Trego's Mountain Ear

A bit after the Sandy Hook shootings (2012)  a friend, Rick Holm MD, was working on an article that could do a rational job of describing the challenges of coming up with a good, effective gun control policy.  The following is an email conversation that occurred over several weeks, with Rick’s questions in bold italics, followed by my answers.  Since Rick’s television program was part of the university, I was at one of those enviable times when I could take the time to fully answer the questions – usually not an option when someone called the Data Center.  In the first paragraph, you will note that a single industry, located in Brookings, SD, was larger than Colt. 

The data is 12 years old – but offers a perspective that is not common on the topic.  The links may, or may not still be valid, but they show where I located most of the data:

How big is the gun industry?

            On Hoovers, I checked the sales for Brookings own Daktronics  – it was listed as 489.53 million.  When I searched for Colt, I had two entries –Cold Defense LLC at 208.81 million in sales, and Colt’s Manufacturing Company LLC at 24.3 million.  Those were the only entries for Hartford, CT – home to Colt since before the war between the states – so it looks to me like Colt is about half the size of Daktronics. The Rainbow Play Systems facility in Brookings is  shown at 29.2 million – so it’s actually larger than Colt’s Manufacturing.  When Winchester shut down six or seven years ago, the layoff was less than 200 employees.  Sturm, Ruger and Company showed up on Hoover as 328.82 million in sales.    D&B Hoovers

Violence is actually decreasing, right? 

Steve Pinker’s work shows that we’re living in the least violent time in human history.  He identifies institutional changes that have decreased levels of life-threatening violence. The rise of states 5,000 years ago dramatically reduced tribal conflict. In recent centuries, the spread of courtly manners, literacy, commerce, and democracy have reduced violence even more. Polite behavior requires self-restraint; literacy encourages empathy; commerce switches encounters from zero-sum to positive-sum gains; and democracy restrains the excesses of government. Edge: A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE By Steven Pinker

Does that include these rampage killings like the elementary school in CT?

            Probably – this is one of those spots where, if I cherry pick the data, I can assemble something that correlates with just about everything. The record in Africa is held by William Unek – but he did one in 1954 (killed 21 people with an axe), then did a repeat performance in 1957 with a bolt action rifle and an axe – he killed 36 more that time.  The record for the Americas is held by Campo Elias Delgado, an English teacher and VietNam veteran who killed thirty people and wounded 15 with a knife and a 32 caliber revolver in Bogota, Columbia, 1986. 

            In the US, that same year, Pat Sherrill brought the phrase “going postal” into the language when he killed 14 co-workers and wounded 6.  http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,144859,00.html

How do assault rifles figure in to make these rampage killings more lethal?

            They haven’t yet – the restrictions on machine guns have been in place for nearly 70 years, and the only murder done with a registered machine gun was done by an Ohio police officer, Roger Waller in 1988.  See, by definition, an assault rifle is fully automatic.

            If we’re talking sloppy, about semi-automatic rifles that resemble assault rifles, we don’t have access to data that separates rifles into categories – we do know that, according to FBI statistics, In 2011, 323 murders were committed with rifles and 356 with shotguns.  496 were committed with hammers and clubs and 1,694 were killed by “knives or cutting instruments.”  It does kind of put things into perspective.  FBI — Table 20  Much as it pains me to admit it, about half the nation’s murders are done with handguns – but that doesn’t lead to a logical conclusion that if you get rid of the handguns you’ll cut the murder rate in half.

Why can’t we assume that getting rid of the weapon responsible for half of the murders will cut the murder rate in half?

We have two separate 50% categories – first, half the homicides are with handguns – but human beings are adaptable – there are a whole lot of things that can substitute – like a 12 gauge shotgun that encounters a hack saw . . . or a handgun that wasn’t registered.  Or an increase in knives and hammers – remember, the crazed ex-con who was shooting firemen a few weeks back started with a hammer to kill his grandmother.

