2 popular government, winter 2000 - UNC School of Government · 2.57 homicides per 100,000 children under age fifteen, compared with 0.51 for the twenty-five other highly in-dustrialized

2 popular government, winter 2000

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winter 2000, popular government 3

• Does the United States have a higher level of fatal violencethan comparable countries?

• How much of the violence in the United States is due tocrimes committed with guns?

• Does the United States have a higher level of gun ownershipand possession than comparable countries?

• Why do people acquire firearms?

• How often do gun owners actually use their guns to defendthemselves against crime?

• Do higher levels of gun ownership cause rates of violentcrime to be higher in the United States than in comparablecountries?

• Have restrictions on firearms been effective in reducingviolence?

• What should be done about possession and use of guns byminors?

The author is an Institute of Government faculty member whospecializes in correctional law and criminology.

Stevens H. Clarke

FirearmsC OVE R ARTIC LE

and

This article interprets available information anddiscusses a variety of viewpoints on the associa-tion between possession of firearms and rates ofviolence, especially criminal violence that can or

does cause death. Most of the article has a national orinternational perspective but, where possible, it includescomparable information on North Carolina.

ViolenceINTERPRETING THE CONNECTION


Levels of Fatal Violence

The annual homicide rate in the UnitedStates reached its highest point ever inthe twentieth century—10.7 homicidesper 100,000 residents, in 1980. Therate declined afterward, to 8.4 in 1984,but subsequently increased again, to10.5 in 1991. Since then it has declined,reaching 7.8 in 1996, the latest yearfor which mortality data are availablefrom the U.S. Centers for Disease Con-trol and Prevention. North Carolina’shomicide rate also declined from 1991to 1996, from 13.1 per 100,000 resi-dents to 9.1.1

Despite the recent drop, the UnitedStates has a much higher level of homi-cide than comparable nations. A com-

parison of homicide rates during the1990s in the twenty-six nations that theWorld Bank considers highly industrial-ized reveals that the United States hasthe highest rate (see Figure 1). In fact,the U.S. rate is more than twice that ofevery other highly industrialized nationexcept Northern Ireland (treated inthese statistics as a separate country),whose rate of 6.1 is a close second.

A comparison of rates of homicidecommitted with firearms reveals aneven more striking difference: the U.S.rate of 5.29 in 1996 was more than fivetimes that of every other highly indus-trialized country except Northern Ire-land with 5.24 and Italy with 1.66 (seeFigure 1).2

The United States also leads the

highly industrialized nations in fatalviolence involving children and youth.On the basis of annual rates measuredduring 1990–95, the United States had2.57 homicides per 100,000 childrenunder age fifteen, compared with 0.51for the twenty-five other highly in-dustrialized countries combined (thatis, for the total population of thetwenty-five countries). For homicidewith firearms, the U.S. rate was 0.94,compared with 0.06 for the othertwenty-five countries, a ratio of nearly16 to 1. Suicides and accidental deathsby firearm also were much higher forthe United States.3 Among teenagersand young adults as well as amongyoung children, in the late 1980s theUnited States had a rate of 8.6 homi-

Figure 1. Homicide Rates, 26 Industrialized Countries, 1990s

Ho

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ide

Rat

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er 1

00,0

00 R

esid

ents

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

0

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France

1994

Austria 19

94

Switzerla

nd 1994

Hong Kong 1993

New Zealand 1993

Taiw

an 1994

Canada 1992

Italy 19

92

Finland 1994

USA 1996

7.77

5.29

6.09

5.24

3.24

2.32 2.25 2.24 2.16

1.78 1.71

1.47 1.411.32 1.30 1.23 1.21 1.17 1.17 1.12

0.44

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80.5

80.60

0.17

0.070.1

50.4

4

0.19

1.66

0.72

Germany 19

94

Denmark

1993

Sweden 1993

Belgium 19

90

Singapore 19

94

Australia

1994

Scotla

nd 1994

Israel 1

993

N. Irela

nd 1994

Rate of homicide

Rate of homicide with firearms

0.86

1.86

0.76

Source: Data from Etienne G. Krug et al., Firearm-Related Deaths in the United States and 35 Other High- and Upper-Middle-Income Countries, 1998INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EPIDEMIOLOGY 214–21; U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mortality Database, available at http://wonder.cdc.gov.


evated death toll from violence. . . . [I]tis hard to get them to consider anythingelse.”5

Nevertheless, the connection be-tween firearms and violence is subjectto a variety of interpretations. To exam-ine this connection, one must first askhow many firearms people have andwhy people have them.

Levels of Gun Ownership

Gun ownership is much more wide-spread in the United States than it is insimilar countries (see Figure 2). An in-ternational survey measured gun own-ership in seventeen highly industrial-ized countries in 1989 and 1992.6 Thepercentage of households whose resi-dents said that they or someone else intheir household owned any kind of fire-arm ranged from less than 1 percent inScotland, England, and Wales to 48 per-cent in the United States. The U.S. ratewas more than twice that of most of thecountries included in the survey.

The United States also led in house-holds with handguns, and in this com-parison the difference was more strik-ing: the U.S. rate of 28.4 percent wasmore than three times the rates of allbut one of the other countries includedin the survey. The exception was Swit-zerland, whose handgun rate of 12.2percent was probably relatively highbecause members of the Swiss defenseforces are required to keep their serviceguns at home.7 The U.S. proportion ofhouseholds that possess guns, althoughstill much higher than that of compa-rable nations, may have declined re-cently. The National Survey of PrivateOwnership of Firearms (NSPOF), con-ducted in 1994 after the internationalstudy just mentioned, indicated that alower proportion of U.S. households,35 percent, owned guns.8 Gallup Pollsindicate that the proportion of adultswho say they have a gun in their homerose to 51 percent in 1993 and thendropped, reaching 36 percent in 1999.9

According to estimates reviewed byAlbert J. Reiss and Jeffrey A. Roth, thetotal number of firearms in the UnitedStates was 60 million to 100 million in1968 and has gradually increased sincethen, reaching 200 million in 1990.10

Gary Kleck reports that the number ofguns of all types per 1,000 U.S. resi-

dents more than doubled from 1946,when it was 344, to 1987, when it was816. The number of handguns per1,000 residents during the same periodnearly tripled, from 91 to 271.11 Thedata of the NSPOF, mentioned earlier,yield a rate in 1994 of about 737 fire-arms of all types per 1,000 U.S. resi-dents, and 250 handguns. These figureson guns per capita, like the data on thehousehold ownership rate, suggest thatgun ownership may have declinedsomewhat in the late 1980s and early1990s, although it still is considerablyhigher than it was in the 1940s.12

Apparently a large number of gunsare concentrated in the hands of rela-tively few owners. According to esti-mates from the NSPOF in 1994, therewere 192 million firearms (65 millionof which were handguns), owned by 44million people. Although that wasenough guns to provide every adult inthe nation with one, the NSPOF indi-cates that only 25 percent of adults ac-tually owned firearms, while 74 per-cent of the owners had two or more.Cook and Ludwig cite NSPOF data in-dicating that in 1994, 10 million people

A comparison ofhomicide rates . . . in

the 26 nations that theWorld Bank considershighly industrialized

reveals that theUnited States hasthe highest rate.cides per 100,000 people aged five to

twenty-four, more than six times that ofCanada (1.3), which had the second-highest rate among the G-7 countries(the Group of Seven Industrial Na-tions).4

Homicides with firearms account formost of the difference in homicide ratesbetween the United States and othernations. For this reason, people seekingto explain the high level of fatal vio-lence in the United States tend to lookfirst at firearms as a possible cause.Franklin Zimring and Gordon Haw-kins have observed that “those whoanalyze American violence by firstmaking international comparisons tendto be adamant in their belief that gunuse is a major explanation of the el-

owned 105 million guns, while the re-maining 87 million guns were dispersedamong 34 million other owners.13

The proportion of adults who reporthaving a gun in their home, accordingto a 1999 Gallup Poll, is higher formales than for females (47 percentversus 27 percent), higher for whitesthan for nonwhites (40 percent versus19 percent), and higher in the South

1.11 1.01

0.62 0.550.62

Japan 19

94

Spain 1993

Kuwait 1995

Netherla

nds

Norway 19

93

Ireland 19

91

England/Wales 1

992

0.36 0.360.30

0.21

0.030.02 0.0

7

0.950.97

1994


50

40

30

20

10

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4.8

27.2

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23.2 22.6

6.1

22.3

5.5

1.6 1.5

16.6

6.9

16.0

5.5

15.1

1.5

13.1

2.1

6.7

Germany 19

89

Spain 1989

Sweden 1992

Italy 19

92

Belgium 19

89

Australia

1989

New Zealand 1992

France

1989

Finland 1989

Switzerla

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Canada 1989

Norway 19

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USA 1989

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Any firearm

Handgun28

.4 29.1

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(46 percent) than in the Midwest (39percent), the East (26 percent), or theWest (33 percent).14

