The Second Amendment Sisters

Estimates vary, of course; however, during the rally, the park service in Washington, D.C. asked the SAS-AIMM coordinators to consider moving some of their group to a secondary location, because we only had a permit for 5000 people, and the Park Service estimated at that point that the crowd was exceeding that limit.  Not bad for quick grassroots organizing!

In Los Angeles, the rally coordinator passed out over 500 name tags to supporters.

Back

Rape Statistics: the Grim Truth

1 in 4 women will be the victim of rape in her lifetime. [ref: It's All In Your Imagination, Sierra Times]

97% of the women who resist a rapist with a firearm do so successfully, meaning that they are not raped and are not otherwise injured. [ref: Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck.

Back

Gun Ownership by Law-Abiding Citizens Reduces Crime

Professor John Lott Jr., Senior Research Scholar at Yale University Law School, conducted a study of 18 years worth of FBI data from all 3,054 counties in the US.  What he found was that those areas in which residents were allowed to carry concealed firearms in general had larger crime reductions or smaller crime increases when compared to those areas of the country where the residents had no such freedom. This was accomplished without any adverse effects on accidents or suicides. He also found that the states now experiencing the largest reductions in crime are also the ones with the fastest-growing rates of gun ownership. He summarized his findings in his book More Guns, Less Crime : Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws (Studies in Law and Economics), University of Chicago Press; ISBN: 0226493636.  It is available online here, among other places.

Various studies have found that guns are used defensively about two million times per year in this country. [ref: Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck]

The Carter administration, in an effort to justify a gun control program that they wished to implement, commissioned the most thorough and scientific study of gun control ever done, lasting 4 years from 1997 - 1981 and costing $400,000.  They of course chose the most credible researchers they could find who were also known gun control advocates.

Unfortunately, the administration made a mistake.  The researchers they chose, as well as being gun control advocates, were unfortunately also people of high integrity.  The results of the study were that no gun control laws in the US, either individually or cumulatively, ever controlled or reduced crime.

The Wright-Rossi report, as the results of these researchers work is known, is still in print in book form* and available through online booksellers, for example through this link.

*Under the Gun : Weapons, Crime and Violence in America, by Peter H. Rossi, James D. Wright, Kathleen Daly ISBN: 0202303035

Considering all of the countries that submitted data for inclusion in the United Nations Demographic Yearbook (published in 1998) shows that the U.S. homicide rate is either 24th or 27th in the world.  Many of the countires with higher homicide rates than the U.S. have extremely severe gun control laws, including Russia and other former U.S.S.R. satellites.  And some countries with higher firearms ownership rates than the U.S. are extremely safe.  High rates of firearm ownership do not imply high homicide rates!

Violent crime is on the decline in this country; gun ownership is on the rise.  The following chart certainly indicates that there is an "epidemic" of firearm ownership in the US.  But an epidemic of violence?  The data says no. 

The years since 1997 have seen a continuation of the trends shown in the chart - an increasing rate of firearm ownership, and a decreasing rate of violent crime.  Actually, one would expect some positive correlation between firearm supply and crime (as people purchase guns in reaction to a rising crime rate) but the chart shows none at all.  If one includes self defense with a firearm as "gun violence," then perhaps there has been an "epidemic of gun violence" during the last decade after all - people protecting their lives with guns.

chart courtesy of www.guncite.com

Source: Data points from Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York 1997, and FBI Uniform Crime Reports. (Handgun homicide rate became available in 1966.)

Back

Guns and Self-Defense

Only 1% of women who defend themselves with a firearm lose the firearm to their attackers. [ref: Gary Kleck]

The Probability of serious injury from a criminal attack is 2.5 times greater for women offering no resistance than for women resisting with a firearm.  The probability of serious injury from a criminal attack is 1.4 times greater for men offering no resistance than for men resisting with a firearm. [ref: Department of Justice: National Crime Victimization Survey]

Kleck's findings from analysis of 1979-1985 national data which shows the following comparative rates of injury: Only 12.1 to 17.4% of robbery and assault victims resisting with guns were injured; 24.7 to 27.3% of victims who submitted were nevertheless injured; 40.1 to 48.9% of those who screamed were injured, as were 24.7 to 30.7% of those who tried to reason with or threaten the attacker and 25.5 to 34.9% of those who resisted passively or sought to evade; 29.5 to 40.3% of those resisting with a knife were injured; 22 to 25.1% of those using some other kind of weapon were injured; 50.8 to 52.1% of those resisting bare-handed were injured.

Data from subsequent years have yielded confirming results. "A fifth of the victims defending themselves with a firearm suffered an injury, compared to almost half of those who defended themselves with weapons other than a firearm or who had no weapon." U.S. Dep't of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Guns and Crime 2 (1994); U.S. Dep't of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Selected Findings from National Statistical Series: Firearms and Crimes of Violence 8 (1994).

