review of this study by four researchers, including John Lott, found the results to be based on a data set that included significant errors (for example, it accidentally counted the same county seventy-three times), as well as a significant arrest-rate error that severely biased the results toward finding a negative effect from right-to-carry laws. A later addendum to this paper admitted the errors and claimed that the underlying results were still valid. But researchers like John Lott, who routinely confirm the findings of other studies in this field, disagree, and have not been provided access to the data used to reach these conclusions.
THE REASON NOTHING CHANGES IS THAT THE NRA BUYS OFF POLITICIANS.
“I have been stunned by the sheer political cowardice of so many politicians in America who seem just terrified of saying anything that the NRA may object to. The NRA has four million members. America has 310 million people living here. I just don’t understand why everybody is so coward[ly] about publicly debating this and trying to get exactly the measures in place that you’ve [Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal] just suggested.”
—PIERS MORGAN, December 20, 2012
“Let’s talk political reality. I don’t have to tell you, the NRA has a lot of clout on Capitol Hill. In the last election cycle, they contributed $20 million to campaigns last year. Fifty percent of the members of the new Congress have an A-rating from the
NRA.”
—CHRIS WALLACE, February 3, 2013
It is often hard for gun control advocates to accept that everyone wants the same thing: to save lives and reduce violence. President Obama believes that those “pundits and politicians and special interest lobbyists” who oppose his gun control regulations do so “because they want to gin up fear or higher ratings or revenue for themselves.” That they will do “everything they can to block any commonsense reform” that is necessary “to protect our communities and our kids.”
I take that not only as a personal insult, but as akin to the president essentially saying that I put ratings and profit above the lives of children. Nothing could be further from the truth, and it’s those kinds of reckless statements that make both sides dig in their heels. After all, I may believe that Obama’s views on guns are dangerous and that his policies endanger public safety, but that’s quite a bit different from accusing him of personally benefiting from the deaths of innocent children.
Obama’s mind-set explains why so many of those “pundits and politicians” on his side of the aisle refuse to accept that there are voters and politicians who oppose more gun control laws. It isn’t because the NRA has bought them off; they don’t buy votes, they invest in politicians who already believe that the right to bear arms is essential to our freedom.
Ironically, one of the best arguments against the Piers Morgans and Barack Obamas of the world on this topic comes from Alan Dershowitz, a guy who probably agrees with almost all of their gun control ideas. In response to Morgan’s saying that the issue is that the NRA wields too much power, Dershowitz disagreed:
I don’t think it’s the NRA power. I think it’s people like us, not the two of us, but Americans who care about guns aren’t doing enough to make our case to the public.
Because we think it’s their issue. We’ve given that issue over to them because they have lobbyists they pay money. But in the end, the people determine the outcome . . . . [W]e have a right to define the America we want to live in and we have the obligation to win politically, to vote for people to put gun control as a high priority.
They [people who support the Second Amendment] put it as a number one priority. We who favor gun control put it as a 16th or 17th priority. So it’s our fault, not the NRA’s fault.
I knew that Dershowitz and I would find some common ground. He’s right that, as with every controversial issue, it’s ultimately up to the people and the voters to prioritize how much they care about it. Believe me, if this country was really anti-gun, you’d see things change very fast. But that’s just not the case.
There is plenty of polling on this, but for a good example, take a look at the trend in those answering “yes, there should be” to this question that Gallup has been asking Americans since 1959: Do you think there should be a law banning the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons?
—1959: 60 percent
—1965: 49 percent
—1975: 41 percent
—1988: 37 percent
—1999: 34 percent
—2006: 32 percent
—2009: 28 percent
—2012: 24 percent
What about making it “illegal to manufacture, sell, or possess semi-automatic guns known as assault rifles?” (This question began in 1996).
—1996: 57 percent were for this idea.
—2004: 50 percent
—2012: 44 percent
The problem isn’t the NRA; it’s that the controllists refuse to admit that they themselves are out of step with the American people. And while Piers Morgan points out that the NRA has “only” 4 million members—as if that somehow implies they should not wield the power they do (for context, the ACLU claims about 500,000 members)—that in no way means that NRA members are the only Americans who want to protect their Second Amendment rights. A recent poll revealed that 68 percent of all Americans—not just gun owners—believe that “the constitutional right to own and carry a gun is as important as other constitutional rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom of the press.” The Bloombergs of the world who live in their ivory castle and travel with armed security simply cannot understand why any of those simple-minded folk out in the heartland might ever want a gun themselves.