In North Carolina the most recentavailable data on gun ownership, fromthe Carolina Poll of 1994, indicate that43 percent of residents aged eighteen orolder possessed a gun and 28 percentpossessed a handgun. Of North Caro-linians who possessed a gun, 66 percentpossessed more than one. Althoughsome of the multiple-gun group hadlong guns (rifles or shotguns), 72 per-cent possessed handguns.15

Reasons for Gun Ownership

One of the most common reasons thatpeople want firearms is to protect them-selves, other people, or their businesses.In national surveys in the 1970s, 74 per-cent of gun owners mentioned hunting,65 percent protection, 40 percent sportor target shooting, and 21 percentgun collecting, as one of their reasons

for ownership.16 Among people whoowned only handguns, 73 percent gavedefense or protection as a primary orsecondary reason. The NSPOF of 1994produced similar results: About half ofgun owners had guns for hunting orother recreational shooting, while 46percent possessed them primarily forself-protection. Almost three-quartersof those who owned only handgunskept them primarily for self-protection.The Carolina Poll found that, amongNorth Carolinians who had guns in1985, 64 percent gave “self-defense athome or work” as one of their reasonsfor possession.17

People’s desire to possess handgunsmay stem from lack of confidence in thegovernment’s ability to protect them.According to Gallup Polls since 1981, afourth to a half of adults have little orno confidence in the ability of the policeto protect them from violent crime—although, as explained later, their confi-dence has increased in the last few

years.18 About one-third of teenagersare concerned about their safety whilein school, as documented later in thisarticle.

The connection between gun own-ership and lack of confidence in policeprotection was the subject of a study byDavid McDowall and Colin Loftin.These researchers analyzed annualvariations in the number of applica-tions for handgun licenses in Detroitfrom 1951 to 1977. Controlling sta-tistically for per capita income and theage distribution of the population, theyfound that handgun purchases went upwhen the 1967 riot occurred and whenviolent crime increased, and went downwhen the number of police increasedrelative to the population. The authorssuggest that people are more apt to takeprotective measures if their faith incommunal security is low.19

McDowall and Loftin’s analysis mayexplain why, as indicated by the GallupPoll, the proportion of adults having a

Figure 2. Households with Guns, 17 Industrialized Countries, 1989 and 1992

Source: Data from Martin Killias, Gun Ownership, Suicide, and Homicide: An International Perspective, in UNDERSTANDING CRIME: EXPERIENCES OF CRIME

AND CRIME CONTROL at 289–303 (Anna Alvazzi del Frate et al. eds., Rome: United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, 1993).


1.4

4.7

0.3

4.7

0.4

1.9

0.9

Netherla

nds 1989

England/Wales 1

989

Scotla

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N. Ireland 19

89

8.4

turn to the questions of whether people’sowning firearms is effective in protectingthem and whether restrictions on gunpossession are effective in preventingcrime.

Use of Guns for Protection

To measure defensive gun use,21 a num-ber of researchers have used the Nation-al Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)conducted by the Census Bureau for theU.S. Department of Justice.22 In theNCVS a representative sample of U.S.residents are asked about their experi-ences as crime victims and measures thatthey may have taken to protect them-selves. One study of NCVS data indi-cates about 82,500 defensive uses ofguns annually in the United States from1987 to 1992 in connection with as-saults, robberies, thefts, and householdburglaries.23 A more recent study sug-gests about 108,000 defensive uses peryear.24

Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Flori-da State University, has published anextensive body of work challenging thenotion that gun prevalence causes thehigh level of violence in the UnitedStates and supporting the notion thatguns actually prevent crime. Becausethe work of Kleck and his coauthors isimportant in the debate about the con-nection between guns and violentcrime, I give it considerable attention inthis article.

Kleck and Marc Gertz assert that themeasurement of defensive gun use de-

rived from the NCVS is a gross underes-timate, for several reasons:25

• NCVS interviewers never directly askwhether the respondent used a gunfor self-protection—only whetherthe respondent did anything to pro-tect himself or herself or his or herproperty while the incident was goingon. Thus the respondent has to volun-teer the information that he or sheused a gun.

• NCVS interviewers do not ask aboutprotection unless the respondent al-ready has said that he or she hasbeen the victim of a crime or an at-tempted crime. If the respondentdoes not want to talk about thecrime of which he or she was a vic-tim (for example, a domestic assaultor rape), he or she also will not re-port any gun used to fend off thecrime.

• NCVS respondents are aware thatthe interviewer works for the gov-ernment and knows where they live.Gun use is a sensitive and contro-versial matter, and respondents areunlikely to know whether their de-fensive use or their possession of thegun is lawful; therefore they may bereluctant to report.

Kleck and Gertz think that the trueannual number of legitimately defen-sive gun uses in the United States is inthe millions. In a recent publication,they reanalyzed thirteen surveys byprivate polling organizations. Theirresults implied more than 700,000

Nearly three-quarters of gun owners surveyed in the 1970s cited hunting as one oftheir reasons for gun ownership.

gun in their home decreased from 1993to 1999. While this decline was occur-ring, according to the same poll, theproportion expressing “a great deal” or“quite a lot” of confidence in the policeto protect them from violent crime wasincreasing, from 45 percent in 1993, to50 percent in 1995, to 70 percent in1999.20

McDowall and Loftin’s analysis alsohelps explain public ambivalence to-ward guns and security, depending onwhether people are thinking of commu-nity interests or their individual inter-ests. If people feel that crime or civil un-rest threatens their community, theymay think of restrictions on gun posses-sion to improve the community’s safety.On the other hand, when it comes totheir own personal safety, they may wantto acquire a gun for self-protection. Thisconflict between collective security andindividual security may help explainwhy public policy toward firearms is socontroversial. Later in this article, I re-

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defensive gun uses per year. Pointingout that these surveys had a variety offlaws,26 Kleck and Gertz turned to theirown National Self-Defense Survey.Conducted in 1993 and involvingnearly 5,000 respondents, it was de-signed to correct the flaws of previoussurveys.27 The authors excluded uses inmilitary and police work as well asagainst animals, and did not count a useas genuinely defensive unless it in-volved a threat against a person that therespondent actually saw. Thus, ver-bally threatening the perceived offend-er (“I’ve got a gun!”), brandishing orshowing a gun, pointing it at the of-fender, or firing it was counted as a de-fensive use, but merely carrying a gunwithout confronting a person was not.

Kleck and Gertz estimated fromtheir survey that 1.13 percent of peopleaged eighteen and older used guns de-fensively one or more times per year.Applying their results to the nationalpopulation, the authors estimated 2.2–2.5 million defensive gun uses annually,of which 1.5–1.9 million involvedhandguns.28

Other researchers, such as PhilipCook, Jens Ludwig, and DavidMcDowall, believe that Kleck andGertz’s estimates of defensive gun useare enormously exaggerated.29 Theirmain criticisms (technical details omit-ted) are as follows:

• Some exaggeration is likely in re-sponding to surveys, because re-spondents tend to magnify the dan-ger in incidents that they report asdefensive gun use and because stand-ing up to an intruder is consideredsocially desirable or heroic.

• Because defensive gun use is a rareoccurrence (even in Kleck’s estima-tion), just a small amount of un-truthfulness or exaggeration in sur-vey responses can greatly inflate themeasurement of defensive gun use.

• Survey interviewers hear from onlyone person involved in a gun use in-cident. If they were to hear from theperson on the other side of the gun,some gun uses would be revealed asaggressive rather than defensive.

• Defensive gun use estimates are over-stated in that they include some de-fensive use by criminals in the courseof committing crimes.

1980.32 This is much greater than thenumber reported by the FBI—around300 annually.33 But Kleck thinks thatsuch killings are greatly underreported.He estimates that they greatly exceedlegal killings of felons by police, whichnumber 300–600 per year. He also esti-mates that justifiable woundings (non-fatal shootings) of criminals by civiliansoccur about six times as often as justifi-able killings. (For further perspective onKleck’s position, see the sidebar, whichdescribes a study indicating that injuri-ous shootings rarely involve justifiabledefense.)

