Does domestic gun ownership pose a more serious
threat to Americans than foreign terrorism?
That's what New York Times columnist Nicholas
Kristof seems to be saying in a recent article. Alarmed by
reports of a surge in gun sales after Sept. 11, Kristof cites
familiar statistics on the perils of guns. Japan, where handguns
are practically unavailable, had only 29 gun deaths (both
murders and suicides) in 1999, while the United States had
26,800 gun deaths in 2000. England, another country with a
strict handgun ban, has higher rates of assault and burglary
than the United States but a murder rate only one-sixth of ours.
According to Kristof, ''it is pointless to try
to deny the link between more handguns and increased murder and
suicide.'' He concludes, ''Our desire to defend ourselves from
terrorism by buying firearms will mean, almost certainly, that
thousands more Americans will die in the years ahead from
gunfire. It's not terrorism, but it should be terrifying.''
Whether handguns are an effective means of
defense against terrorism is an open question. (If the next
frontier of terrorism is biological and chemical warfare, then
the answer is clearly no.) But is the link between handgun
ownership and high rates of murder and suicide really that
incontrovertible?
Consider, for instance, the fact that our nongun
homicide rates exceed total homicide rates in many nations. In
1998, the murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate in the
United States was 6.3 per 100,000 people, and firearms were used
in about two-thirds of these killings. Even if we had somehow
gotten rid not only of handguns but of all guns, and even if,
improbably, none of the killers who used guns would have
substituted some other weapon, we still would have been left
with 2.1 murders for every 100,000 people - about four times the
average annual homicide rate in Japan (0.5 per 100,000) and
higher than the homicide rates in Great Britain (1.2) or Sweden
(1.4). Obviously, access to guns isn't the only factor.
Consider, too, countries where guns are common
and crime is rare. Switzerland boasts a heavily armed population
and a thriving gun culture (shooting contests for children are a
popular tradition). Yet its homicide rates are comparable to
Great Britain's. Israel, where most adults are either on active
military duty or in the reserves and almost every home has a
weapon, also has a low murder rate, on a par with most of
Western Europe.
What's more, more than half of gun deaths in
this country (about 55 percent) are not homicides, but suicides.
Am I saying that we needn't be concerned if people merely shoot
themselves rather than shoot others? No. But in this case,
blaming the guns for the deaths is especially dubious.
Curiously, when it comes to suicide, we don't
see many comparisons with all those countries that so wisely
keep guns out of people's hands - maybe because old gun-crazy
America wouldn't look so bad by comparison. In 1996, the suicide
rate per 100,000 people was 11.8 in the United States, 13.4 in
Canada, 17.9 in Japan, 20.9 in France and 25 in Finland.
While exaggerated claims about the evil of guns
generally get respectful treatment in the media, no such
attention is accorded to facts which suggest that the case for
guns as a means of crime prevention may be more than a National
Rifle Association myth. John
R. Lott, an economist who is now a senior research scholar
at Yale Law School, has published studies that conclude that
state laws allowing any citizen with no criminal record to
obtain a concealed weapon permit lead to lower rates of violent
crime, including murder.
So far, Lott's research has held up well under
scrutiny. Yet most of the mainstream media and punditry ignore
his findings and scoff at the notion that guns may have
benefits.
Gun-control advocates assert that just over 2
percent of handgun homicides are in self-defense and cite
studies purporting to show that a gun in the house is more
dangerous to the owner than to an intruder. Gun-rights
supporters counter that these studies omit cases in which a
civilian stops a crime, and perhaps escapes death or serious
harm, by firing in the air or merely brandishing a weapon.
Estimates of the frequency of such incidents vary widely, from
84,000 to 3.6 million a year.
Obviously, the claims of progun groups about the
benefits of guns for self-defense deserve to be treated with
caution. But so do the claims of the other side.