Finally, Chris Wallace’s comment about the NRA contributing “$20 million to campaigns last year (2012)” just doesn’t hold up. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the NRA made just over $1 million in donations to specific candidates during the 2012 election cycle. The top recipients got $9,900.
Perhaps, to give Wallace the benefit of the doubt, he didn’t really mean the money the NRA gave “to campaigns” but the total money they spent on all independent efforts. In that case his number is much closer—but it’s not really fair to claim the NRA is buying politicians when the vast majority of that money never goes to the campaigns. Will the NRA support your reelection if they believe you support them? Of course—but isn’t that the way it should be? The AFL-CIO spent nearly $9 million last election cycle, all in support of Democrats who support them, or against Republicans who don’t. No one seems to have an issue with that.
THE NRA IS SO CRAZY THAT THEY ACTUALLY WANT TO ARM OUR KIDS!
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: “And when the NRA gets up and says the solution to it is to arm teachers in elementary schools and give kids guns—”
MORGAN: “—wild west. It’s lunacy.”
DERSHOWITZ: “We don’t want to live there.”
You’re right, Alan, we don’t want to live there. Fortunately, we don’t have to because this is a lie.
Dershowitz is a great lawyer—he knows how to mix in just enough truth with his lies to get the jury to bite. But I’m not biting. For anyone interested in the truth, here is what Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA, actually said:
Now, the National Rifle Association knows there are millions of qualified active and retired police, active reserve and retired military, security professionals, certified firefighters, security professionals, rescue personnel, an extraordinary corps of patriotic, trained, qualified citizens to join with local school officials and police in devising a protection plan for every single school.
We could deploy them to protect our kids now. We can immediately make America’s schools safer relying on the brave men and women in America’s police forces. The budgets—and you all know this—everyone in the country knows this—of our local police departments are strained, and their resources are severely limited, but their dedication and courage is second to none and they can be deployed right now.
I’m not seeing the part where LaPierre says that we should hand out guns with lunch, but maybe I just missed it. Oh, and Alan, in case you were wondering, putting armed, trained personnel in schools is not exactly a new concept. According to Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, this idea was first proposed in the 1950s and was federally funded by the Clinton administration.
COLUMBINE PROVES THAT PUTTING ARMED GUARDS IN SCHOOLS JUST DOESN’T WORK.
“Armed guards in schools? Hmmmm . . . Oh! That’s why the 2 armed guards that were at Columbine HS that day were able to prevent the 15 deaths?”
—MICHAEL MOORE, December 21, 2012
“[Columbine] had armed guards and it didn’t stop the tragedy.”
—DENNIS VAN ROEKEL (president, National Education Association), December 27, 2012
I hear this argument all the time and there are several problems with it. First, the obvious one: you don’t take one data point and dismiss an entire idea because of it—especially if you are serious about keeping kids safe. If you’re going to tell me that the Columbine attack succeeded despite armed guards, you better tell me about the instances that failed because of them. Remember Vice Principal Joel Myrick in Mississippi? He stopped a killer by running to his car to grab a gun. What if it had been in his office instead? What if Pearl High School had been staffed with an armed cop? We’ll never k
now—but don’t bring up Columbine unless you’re willing to talk about all of them.
But my main problem with this argument is that it’s really just not true. At least not in the way they try to make it seem. Here’s a condensed version of what really happened that day according to the Jefferson County, Colorado, Sheriff’s Office:
Sheriff’s Deputy Neil Gardner, a fifteen-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Office, was assigned as a “community resource officer” to Columbine High School. He normally ate lunch in the cafeteria with the kids, but on that day, he ate in his car alongside the campus supervisor. The two men were monitoring students in an area called the “smokers’ pit.”
Around 11:23 a.m., a custodian radioed to Gardner, “Neil, I need you in the back lot!” Gardner started his car and pulled out onto the road. Another call, this one over his police radio, followed: “Female down in the south lot of Columbine High School.” Gardner, believing that a girl had been hit by a car, put on his lights and siren and began to make his way toward that parking lot.
As Gardner pulled into the lot he saw kids running, smoke pouring from the school, and he heard several explosions and gunfire. Another message then came over the school radio: “Neil, there’s a shooter in the school.”
Gardner began to get out of his car but was immediately bombarded with gunfire. According to the report: “Eric Harris turned his attention from shooting into the west doors of the high school to the student parking lot and to the deputy.” After firing approximately ten shots his gun jammed and Gardner returned fire. Harris eventually reloaded and began firing again before eventually retreating back into the school. (This exchange may have proved valuable, as it delayed the killers on their way to the school library, where the bulk of the killing occurred.) Very soon after that, additional backup began to arrive on the scene.