Preventing completion and injury inrobbery and assault. From NCVS datafor 1979–85, Kleck finds that robberieswere much less often completed whenthe victim used a gun in self-protectionthan when the victim did not use aweapon or did not protect himself or

Kleck thinks thatarmed private citizensmay present a moreeffective deterrentthan the criminal

justice system.

herself at all. In both robberies and as-saults, gun-using victims were muchless likely to be physically injured thanvictims using other weapons or not pro-tecting themselves.

Thwarting attempted rape. Kleckcites his own study based on NCVSdata indicating that victims of attemp-ted rape who used guns to resist wereless likely to have the attempt com-pleted than were victims who used anyother mode of resistance.34

Reducing injuries of victims of bur-glaries. Kleck believes that having gunsin homes reduces the harm caused byburglary through deterrence. Burglarstend to pick times when no one is hometo do their break-ins, in part becausethey fear that the occupants may bearmed. Their avoidance of confronta-

Role of Defensive Gun Usein Preventing Crime

Some people have guns to protect them-selves, although, as explained earlier,estimates of how often the guns areused vary. How much crime such usesactually prevent is debatable.

Gary Kleck thinks that defensive gunuse either limits or prevents a sub-stantial number of crimes.30 He identi-fies two ways in which people may useguns to defend themselves againstcrime:

• People with guns may disruptcrimes—that is, they may preventcompletion of crimes that are at-tempted or threatened, in ways rang-ing from merely telling an offenderthat they have a gun to shooting andkilling the offender.

• People with guns may deter somecriminals from attempting crimesbecause criminals fear being shot bytheir potential victims.

Kleck argues that the crimes mostlikely to be affected by private posses-sion of guns are those occurring inhomes (where potential victims aremostly likely to have access to a gun)and business establishments (whereproprietors may keep guns). Suchcrimes include assault in the home,residential burglary, and retail storerobbery.

Kleck thinks that armed private citi-zens may present a more effective deter-rent than the criminal justice systembecause

[b]eing threatened or shot at by agun-wielding victim is about asprobable as arrest and substantiallymore probable than conviction orincarceration. . . . There are . . . tensof millions of civilians who have im-mediate access to firearms and arewell motivated to disrupt crimes di-rected at themselves, their families,or their property.31

Kleck presents the following kinds ofevidence to support his view that armedprivate citizens stop, disrupt, or determany crimes by means of their firearms.

Killing and wounding felons. Kleckestimates the number of legal killings byprivate citizens of people in the act ofcommitting felonies at 1,500–2,800 in


tions reduces deaths and injuries thatmight otherwise occur.

Deterring felons. Kleck cites surveysof imprisoned criminals suggesting thattheir fear of firearms in the hands ofpotential victims may have reducedtheir criminal destructiveness. For ex-ample, in a study of imprisoned felons,34 percent said that they had beenscared off, shot at, wounded, or cap-tured by an armed victim at one time oranother, and 40 percent said that, in atleast one instance, they had decided notto commit a crime because they thoughtthe victim was carrying a gun.35

Kleck’s assessment of crime preven-tion through defensive gun ownershipor use is controversial. One criticism isthat he greatly exaggerates the numberof defensive uses, for reasons summar-ized in the previous section. Anothercriticism is that the crime-inducingeffect of guns may exceed their crime-preventing effect.

Defensive Gun Use versusCriminal Gun Use

Some studies that address the crime-inducing effect of guns measure howoften guns are used to kill in self-protection, compared with how oftenthey are used in criminal homicides, sui-cides, and accidental deaths. For ex-ample, looking at all 743 gunshotdeaths in King County, Washington,from 1978 and from 1983, physiciansArthur Kellermann and Donald Reayfound that 398 (54 percent) had oc-curred in the home where the firearmwas kept. Only 11 of the gun killings inthe home were justifiable in that theyinvolved either the killing of a felonduring the commission of a crime or le-gitimate self-defense as determined bypolice. For every instance in which agun in the home was used in justifiablekilling, the authors reported 4.6 crimi-nal homicides, 37.0 firearm suicides,and 1.3 unintentional deaths.36 The in-ference from such studies is that guns inthe home are far more likely to be usedin illegal or undesirable killings than inlegitimate ones.

Kleck contemptuously rejects theKellermann-Reay study and others likeit, contending that they enormouslyundercount uses of guns to defend peo-ple against crime. Very few defensive

or information onnonfatal as well as

parking lot, 32 percent insomeone’s home, and therest in motor vehicles,workplaces, bars, and other

locations.Nineteen percent of the injured

persons died. Eighty-eight percent ofthe victims received care in a hospi-tal emergency department, with amedian stay of three days and a me-dian cost of $10,000, not countingprofessional fees.

Four and five-tenths percent ofall the shootings were uninten-tional, and 7.2 percent were suicideattempts, whereas 78 percent in-volved assaults. Of the assaults,only 2 percent were found to be jus-tifiable—1 percent by police in thecourse of law enforcement and1 percent by private citizens. Theseresults suggest that justifiableshootings are quite rare comparedwith criminal ones.

Notes1. Arthur L. Kellermann et al., Inju-

ries Due to Firearms in Three Cities, 335NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE

1438 (1996).2. The murder rates per 100,000

residents in 1993 for the three cities,based on FBI data, were Memphis, 32.0;Seattle, 12.6; and Galveston, 39.5. Ac-cording to the FBI, the average murderrate in 1993 for cities with populationsin the 500,000–999,999 range was21.6, and for cities in the 50,000–99,999 range, 7.5. Thus both Memphisand Galveston had much higher ratesthan the average city in their populationgroup, whereas Seattle had a muchlower rate. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE,FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, CRIME

IN THE UNITED STATES, 1993: UNIFORM

CRIME REPORTS at 196, tbl. 16 (Washing-ton, D.C.: U.S. Government PrintingOffice, 1994).

3. On the high rate of victimizationamong young black males, see StevensH. Clarke, Murder in North Carolina,61 POPULAR GOVERNMENT, Summer1995, at 2; and Stevens H. Clarke, AtLast, Some Good News about ViolentCrime, 63 POPULAR GOVERNMENT, Sum-mer 1998, at 2.

Types of Shootings and Victims

Ffatal shootings, one mustturn to specific studies be-cause there are no regu-larly published reports. In a particu-larly informative study, ArthurKellermann and his colleagues inves-tigated both nonfatal and fatalshootings, including noncriminaland criminal cases occurring athome or elsewhere, and includingany shooting severe enough to causedeath or require emergency medicalattention.1 The study involved threecities, whose approximate popula-tions in 1992 were as indicated:Memphis, Tennessee, 610,000; Se-attle, Washington, 516,000; andGalveston, Texas, 59,000. These cit-ies are not necessarily typical—nordo the researchers claim that theyare—but the study of them does givea fuller picture than other sources ofthe “mix” of types of shootings andvictims.2 The researchers combinedthe records of hospital emergencydepartments, medical examiners,and police to offset the deficienciesof each type of record.

The researchers identified 1,915shooting cases from November 1992through May 1994. From this data-base they computed an annual rateof firearm injury ranging from 54per 100,000 residents in Seattleto 223 in Memphis. Males weremuch more likely to be shot than fe-males, and blacks were more likelyto be shot than whites. Young blackmales had by far the highest victim-ization rates, reaching 1,708 per100,000 residents for those aged fif-teen to twenty-nine.3 The shooterand the victim were strangers toeach other in 42 percent of the as-saultive shootings, were noninti-mate acquaintances in 38 percent,were known as rivals or adversariesin 8 percent, had intimate or familyrelationships in 7 percent, and hadother relationships in 4 percent.Forty-seven percent of the assaultiveshootings occurred on a street or in a


gun uses involve killing acriminal, Kleck asserts. Toassess the true defensivebenefits of guns in thehome, one must count notonly defensive killings butalso instances in whichpeople or property areprotected without kill-ing—for example, “thenumber of burglars cap-tured, frightened off, de-terred from attemptingburglaries, or displaced tounoccupied premises [bydeterrence through thefear of armed household-ers] where they could notinjure any victims.”37

Kleck makes a goodpoint that nonfatal defensive usesshould be counted. On the other hand,one must consider as well the nonfatalundesirable or criminal uses of guns,which also are not counted in the stud-ies of deaths by gunshot. For example, agun could be used unjustifiably tothreaten or to shoot other members of ahousehold, with no one dying as a re-sult. Undesirable nonfatal use, like de-fensive nonfatal use, probably is morecommon than fatal use.38

Other studies have examined non-fatal as well as fatal uses of firearms.These studies help answer some ofKleck’s criticisms and also raise doubtsabout his position on the relative fre-quency of justifiable defensive use com-pared with criminal use. For example, astudy by Arthur Kellermann and othersof fatal and nonfatal gunshot injuries inthree cities in the United States (see thesidebar, page 9) suggests that defensiveuse is almost insignificant. Fewer thanone percent of the injurious shootingsin the three cities were justifiably defen-sive actions by private citizens. Morethan three-quarters involved criminalassault or homicide, and most of therest were accidental injuries, suicides,or attempted suicides.