            The second 50% category is racial –  homicide rates for white males was 10.9 per 100,000 in 1980 – in 2007 it was 5.4 – basically cut in half over 30 years.  The real wow is that we’re looking at 39.7 (per 100,000) black males in 2007.  A Black man is more than 7 times more likely than a white man to be murdered – 2007 showed 8914 white homicide victims and 8870 black victims.  Basically, an eighth of America accounts for half the murder victims, and half the murderers.

            I think it’s rational to believe that if we could kick Chicago out of the USA, we could reduce homicides by 5 percent – but we don’t have a mechanism in the constitution to let us boot a city. 

I can paint a statistical argument that we can reduce gun violence more by giving up the war on drugs than limiting firearms – but I’m a numbers guy, not a policy wonk.  On the other hand, it’s hard to believe folks who recommend policies and ignore facts are as good as they think they are.

How about other countries that have fewer guns in private hands?

            Absolutely – we are the best armed civilians in the world.  On the other hand, other countries may not be as disarmed as we believe – a lot of Europe was fought over in WWII, and I’d hate to guess how many guns were stashed somewhere.  The Small Arms Survey 2012 is available at http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/publications/by-type/yearbook/small-arms-survey-2012.html and we have versions going back to 2001.  Among other things, 2007 shows:

Gary Mauser published this in 2006:

Again, the data is all over the map – but the second highest murder rate occurred in Luxembourg,  where no guns are owned.

England banned guns, and now homicides are down, right?

            Sure – gun homicides are much lower than in the US, and the homicide rate is just about half . . . remember those two 50 percent correlations . . . in the US about half of the homicides are committed with handguns, and about half the homicides occur with black victims and perps.  England’s total crime rate is a little higher than in the US – I can correlate things, or I can admit I’m comparing apples and oranges.  It isn’t that simple.  The reality is that the homicide rate is dropping with or without gun control or bans – and that makes it really hard to compare different places.  Japan has virtually no guns, very few homicides, and is racially extremely homogeneous.  I could credit the low homicide rate on few guns, or on racial homogeneity – but neither call would be scientifically responsible.  The Japanese, and the Brits, have always had lower levels of gun homicides . . . even before the bans.  Suicide, on the other hand . . .

Former- president Clinton said that half the mass killings in the US have occurred since the Assault Weapons ban expired – what do the statistics say?

            He has been pretty casual with the truth.  This is a place where, if I pick a specific time span, and start late enough, I could probably make an argument that would support him.  On the other hand, if you take American history, as he seems to be doing, that isn’t the case.  The whole problem is that, if I cherry pick the data, I can show a correlation for either side of the argument . . . and probably associate gun ownership with natural disasters.

Can you sum up an answer?

            Sure – let’s go back to the President’s initial idea – we want to reduce violence.  Nationally, internationally we’ve been doing a great job – violence is way down.         So we get folks who look at things logically, and say “If there weren’t any guns, nobody would get shot.”  It’s true – but a gun is easy to build, the technology is there, and the knowledge is there.  One of my friends built a single-shot pistol from a hospital bed in southeast Asia – he didn’t want to be unarmed there during the Tet offensive.  We’re not talking rocket science here – I imagine you and I could wander through your hospital and pick up enough stuff to build a pistol just like Harold did – though he did have more skill than we do (despite being only a high school graduate) and the Viet Cong probably provided a little extra motivation.  I know his trigger mechanism came from a ballpoint pen, and I think vitamin C tablets provided the basis for his propellant.

            Anyone who wants to check the record of our great success in outlawing and banning marijuana and methamphetamine should be able to predict how well a gun ban would work.  My point is that we have reduced violence.  I suspect the shoot ‘em video games do condition players to look at people as targets.  There are people who flat shouldn’t own guns – or dogs, or cats, or cars, or machetes. 

***

Rick died (pancreatic cancer) a couple of years after I retired and moved back to Montana.  I don’t know if he ever published the article he was working on.  Still, this was a pleasant reminder of working with a friend to keep the science and data right on a controversial topic.  Fair winds and a following sea, my friend.