Deltoid

[Writing to Don Kates] You asserted that handguns are involved in less than 50% of criminal firearm injuries. You dismissed my calculation that the data in your paper implied that the percentage was 90-97% as some sort of trick. Could you please tell me what you consider the correct value of this percentage to be?

Don B Kates, Jr. writes:

I answer: The correct value is determinable only from actual statistics. So far as I know, no statistics are available on the percentage of injuries involving handgun versus long gun crime. (Conceivably, the NCVS have such data, but I am not aware of it. The Uniform Crime Reports do not report it.)

Table 5.7 of "Point Blank" gives the fraction of NCVS measured injuries inflicted with handguns (.021) and the fraction with other guns (.004). This implies that about 85% (4/25) of criminal firearm injuries are inflicted with handguns.

Schetky purported to provide a value and Smith & Falk provided a less exact one. They both FABRICATED references supposedly supporting their figures. That was my primary concern.

Schetky made no claims about criminal firearm injuries (but rather about criminal firearm misuse). Smith & Falk's claim that handguns are involved in the majority of criminal firearm injuries is supported by the reference they cite: you state this gives an estimate of handgun use in 70-75% of firearm homicides. I'm not aware of anyone who believes that handgun wounds are on average more lethal than long gun wounds, so it follows that handguns are used to inflict at least 70% of firearm injuries, which is certainly a majority.

I do not think "fabrication" is the correct characterization of what Smith and Falk did.

On the other hand, you did not give any reference to support your (false) counterclaim that handguns are NOT involved in the majority of criminal firearm injuries, and now I found that your counterclaim was not based on any facts at all.

I think, perhaps, that "fabrication" might the appropriate word to describe your counterclaim.

As far as I can tell, you have completely ignored what I wrote about the Sloan article. Is it your assertion that prior to 1977 Vancouver's gun laws were identical to those of Seattle?"

I answer: The Sloan study is dedicated to showing that severe control over the possession of handguns greatly reduces homicide. Until 1977 Canadian handgun control was little more severe than American. The 1977 law classified handguns as "restricted weapon" and required for simple possession that the owner have applied for and been issued a Restricted Weapon Registration Certificate. See generally, the Kopel article "Canadian Gun Control," 5 TEMPLE INT'L. & COMP. L. J. 1, 9-18 (1991). This is the type of legislation the Sloan article addresses and exalts --- according not just to us, but to Sloan (as we quoted) and other anti-gun public health advocates whom we quoted describing the Sloan article (whom we also quoted).

As you admit, prior to 1977 Vancouver's gun laws were not identical to those of Seattle. You consider those differences to be insignificant, Sloan does not. You seem to believe that it is impossible for anyone to honestly hold a different opinion from you on this issue.

Furthermore, I note that while Centerwall (whom you cite approvingly) disagrees with Sloan on the efficacy of Canadian gun laws he appears to agree with Sloan that there were significant differences in the gun laws before the 1977 law, since he uses pre-1977 data in his comparison.

A number of other "public health" students of firearms policy (whom we also directly quote) also say that they take Sloane et al to have been evaluating the effect of the 1977 law. Indeed, how could they not have been? The hypothesis is: the law has some sort of effect on peoples' behavior and hence on the statistics that reflect firearms mortality. Is it now claimed that a rising homicide rate and a more restrictive gun control law are somehow consistent with the premise of gun control laws?

The two references that you cite in your paper on the effect of the 1977 law on homicides (in footnote 144, Mundt and Mauser) both found that the law was associated with a decline in the homicide rate.

If that is indeed the case, one is bound to suspect that further discussion is futile, as those who hate to think of firearms in private hands would evidently then be in possession of a theory so powerful that it is substantiated by any possible evidence and is consistent with every possible state of the world. Theories that powerful are religious, not scientific.

Mundt and Mauser both felt that the decline was caused by other factors. Does this imply that they are in possession of a religious "gun control does not work" theory?