Kleck does not dispute that when fa-tal use of guns in the home is involved,

undesirable or illegal killings far out-number desirable or justifiable killings.Even if in some instances private citi-zens use firearms to prevent crime, themuch larger number of criminal shoot-ings may be a high price to pay for thecrime prevention.

The Contribution of High GunAvailability to Homicide

“Guns don’t kill people—people killpeople” was once a popular bumper-sticker statement. Zimring and Haw-kins analyze its meaning. The state-ment is true in the sense that guns areharmless without people firing them—and most people who own guns do notattack other people with them. Thestatement is true in another sense:people can and do kill one anotherwithout guns (according to FBI data,32 percent of homicides in 1996 werecommitted without firearms).39 How-ever, the statement also suggests a moredoubtful proposition: that the samenumber of people would be killed re-gardless of guns. Zimring and Haw-kins reject this proposition:

The most accurate label for the roleof firearms in those cases of deathand injury from intentional attacks

in which they are used is contribut-ing cause. Even where the availa-bility of a gun plays no importantrole in the decision to commit an as-sault, the use of a gun can be an im-portant contributing cause in thedeath and injury that results [from]gun attacks. When guns are used in ahigh proportion of such attacks, thedeath rate from violent attack will behigh. Current evidence suggests thata combination of the ready availabil-ity of guns and the willingness to usemaximum force in interpersonalconflict is the most important singlecontribution to the high U.S. deathrate from violence. Our rate of as-sault is not exceptional; our deathrate from assault is exceptional.40

“Our death rate from assault”—thatis, the homicide rate in the UnitedStates—is far greater than the homiciderates of other highly industrializedcountries, as explained earlier. For rob-bery and assault,41 the most commonserious nonfatal violent crimes, interna-tional comparison tells a different story:U.S. rates, though on the high side, donot greatly differ from those of compa-rable nations. Zimring and Hawkinsdiscuss crime victimization surveys car-ried out by United Nations–sponsored

In a 1999 Gallup poll,more than one-third ofadults said that they hada gun in their home.


researchers in twenty nations in the late1980s and early 1990s, using an identi-cal telephone survey instrument in eachcountry.42 According to these surveys,five countries had robbery rates per 100residents aged sixteen or older within30 percent of the U.S. rate, and sevenhad assault rates within 30 percent ofthe U.S. rate.43 This comparison is quitedifferent from the homicide rate com-parison, in which the United States farexceeds the other countries.

These data suggest that, althoughAmericans do not commit more rob-beries and assaults than the residents ofcomparable countries do, they commitfar more murders. If Americans decideto commit a robbery or an assault, soZimring and Hawkins’s thinking goes,the greater availability of guns in thiscountry means that the crime is morelikely to result in the victim’s death. Theperpetrator may not necessarily intendto kill the victim, but the instrumental-ity of the firearm makes killing muchmore likely. “People kill people” is atrue statement, but armed attackers aremore likely than unarmed attackers tokill their victims.

Kleck has different views on this is-sue, expressed in his latest book, Tar-geting Guns.44 He concedes that theUnited States has high levels of bothviolence and gun ownership. Never-theless, he says, high levels of gun own-ership are not necessarily the cause ofhigh levels of violence; the sameamount of violence might occur with-out the guns. Kleck rejects analysisbased on international comparisonsbecause, he says, it all rests on just onespecial case, the United States, withuniquely high rates of both homicideand gun ownership.45 Also, Kleck says,there may be a causal connection be-tween gun ownership and violence, butthe causation may work the other way:a high level of violence may causepeople to acquire guns.

The reasoning in Targeting Guns canbe summarized as follows: Accordingto NCVS data, about half of assaultsare threats without any physical attack.When physical attacks occur, about halfresult in injury. Only 1.4 percent ofthese injuries result in death. What isthe possible contribution of gun posses-sion at each of the points in this “hierar-chy of violence”? With regard to initiat-

ing assaults, research is inconclusive onwhether gun possession encourages thisbehavior—for example, whether hav-ing a gun makes attacking a strongeradversary easier or stimulates people tobehave more aggressively than theyotherwise would. With regard to caus-ing injury, NCVS data show that at-tacks with guns resulted in woundingthe victim only 18 percent of the timewhile attacks with knives resulted ininjuries 45 percent of the time. Kleckimplies that if assailants de-escalatedfrom guns to knives, injuries would notlessen. However, Kleck offers no evi-dence that if guns were harder to get,people would use knives rather thanother less dangerous weapons or noweapons. With regard to causing death,research by Zimring and others sug-gests that firearm use makes some as-sault injuries fatal that otherwise wouldnot be fatal. Killers frequently do notintend to kill, or are just “average Joes”(not hardened felons) who lose theirtemper and happen to have a gunhandy. But Kleck rejects these studies,

gun assault, and rape all tended to in-crease the level of gun ownership.46

Kleck concludes as follows:

When aggressors possess guns, thishas many effects on the outcome ofviolent incidents, some tending tomake harmful outcomes more likely,some making them less likely. . . . Onthe other hand, aggressor possessionof guns has the overall effect of re-ducing the likelihood of attack,probably because it often makes at-tack unnecessary, and of reducingthe probability of an injury being in-flicted, while [defensive] gun use byvictims reduces the likelihood of in-jury or crime completion. . . . Conse-quently, the hypothesis that generalgun availability causes increases inrates of homicide and other violentcrimes is not supported. The policyimplication is that nothing appearsto be gained from reducing the gen-eral gun ownership level.47

Kleck’s analyses and conclusions dif-fer in a number of respects from thoseof other distinguished criminologistswho have studied this issue. Perhaps themost important difference is in the de-gree to which they consider the crime-preventing effects of gun possession tooutweigh the crime-causing effects.Other criminologists concede that hav-ing firearms prevents or disrupts somecrime, but they think that such preven-tion is far too little to outweigh the rolethat guns play as a contributing causeof violent crime. Their position is basedon (1) their conclusion (explained ear-lier) that Kleck enormously overesti-mates the frequency of justifiable defen-sive gun use and (2) the lack of solidevidence that defensive gun ownershipdeters crime.48

Regardless of how much violentcrime defensive gun ownership mayprevent, other means of prevention maybe preferable to relying on fear ofarmed retaliation. Richard Alba andSteven Messner make this comment onthe implications of Kleck’s views:

We wonder, finally, about the qualityof life in the kind of society whereroutine social order depends uponthe massive armament of the citi-zenry. Fear is a keynote, we pre-sume, because in a society where

“People kill people” isa true statement, butarmed attackers are

more likely thanunarmed attackersto kill their victims.

asserting that the average killer has along criminal history, even the perpetra-tor of a “crime of passion” in a domes-tic dispute. Thus one cannot assumethat a killer did not intend to kill orwould not have killed if he or she hadnot had a gun.

