-Caveat Lector-
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From: "Randy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date sent: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 09:57:20 -0400
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Subject: [PCL] Gun Control Shoots Blanks
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Gun control advocates used to claim that more guns meant more crime.
Research demonstrated, though, that more guns meant less crime. As
the
criminology argument faded, gun control advocates began arguing guns
were a
public health problem.
But the public health argument is also bankrupt, according to Miguel A.
Faria Jr., M.D., editor of the Medical Sentinel, the journal of the
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Faria lays out
his
reasoning in the Spring 2001 issue.
The U.S. public health establishment declared in 1979 that handguns
should
be eradicated, beginning with a 25 percent reduction by the year 2000.
Since that time, hundreds of "scientific" articles have been published in
medical journals supporting the notion that guns are a public health
problem.
Faria's article spotlights many of the flaws of this research, including
that of Dr. Arthur Kellerman of the Emory University School of Public
Health. Since the mid-1980s, Dr. Kellerman used funding from the
Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention to publish research purporting to
show
that persons who keep guns in the home are more likely to be victims of
homicide than those who don't.
Dr. Kellerman claimed in a 1986 New England Journal of Medicine study
that
having a firearm in the home is counter-productive. He reported "a gun
owner is 43 times more likely to kill a family member than an intruder."
Dr. Faria points out that Dr. Kellerman's analysis ignored the vast
majority of benefits from defensive uses of guns. Since only 0.1 percent
to
0.2 percent of defensive uses of guns involve the death of the criminal,
Dr. Kellerman's study underestimated the protective benefits of firearms -
in terms of lives saved, injuries prevented and related medical costs - by
a factor of as much as 1,000.
In a 1993 New England Journal of Medicine study, Dr. Kellerman again
reported guns in the home are a greater risk to the victims than the
assailants. In addition to repeating the errors of his prior research, Dr.
Kellerman used studies of populations with disproportionately high rates
of
serious psychosocial dysfunction such as a history of arrest, drug abuse
and domestic violence. Moreover, 71 percent of the victims were killed by
assailants who didn't live in the victims' household, using guns
presumably
not kept in the home.
Dr. Kellerman's conclusions depend on an apparent higher rate of
homicides
among households with guns compared to households without guns (45
percent
vs. 36 percent). But Dr. Kellerman ignored his own data indicating there
were enough false denials of gun ownership to reverse this result.
Controversy has also swirled around Dr. Kellerman's claim that gun
availability increases the risk of suicide. Dr. Faria says "the
overwhelming available evidence compiled from the psychiatric literature
is
that untreated or poorly managed depression is the real culprit behind
high
rates of suicide."
Backing this up is the observation that countries with strict gun control
laws and low rates of firearm availability - such as Japan, Germany and
the Scandinavian countries - have suicide rates that are 2 time to 3
times
higher than for the U.S. In these countries, people simply substitute for
guns other suicide methods such as Hara-Kiri, carbon monoxide
suffocation,
hanging, or chemical poisoning.
Dr. Faria also cites the work of Florida State University professor Gary
Kleck and Yale University professor John R. Lott Jr. as serious
challenges
to gun control advocates' claim that guns are a public health problem.
In his books Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America and Targeting
Guns,
Kleck reports that firearms are used defensively 2.5 millions times per
year, dwarfing offensive uses by criminals. Kleck says that 25 to 75 lives
are saved by guns for every life lost by a gun. The medical costs saved
by
the defensive use of guns are 15 times greater than the costs caused by
criminal use of firearms, according to Kleck.
Lott reports in his book, More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime
and
Gun Control Laws that neither state waiting periods nor the Brady Law
are
associated with a reduction in crime rates. However, laws that permit the
carrying of concealed weapons are associated with a 69 percent
decrease in
death rate from public, multiple shootings such as those that occurred in
Jonesboro, Arkansas and Columbine High School.
Some concerned with gun violence in society have, in desperation,
signed on
to the gun control agenda. They are willing to trade basic American
rights
guaranteed by the Second Amendment for less violence. But it's not a
fair
trade.
The myth-busting work of Dr. Faria and others exposes gun control not
only
as being unlikely to reduce violence but also as having adverse safety
and
economic consequences. Junk science-fueled gun control misfires as a
public
health strategy.
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The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught
even to young children, is called, in Newspeak, crimestop. Crimestop
means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the
threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not
grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of
misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc
(English Socialism), and being bored or repelled by any train of thought
which is capable of leading in a heretical direction.
CRIMESTOP, IN SHORT, MEANS PROTECTIVE STUPIDITY. But stupidity is
not enough... Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Big
Brother is omnipotent and that the Party is infallible.
~~George Orwell, 1984
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