Kleck cites research by himself andGary Patterson on the association be-tween gun ownership levels and violentcrime rates in 170 cities in the UnitedStates. He and Patterson concludedthat, although the level of gun own-ership had no effect on the total rate ofviolent crime, the rates of homicide,


many are armed, others will beafraid to assert their rights in ordi-nary encounters with strangers —tohonk their horn when their car is cutoff, for example—out of fear of be-ing confronted with a gun. [Kleckdoes not consider] the psychologicaleffect on a community’s residents ofthe knowledge that many guns are inits homes, on its streets, and even inits schools. These are the conditionsin many inner-city, minority commu-nities in the United States. . . . [F]earis the dominant emotion inspired bythe pervasiveness of guns and guncrime. Are these the conditions weshould be willing to accept in a hell-ish bargain to obtain, if Kleck isright, some check on criminal pro-pensities?49

Gun Control MeasuresNational opinion polls indicate that amajority of Americans support a vari-ety of restrictions on guns. This sup-port increased after the well-publicizedschool shootings in Colorado andGeorgia in spring 1999. For example,Gallup Polls indicate that the propor-tion of adults who favor registration ofall firearms increased from 67 percentin fall 1998 to 79 percent in June 1999.Large majorities responding to the June1999 poll also supported such gun con-trol policies as mandatory backgroundchecks before gun purchases at gunshows; mandatory prison sentences forfelonies committed with guns; and man-datory safety locks or trigger guards onall newly purchased firearms.50

Policy makers and researchers haveconducted and evaluated a variety ofinterventions to reduce the availabilityof firearms. Reiss and Roth, in a bookstemming from the work of the Na-tional Research Council’s Panel on theUnderstanding and Control of ViolentBehavior, recognize four strategies forintervention:51

1. Altering the uses or the storage ofguns—for example, by restrictingthe carrying of guns; enhancingcriminal sentences for gun use;making owners liable for damagecaused by their guns; improving thedetectability of guns; and educatingthe public about safe use and stor-age of firearms

2. Changing gun allocation—for ex-ample, by licensing gun owner-ship to exclude felons, drug users,and minors; establishing waitingperiods for gun purchases; dis-rupting illegal gun markets; andputting combination locks on guns

3. Reducing the destructiveness ofguns—for example, by reducingbarrel lengths, muzzle bores, andmagazine sizes; and banning dan-gerous ammunition

4. Reducing the number of guns—forexample, by restricting licensing,imports, or ownership

Reiss and Roth list most of thesestrategies as not having been evaluated.Of those that have been evaluated, theyconsider three to be effective or par-tially effective:52

• Restricting the carrying of firearms.The 1974 Bartley-Fox Amendmentexpanded gun licensing proceduresin Massachusetts and mandated aone-year sentence for unlicensed car-rying of firearms in public. Duringthe first two years the law was in ef-fect, gun use in assaults, robberies,and homicides decreased in Mas-sachusetts, compared with neigh-boring states.53

• Enhancing sentences for gun use.This approach was evaluated in sixjurisdictions. Analysis of the find-ings revealed that sentence enhance-ments for using a gun decreased gunhomicide rates, left nongun homi-cide levels unchanged, and had noconsistent effect on rates of gun rob-bery or assault.54

• Restricting licensing. The 1977 Dis-trict of Columbia Firearms ControlAct has been, according to Reiss andRoth (writing in 1993), this coun-try’s most ambitious effort to reducethe number of firearms in a commu-nity. It prohibited handgun owner-ship by virtually everyone exceptpolice officers, security guards, andprevious gun owners. Several re-searchers concluded that this law re-duced the rates of gun robbery, as-sault, and homicide during the threeyears following implementation ofthe law and, to a lesser extent, until1988, when gun homicides associ-ated with crack cocaine increased.Furthermore, there were no compen-

sating increases in homicides com-mitted without guns.55

Besides the strategies that have beenevaluated, Reiss and Roth urge testingof three strategies that they considerpromising: disrupting illegal gun mar-kets; conducting community-orientedpolice work to reduce gun prevalenceand gun violence; and enforcing exist-ing laws forbidding juvenile possessionof handguns. (The next section of thisarticle deals with juvenile possession.)

Kleck disputes the efficacy of the guncontrol programs that Reiss and Roththink are promising, questioning boththe methods and the findings of thestudies they cite.56 In fact, Kleck thinksthat gun control programs thus far havehad little or no effect on either gunprevalence or violence. One basis forhis doubts is his study with Patterson of

In a society wheremany are armed, otherswill be afraid to asserttheir rights in ordinary

encounters withstrangers—to honk

their horn when theircar is cut off, for

example—out of fearof being confronted

with a gun.

all 170 U.S. cities with a population ofat least 100,000 in 1980.57 The authorslooked for effects of nineteen types ofgun regulations that existed in these cit-ies around 1980 (of course, cities variedin the regulations they had). Some ex-amples of these regulations are as fol-lows: requiring a license to possess agun in the home; requiring a permit topurchase a gun; establishing a waitingperiod to buy or receive a gun; prohib-iting possession of guns by criminal,mentally ill, or incompetent people; re-quiring gun registration; and imposing


additional criminal penalties for com-mitting crimes with a gun.

Perhaps the most important findingof the Kleck and Patterson study wasthat the various gun regulations hadpractically no effect on gun prevalenceand little effect on rates of violentcrime. Of course, Kleck does not sup-port gun regulations because he doesnot think that gun prevalence has a neteffect on violence. Those who disagreeon this point and support gun regula-tions as a possible means of reducingviolence should be aware that reducingthe availability of guns will not be easy,according to the research thus far.

Involvement of Children andYouth with Firearms

As explained at the beginning of thisarticle, the United States leads the in-dustrialized world in homicides of chil-dren and youth, especially homicidescommitted with firearms. Many homi-cides of young people are committed byyoung people. For example, in NorthCarolina in 1992, of murders of whitemales aged fifteen to twenty-four, ac-cording to police data, 27 percent of thesuspected killers were in the same agerange, and another 39 percent weretwenty-five to thirty-four years of age.Of murders of black males aged fifteento twenty-four, 67 percent of the sus-pected killers were in the same agegroup.58 Most of these murders werecommitted with firearms, primarilyhandguns.

Young people sometimes kill olderpeople as well. The State Bureau of In-vestigation reports that in 1997, ofmurders of victims of all ages in whichpolice believed they knew the age of thekiller (these constituted 77 percent of allmurders), youth aged fifteen to nineteenwere responsible for 24 percent, andthose aged eleven to fourteen were re-sponsible for just under 1 percent.Again, many of these murders werecommitted with firearms.

How many young people have orcarry guns? The U.S. Centers for Dis-ease Control and Prevention, in their1997 survey of risk behavior by stu-dents in grades 9–12 nationwide, indi-cated that 9.6 percent of male studentsand 1.5 percent of female students re-ported carrying a gun within the previ-

ous thirty days. The gun-carrying pro-portion was higher for black males(16.3 percent) and Hispanic males(16.9 percent) than for white males(7.2 percent).59 A recent Gallup Poll,conducted just before the well-publicized shooting incident in Lit-tleton, Colorado, indicates that 17 per-cent of teenagers regard students bring-ing weapons to school as a “big” or“very big” problem in their school. A1996 poll indicates that 30 percent ofteenagers fear for their physical safetywhen they are in school.60

Other studies have found that gun-owning youth are disproportionatelyrepresented among those in serioustrouble with the law. For example, Jo-seph Sheley and James Wright surveyed835 male inmates in juvenile correc-tional facilities in California, Illinois,Louisiana, and New Jersey in 1991, aswell as 758 male students in ten inner-city public high schools near these cor-rectional institutions. Twenty-two per-cent of the students said that theyowned some kind of firearm at the timeof the survey; in contrast, 83 percent ofthe inmates said that they had ownedone just before confinement. Ninetypercent of the inmates had friends orassociates who owned and carried gunsroutinely. Sheley and Wright commentas follows:

Thus, in the street environment in-habited by these juvenile offenders,owning and carrying guns were vir-tually universal behaviors. Further,in this same environment, the inmaterespondents regularly experiencedthreats of violence and violence it-self. A total of 84 percent reportedthat they had been threatened with agun or shot at during their lives.61

How do juveniles get guns? Of theinmates in the Sheley and Wright study,22 percent said that they had obtainedtheir most recently acquired gun fromsomeone “off the street,” 36 percentfrom a family member or a friend, 21percent from a drug dealer or addict,and 12 percent from someone’s houseor car (from which the inmate “took”it). Only 7 percent bought their gunfrom a gun shop or a pawnshop. Com-pared with the inmates, the students inthis study more often acquired theirguns from a friend or a family member

(61 percent) and less often from “thestreet,” a drug dealer, or a drug addict(20 percent). The studies of minors’ ac-cess to guns have not attempted to mea-sure to what extent gun possessionmight have been authorized or super-vised by responsible adults.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,and Firearms (BATF) of the U.S. Trea-sury Department regularly traces wea-pons used in crimes to see how the of-fenders obtained them. Concernedabout the increase in juvenile and youthhomicides in the late 1980s and early1990s, Congress approved the Youth

Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative(YCGII) to support BATF in investigat-ing illegal trafficking that puts guns inthe hands of young people. A 1999BATF report covers investigations of1,604 firearms that were illegally traf-ficked in twenty-seven cities.62 Of theseinvestigations, 13 percent involved ju-veniles under age eighteen, and 39 per-cent involved youth aged eighteen totwenty-four. In the 648 cases involvingjuveniles and youth, the investigations

Digital imagery ® copyright 1999 PhotoDisc, Inc.


revealed that most of the guns camefrom illegal sources (see Table 1).

Reduction of Minors’Access to Guns

Most Americans seem to agree that mi-nors should not possess or have accessto guns without adult supervision. The1994 Carolina Poll found that 79 per-cent of 673 adult North Carolinians fa-vored making it a felony to sell a hand-gun to a minor. The state’s legislatorsalso apparently favor restrictions onminors’ access to guns. North Carolinalaw prohibits possession of a handgunby a minor (under age eighteen), withcertain exceptions,63 and imposes toughrestrictions on possession of guns andother weapons on school property.64

The surge in homicides of childrenand youth in the late 1980s and early1990s stimulated many violence-prevention efforts, both governmentaland nongovernmental, involving citi-zens’ groups as well as law enforce-ment and social service agencies. A newreport by the U.S. Department of Jus-tice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and De-linquency Prevention (OJJDP) offerssome examples.65 The OJJDP report re-views four types of strategies to reducegun violence: community organizing inareas with high levels of gun violence;disrupting sources of illegal guns; deter-ring illegal gun possession; and other.

Community organizing in areas withhigh levels of gun violence. The reportdescribes violence-prevention efforts ineight cities in considerable detail.66 Theefforts begin with the community rec-

ognizing its gun-violence problem. Apartnership of community residents—such as victims, offenders, and familiesassociated with gun violence—and lawenforcement and other governmentalagencies then faces the challenge to

convince those who carry guns thatthey can survive in their neighbor-hoods without being armed. Pro-grams in these communities mustwork to dispel the perception ofmany residents that the authoritiescan neither protect them nor main-tain order in their neighborhoods.67

The partnership must have resources,including professional staff, volunteers,and funding from sources within andoutside the community. It develops acomprehensive plan, which is likelyto be most successful, according toOJJDP, if it addresses not one but a va-riety of risk factors, and the demand forillegal firearms as well as the supply.The risk factors associated with vio-lence include aggressive behavior in

young children; gun possession and car-rying; gang membership; drug abuse;poor parental supervision; low academ-ic achievement and truancy; and unem-ployment.

Operation Cease-fire, a gun-violenceprevention effort in Boston aimed atyouth aged eight to eighteen, involvespolice initiatives to (1) identify and dis-rupt illegal gun markets by tracing gunsused in crime; and (2) conduct unan-nounced visits to the homes of high-riskyouth probationers in the evening toenforce curfews imposed on these of-fenders and encourage their parents tokeep them out of trouble. Along withthe police initiatives, a StreetworkersProgram brings members of youthgangs together with police and proba-tion officers for informational meetingsand referrals to employment opportuni-ties. A related initiative offers residentsof high-crime areas the opportunity towork with law enforcement and gov-ernmental officials to expedite city ser-vices, rehabilitate abandoned property,and obtain job training.

Disrupting sources of illegal guns.Tracing guns used in crimes serves twofunctions. It enables police to recon-struct the history of a firearm used in acrime and may lead to the arrest of anetwork of people associated with thatcrime and perhaps related cases. Also, ithelps identify patterns of illegal guntrafficking. This can provide evidencefor prosecution of trafficking rings.

Another approach is to focus on thefew federally licensed firearms dealerswho may be involved in systematic ille-gal transfer of guns to minors and fel-

Table 1. Sources of Firearms Obtained by Juveniles and Youth

Source Percentage

Trafficked by “straw purchaser” (ostensibly legal purchaser) 51

Stolen from federally licensed dealer 21

Trafficked by unregulated private seller 14

Stolen from residence 14

Trafficked at gun shows and auctions, in want ads and gun magazines 10

Trafficked by licensed dealer 6

Bought or sold by street criminal 4

Stolen from common carrier 3

Other sources 1

Source: From U.S. TREASURY DEPARTMENT, BUREAU OF ALCOHOL, TOBACCO, AND FIREARMS, THE YOUTH

CRIME GUN INTERDICTION INITIATIVE (YCGII): 27 COMMUNITIES, at app., pp. 10, 13 (Washington, D.C.:BATF, 1999).

Note: The percentages add to more than 100 because a single firearm may have morethan one source.

The American publicmay expect adults to be

able to protect them-selves with guns, butit does not think thatminors should do so.

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ons. Joint federal and local police taskforces can take advantage of gun-tracing information, especially when itis geographically coded, to find andshut down illegal firearms markets.

Deterring illegal gun possession.This strategy focuses on making itharder for youth to gain access to guns.This may be done, for example,through “silent witness” or “weaponshotline” systems, involving anonymityand a cash reward for reporting illegalgun possession; and through police sei-zures of guns from juveniles by ob-taining their parents’ consent.

Other strategies. Other strategies re-viewed by OJJDP include specializedprosecution of firearms offenders (astrategy that usually involves federalprosecutors and adult offenders) andeducation of citizens about guns andviolence.

Conclusions

The evidence discussed in this articlesuggests the following answers to thequestions posed at the beginning:

• The United States has a much higherlevel of lethal violence (homicide)than comparable countries.

• Most of the difference in homiciderates is attributable to crimes com-mitted with guns.

• The United States also has a muchhigher level of gun ownership thancomparable countries.

• Most people cite protection (of peo-ple or property) as a primary reasonfor possessing firearms. Other com-mon purposes are hunting, targetshooting, and amassing a gun collec-tion.

• Experts disagree on how often gunsare used for legitimate defense.

• The relationship between gun own-ership and violent crime is a “chic-ken and egg” issue: availability ofguns contributes to violence, but thelevel of violence also probably moti-vates people to acquire guns.

• Some restrictions on firearms haveshown some results in reducing vio-lence, although the research makes itclear that this is not an easy task. Inparticular, there seem to be some ef-fective strategies for reducing thenumber of guns in the hands of unsu-

pervised juveniles, such as identify-ing and disrupting illegal gun mar-kets.

The reader must make up his or herown mind about whether guns preventmore crimes than they cause. My view,based on research on typical firearmsusage (illustrated by the study de-scribed in the sidebar), is that criminaluses of guns enormously outnumberjustifiable defensive uses.

Most readers probably would agreethat the argument that guns are neededfor self-protection does not apply to thepossession of guns by minors withoutadult supervision. The American publicmay expect adults to be able to protectthemselves with guns, but it does notthink that minors should do so. That iswhy, even though some children believethat they need guns for protection, lawsforbid guns in schools.

That the United States leads the in-dustrialized world in homicide and fire-arms possession is no doubt troublingto most readers. That this countrystands out even more in gun homicidesamong children and youth probably iseven more troubling. To reduce the lev-els of violence in this country, the firststep should be to put an end to illegalfirearms possession by minors. Thisstep is important to take even as schoolsand parents put more emphasis onteaching children to deal with conflictswithout violence. As Philip Cooknotes,68 despite the best efforts to teachnonviolence, there may be a few young-sters who are inclined to violence, andall it takes is one per high school. Ifthese few are able to get guns, tragedieslike the recent school shootings willcontinue to occur.

Notes1. Stevens H. Clarke, At Last, Some

Good News about Violent Crime, 63 POPU-LAR GOVERNMENT, Summer 1998, at 2. Thisarticle contains information on these andrelated trends.

2. The data in Figure 1 were taken fromEtienne G. Krug et al., Firearm-RelatedDeaths in the United States and 35 OtherHigh- and Upper-Middle-Income Coun-tries, 1998 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EPIDE-MIOLOGY 214. Krug and his colleagues basedtheir publication on data provided by theministries of health or the national statisti-cal institutes of the various countries. For

the United States, I have inserted 1996 datafrom the U.S. Centers for Disease Controland Prevention, taken from the agency’smortality data set, on the Web at http://wonder.cdc.gov/.

3. U.S. Centers for Disease Controland Prevention, National Center for InjuryPrevention and Control, Rates of Homi-cide, Suicide, and Firearm-Related Deathamong Children—26 Industrialized Coun-tries, 46 MORTALITY AND MORBIDITY WEEKLY

REPORT 101 (1997).4. For the five other G-7 countries, the

youth homicide rates were France, 0.6;Germany, 0.7; Italy, 0.9; Japan, 0.4; and theUnited Kingdom, 1.1. The source for thesedata is WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION,WORLD HEALTH STATISTICS ANNUAL § D, tbl. 9(Geneva, Switzerland: WHO, 1990), citedby the National Center for Education Statis-tics at its Web site, http://nces01.ed.gov/NCES/pubs/esn/n07a.html.

5. FRANKLIN E. ZIMRING & GORDON

HAWKINS, CRIME IS NOT THE PROBLEM: FATAL

VIOLENCE IN AMERICA at 110 (New York:Oxford University Press, 1997).

6. Martin Killias, Gun Ownership,Suicide, and Homicide: An InternationalPerspective, in UNDERSTANDING CRIME: EX-PERIENCES OF CRIME AND CRIME CONTROL at289 (Anna Alvazzi del Frate et al. eds.,Rome: United Nations Interregional Crimeand Justice Research Institute, 1993).

7. JAN J. M. VAN DIJK ET AL., EXPERI-ENCES OF CRIME ACROSS THE WORLD: KEY

FINDINGS OF THE 1989 INTERNATIONAL CRIME

SURVEY at 42 (Deventer, The Netherlands:Kluwer Law and Taxation Publishers,1990). These authors report that in Swisshomes “52% of all handguns were said tobe army guns.”

8. PHILIP J. COOK & JENS LUDWIG, GUNS

IN AMERICA: NATIONAL SURVEY ON PRIVATE

OWNERSHIP AND USE OF FIREARMS (Wash-ington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice,U.S. Department of Justice, 1997).

9. The Gallup Organization, U.S. GunOwnership Continues Broad Decline, POLL

RELEASES, Apr. 6, 1999, obtained from theorganization’s Web site, http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr990406.asp. Accordingto this same series of polls, from 1965 to1991, the proportion of adults having a gunin their home ranged from 40 to 50 percentand averaged about 45 percent.

10. ALBERT J. REISS, JR., & JEFFREY A.ROTH, UNDERSTANDING AND PREVENTING VIO-LENCE at 256 (Washington, D.C.: NationalAcademy Press, 1993).

11. GARY KLECK, POINT BLANK: GUNS AND

VIOLENCE IN AMERICA at 49 (New York:Aldine, 1991).

12. These per capita rates were com-puted on the basis of the number of guns


reported in COOK & LUDWIG, GUNS IN

AMERICA, and an estimated U.S. populationof 260,341,000 in 1994.

13. COOK & LUDWIG, GUNS IN AMERICA

at 2.14. Gallup Organization, U.S. Gun

Ownership.15. The Carolina Poll is conducted by

the School of Journalism and the Institutefor Research in Social Science, both at TheUniversity of North Carolina at ChapelHill. These results were obtained from thepoll’s Internet site (http://veblen.irss.unc.edu/data_archive) and are based on re-sponses from 673 North Carolina residents.The Carolina Poll responses are not directlycomparable to the Gallup Poll responsesbecause the Gallup Poll asked whether therespondent had a gun in his or her home,whereas the Carolina Poll asked whetherthe respondent possessed a gun (whichcould be somewhere besides home).

16. KLECK, POINT BLANK at 25–26.17. Carolina Poll, at http://veblen.

irss.unc.edu/data_archive.18. These Gallup Poll results were ob-

tained from THE POLLING REPORT in Wash-ington, D.C., through its Web site, http://www.pollingreport.com.

19. David McDowall & Colin Loftin,Collective Security and the Demand forLegal Handguns, 88 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

SOCIOLOGY 1146 (1983).20. Gallup Poll results obtained from

the POLLING REPORT, at http://www.pollingreport.com.

21. By “defensive gun use,” I mean useby private citizens, not by police.

22. For an explanation of the NCVS,see Clarke, At Last, Some Good News.

23. MICHAEL R. RAND, GUNS AND CRIME

(Publication No. NCJ-147003, Washing-ton, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S.Department of Justice, Apr. 1994).

24. Philip J. Cook et al., The GunDebate’s New Mythical Number: HowMany Defensive Uses Per Year? 16 JOURNAL

OF POLICY ANALYSIS AND MANAGEMENT 463(1997), cited in Philip J. Cook & JensLudwig, Defensive Gun Uses: New Evi-dence from a National Survey, 14 JOURNAL

OF QUANTITATIVE CRIMINOLOGY 111 (1998).25. Gary Kleck & Marc Gertz, Armed

Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence andNature of Self-Defense with a Gun, 86JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW AND CRIMINOLOGY

150 (1995).26. Following are some examples of the

flaws that Kleck found: using an unrepre-sentative sample of survey respondents(such as only gun owners or only registeredvoters); using a lifetime-recall period, mak-ing it impossible to estimate uses within anyspecified time period; and failing to ask

enough questions to establish exactly whatwas done with the gun in a reported de-fensive incident.

27. Employing random-digit telephonedialing, the survey involved a nationallyrepresentative sample of 4,977 adults agedeighteen and older in the lower forty-eightstates living in households with telephones.The sample was stratified to represent eachstate’s population adequately. The surveyinquired about experiences during both thelast year and the last five years, and includ-ed detailed questions to establish exactlywhat the gun-using respondents did withtheir guns. Other questions establishedwhat specific crime or crimes the usersought to prevent (burglary, robbery, as-sault, and so on). The interviewers workedfor a private professional polling firm anddid not know the names or addresses of therespondents.

28. Kleck & Gertz, Armed Resistanceat 164.

29. See Cook & Ludwig, DefensiveGun Uses; David McDowall, Firearms andSelf-Defense, 539 ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN

ACADEMY OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

130 (1995).30. KLECK, POINT BLANK at 120–51.31. KLECK, POINT BLANK at 132.32. Kleck bases this estimate on homi-

cide studies in Dade County, Florida, andDetroit, Michigan.

33. FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION,CRIME IN THE UNITED STATES, 1996: UNIFORM

CRIME REPORTS at 22, tbl. 2.17 (Wash-ington, D.C.: U.S. Government PrintingOffice, 1997).

34. Gary Kleck & Susan Sayles, Rapeand Resistance, 37 SOCIAL PROBLEMS 149(1990), cited in KLECK, POINT BLANK at 126.

35. JAMES D. WRIGHT & PETER H. ROSSI,ARMED AND CONSIDERED DANGEROUS: A SUR-VEY OF FELONS AND THEIR FIREARMS at 155(New York: Aldine, 1986). The sample sizesfor these two percentages were 1,673 and1,627, respectively.

36. A. L. Kellermann & D. T. Reay, Pro-tection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearm-Related Deaths in the Home, 314 NEW

ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE 1557 (1986).The earliest study of this type, involvingCuyahoga County, Ohio, from 1958 to1973, reached similar results: accidental kill-ings in the home outnumbered justifiable-defense killings by six to one. N. B. Rush-forth et al., Accidental Firearm Fatalities in aMetropolitan County, 100 AMERICAN JOUR-NAL OF EPIDEMIOLOGY 499 (1975).

37. KLECK, POINT BLANK at 128. Keller-mann and his colleagues did later researchthat matched households in which homi-cides occurred with similar households inwhich homicides had not occurred. They

found that gun ownership was more com-mon in the households of homicide victimsand concluded that guns kept in the homepose a substantial threat to members of thehousehold. Arthur L. Kellermann et al.,Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homi-cide in the Home, 329 NEW ENGLAND JOUR-NAL OF MEDICINE 1084 (1993). Kleck rejectsthis research because it failed to control forconfounding factors that increase the risk ofhomicide victimization. Most factors thatincrease the risk of homicide victimiza-tion, Kleck notes, also could increase thelikelihood that people exposed to thosefactors would acquire a gun for self-protection. Furthermore, Kellermann andhis colleagues did not document a singlecase in which the victim was killed with agun kept in his or her home, and it waslikely that most of the guns used came fromoutside the home because most of the killersdid. GARY KLECK, TARGETING GUNS: FIREARMS

AND THEIR CONTROL at 224–25 (New York:Aldine, 1997).

38. Marianne Zawitz looked at shoot-ings that were part of criminal assaults andresulted in serious injuries, regardless ofwhere the shootings occurred. She esti-mated that 57,500 nonfatal gunshotwounds from criminal assaults were treatedin hospital emergency departments fromJune 1992 to May 1993 throughout theUnited States. Sixteen percent of these, orabout 9,200, were reported by hospital staffto have occurred in a home. The true num-ber may be considerably larger because, inmore than half of the cases, hospital staffdid not know where the shooting tookplace. Zawitz’s study did not distinguishshootings committed with a gun kept in thehome from those committed with a gunbrought in from outside the home.MARIANNE W. ZAWITZ, FIREARM INJURY FROM

CRIME (Selected Findings series, Washing-ton, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S.Department of Justice, 1995).

39. FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION,CRIME IN THE UNITED STATES, 1996, at 18, tbl.2.11.

40. ZIMRING & HAWKINS, CRIME IS NOT

THE PROBLEM at 122–23.41. The crime of robbery involves as-

sault—that is, the physical attack or thethreatened attack that is used to take an-other person’s property from his or her per-sonal control. What is referred to as assaulthere is physical attack, which does not in-volve taking another person’s property.Both categories of crimes may result in thedeath of the victim, in which case theywould be counted as murders.

42. In the countries studied, mosthomes had telephones. In Northern Irelandand rural Spain, where fewer homes had


telephones, personal interviews were used.VAN DIJK ET AL., EXPERIENCES OF CRIME at 7.

43. “Within 30 percent of the U.S. rate”means plus or minus 30 percent of that rate.So, to use the 1996 U.S. homicide rate of 7.8per 100,000 residents as an example, rateswithin 30 percent of that would range from5.5 to 10.1. Within 30 percent in their rob-bery rate were (in increasing order by rate)England, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Austra-lia, Italy, and Poland. Within 30 percent intheir assault rate were (in increasing orderby rate) Sweden, Czechoslovakia, England,Poland, The Netherlands, Finland, andCanada. ZIMRING & HAWKINS, CRIME IS NOT

THE PROBLEM at 38–39, citing JAN J. M. VAN

DIJK & PAT MAYHEW, CRIMINAL VICTIMIZA-TION IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD (The Hague,The Netherlands: Ministry of Justice,1992). Zimring and Hawkins’s graphs ofthe data on pages 38–39 refer to the robberyand assault rates as rates per 1,000 persons,but apparently these actually are rates per100 persons, as explained in VAN DIJK ET AL.,EXPERIENCES OF CRIME at 13.

44. KLECK, TARGETING GUNS at 215–64.45. Kleck reviews research by Killias

(Gun Ownership) that showed a positivecorrelation between household gun own-ership and homicide rates in eighteen coun-tries. Looking at all eighteen countries,Killias found a statistically significant corre-lation of .610 between gun ownership andhomicide rates. Killias then removed thetwo “outliers,” the United States andNorthern Ireland, both of which have veryhigh homicide rates, from the analysis. Forthe remaining sixteen more “normal” na-tions, the correlation between gun own-ership and homicide rates was lower (.476)but still statistically significant. However,Kleck notes that if one removes only theUnited States from the data, the correlationceases to be statistically significant. Hetherefore concludes that Killias’s findingsmerely reflect the unique status of theUnited States as a country with high levelsof both violence and gun ownership.

46. Gary Kleck & E. Britt Patterson,The Impact of Gun Control and Gun Own-ership Levels on Violence Rates, 9 JOURNAL

OF QUANTITATIVE CRIMINOLOGY 249 (1993).Kleck and Patterson used a statistical-modeling technique that took into accounta possible two-way relationship betweenviolence and gun prevalence—that is, a rela-tionship in which gun availability can causeviolence, and violence can cause gun avail-ability. Their measurements of violencewere the rates of homicide, suicide, aggra-vated assault, robbery, rape, and fatal gunaccidents, per 100,000 residents. The mod-els controlled for various characteristics ofthe cities’ populations that could be associ-

ated with levels of violence, such as percent-age of males aged fifteen to twenty-four,percentage of families headed by females,and percentage of families with incomesbelow the poverty line. Like other research-ers, Kleck and Patterson were unable tomeasure gun prevalence directly in the citiesthey studied. Instead, they measured it indi-rectly with a variety of indicators, such aspercentages of certain crimes committedwith guns.

47. KLECK, TARGETING GUNS at 258 (em-phasis added).

48. Richard D. Alba & Steven F.Messner, Point Blank against Itself: Evi-dence and Inference about Guns, Crime,and Gun Control, 11 JOURNAL OF QUANTI-TATIVE CRIMINOLOGY 391 (1995). It is diffi-cult to prove deterrent effects of any policyor behavior on crime because one cannot besure how much crime would take place inthe absence of the policy or the behavior.Kleck himself concedes the difficulty(KLECK, POINT BLANK at 131–32).

49. Alba & Messner, Point Blankagainst Itself at 408–9.

50. Frank Newport, Americans SupportWide Variety of Gun Control Measures,POLL RELEASES (The Gallup Organization),June 16, 1999, available at the orga-nization’s Web site, http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr990616.asp.

51. REISS & ROTH, UNDERSTANDING AND

PREVENTING VIOLENCE at 255 (Washington,D.C.: National Academy Press, 1993).

52. See REISS & ROTH, UNDERSTANDING

AND PREVENTING VIOLENCE at 275–79.53. REISS & ROTH, UNDERSTANDING AND

PREVENTING VIOLENCE at 275, citing Glenn L.Pierce & William J. Bowers, The Impact ofthe Bartley-Fox Gun Law on Crime in Mas-sachusetts (unpublished manuscript, North-eastern University, Center for Applied SocialResearch, 1979). A published version of thiswork is Glenn L. Pierce & William J. Bow-ers, The Bartley-Fox Gun Law’s Short-TermImpact on Crime in Boston, 455 ANNALS OF

THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POLITICAL AND

SOCIAL SCIENCE 120 (1981).54. REISS & ROTH, UNDERSTANDING AND

PREVENTING VIOLENCE at 275–76, citingDavid McDowall et al., A ComparativeStudy of the Preventive Effects of Man-datory Sentencing Laws for Gun Crimes, 29CRIMINOLOGY 541 (1992); and citing DavidMcDowall et al., Preventive Effects of Man-datory Sentencing Laws for Gun Crimes, inPROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIAL STATISTICS SEC-TION, ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN

STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION, 1991, at 87 (Alex-andria, Va.: American Statistical Associa-tion, 1992).

55. REISS & ROTH, UNDERSTANDING AND

PREVENTING VIOLENCE at 278, citing Philip J.

Cook, The Technology of Personal Vio-lence, in 14 CRIME AND JUSTICE: A REVIEW OF

RESEARCH 1 (Michael Tonry ed.) (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1991); and cit-ing Colin Loftin et al., Effects of RestrictiveLicensing of Handguns on Homicide andSuicide in the District of Columbia, 325NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE 1615(1991).

56. KLECK, POINT BLANK at 390–416.57. Kleck & Patterson, The Impact of

Gun Control.58. Stevens H. Clarke, Murder in North

Carolina, 61 POPULAR GOVERNMENT, Sum-mer 1995, at 2.

59. U.S. Department of Health and Hu-man Services, Centers for Disease Controland Prevention, Youth Risk Behavior Sur-veillance—United States, 1997, 47 MORBID-ITY AND MORTALITY WEEKLY REPORT SS-3, ati-89, 38 (tbl.), 6–7. The study employed athree-stage cluster sample involving 151schools nationally; 16,292 questionnaireswere completed, for an overall response rateof 69 percent. Participation was anonymousand voluntary.

60. The Gallup Organization, One-Third of Teenagers Feel Unsafe at School,POLL RELEASES, Apr. 22, 1999, obtainedfrom the organization’s Web site, http://w w w. g a l l u p . c o m / p o l l / r e l e a s e s /pr990422b.asp.

61. JOSEPH F. SHELEY & JAMES D. WRIGHT,GUN ACQUISITION AND POSSESSION IN SELECTED

JUVENILE SAMPLES at 4 (Washington, D.C.:Office of Juvenile Justice and DelinquencyPrevention, U.S. Department of Justice,1993).

62. U.S. TREASURY DEPARTMENT, BUREAU

OF ALCOHOL, TOBACCO, AND FIREARMS, THE

YOUTH CRIME GUN INTERDICTION INITIATIVE

(YCGII): 27 COMMUNITIES, at app., pp. 10,13 (Washington, D.C.: BATF, 1999).

63. N.C. GEN. STAT. § 14-269.7 (here-inafter G.S.). This statute makes an ex-ception for minors using handguns for edu-cational or recreational purposes under thesupervision of an adult.

64. See, e.g., G.S. 14-269.2.65. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, OFFICE

OF JUVENILE JUSTICE AND DELINQUENCY PRE-VENTION, PROMISING STRATEGIES TO REDUCE

GUN VIOLENCE (Washington, D.C.: OJJDP,1999).

66. The eight cities (as presented in thereport) are as follows: Baltimore; Boston;Buffalo, New York; Richmond, California;Oakland, California; Indianapolis; Minne-apolis–St. Paul; and Baton Rouge, Louisi-ana.

67. OJJDP, PROMISING STRATEGIES at 17.68. Philip J. Cook, personal communi-

cation with John Rubin, editor of POPULAR

GOVERNMENT, July 1, 1999.

Documents

2 popular government, winter 2000 - UNC School of Government · 2.57 homicides per 100,000 children under age fifteen, compared with 0.51 for the twenty-five other highly in-dustrialized