[I]n nearly 400,000 incidents of violence, the victim had a firearm for self-protection. In 35% of these incidents, the offender was also armed with a firearm. About a fifth [20%] of the victims using a gun for self-defense were injured [but a]mong victims defending themselves with a weapon other than a firearm or having no weapon, about half [5O%] sustained an injury.

[ref: Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, from Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda?]

Back

Gun Violence in America

Deaths Due to Unintentional Injuries, 1998 (Estimates)
(Source: National Health Safety Council, Injury Facts, 1999)

Chart courtesy of www.guncite.com

Notes:

1. Pedestrian fatalities are also included in All Automobile  fatalities. They are broken-out on a separate line to illustrate how often pedestrian fatalities occur.
2. Pedestrian fatality figures were obtained from a Department of Transportation publication, Traffic Safety Facts 1998 -- Pedestrians.
3. The age breakdowns differ slightly from the rest of the accident figures displayed in the table above. For pedestrian fatalities, the age groupings are: 0-4, 5-15, 16-24, 25-44, 45-64, 65-69, and 70+.
4. Included in the total are 55 pedestrian fatalities of unknown age.

A report released by the Justice Policy Institute, based in Washington and San Francisco, and the nonprofit legal aid Children's Law Center in Covington, Ky., contained the following findings:

• Seven in 10 Americans think a school shooting could happen in their communities, but a child has a 1 in 2 million chance of being killed in a U.S. school.
• Youth homicide arrests dropped 56 percent from 1993 to 1998, but two-thirds of 1,000 people polled by The Washington Post in November 1999 said they believed children were getting more violent. 

The gun control advocates often maintain that "12 children a dayare killed by guns." This figure is taken from a government statistic that includes children and adults up to and including 19 year olds.  If you take the legal definition of a child, which is a person under 15 years old, then the actual number is 1/7th what the gun control advocates claim it is, since most late adolescent and adult gang members are thereby excluded.  Even this much lower figure includes juvenile criminals shot by police officers in the line of duty and justifiable firearm homicides by civilian crime victims.

For some perspective, here are some numbers from the National Safety Council:

According to information obtained by the National Safety Council (latest available statistics as of this writing are from 1992) 200 children under the age of 15 were accidentally killed by firearms. There were also 520 suffocations, 160 fatal poisonings, 160 falls, 990 deaths in fire, 1150 drownings and 2800 children killed in automobile accidents.

From a letter by Julianne Versnel Gottlieb to Women & Guns Magazine

Also from the National Safety Council, but more recently:

In 1998, 500 children under the age of five drowned.  Since 1990, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recorded 153 fatalities as a result of an air bag deployment. To date (2/1/00), 89 of these deaths have been children.  Every 33 minutes someone dies in an alcohol-related automobile accident. Alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes killed nearly 16,000 people in 1998.

"Kids and Guns," a statistical report by the Justice Department, found that the number of juvenile firearm related deaths has declined steadily each year since 1993. As the article below indicates, the downtrend started even earlier.

More information from the Washington Post:

Youth Violence Down, Study Finds
By Kenneth J. Cooper Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 4, 1999

The amount of violence committed by teenagers -- both in and out of school -- has declined significantly since the early 1990s, according to a study whose findings run counter to the widespread public impression of escalating juvenile violence.

A biennial survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed sharp decreases in several categories of violent activity by teenagers -- such as carrying a weapon or fighting -- between 1991 and 1997, the most recent year for which data is available. In other categories -- such as being threatened with a weapon or having property stolen -- the survey found no appreciable change.

"None of the behaviors we studied showed any sign of going up," said Thomas R. Simon, co-author of the study, which surveyed 16,000 students in grades 9 through 12 and was published in today's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

That overall finding clashes with a public perception of teenagers as increasingly dangerous, a view driven in part by a series of high-profile school shootings over the past two years. That view has pressured lawmakers and prosecutors to crack down on juvenile offenders, often by trying more of them as adults. After the April shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., for example, the House and Senate rushed to pass long-delayed juvenile justice bills.

Nonetheless, for several years, Justice Department reports have shown decreases in crime committed by youth. The CDC study extends that good news to violent behaviors that do not reach the attention of the criminal justice system.

The most dramatic drops recorded in the study involved teenagers carrying guns and other weapons. About 18 percent of the those surveyed in 1997 reported carrying a weapon -- defined as a gun, knife or club -- in the previous month, down from 26 percent in 1991. About 9 percent admitting carrying a weapon at school during the same period, down from almost 12 percent in 1993 -- the first year that question was asked.

Back

Recommended Reading

• One of THE most comprehensive works on gun issues available is Gun Facts Version 2.2 by Guy Smith. This work provides facts on:

  • The availability of guns
  • Children and guns
  • Licensing and registration
  • Accidental deaths
  • Government, gun laws, and social costs
  • Crime and guns
  • Guns and Crime Prevention
  • Concealed carry laws and weapons
  • Guns in other countries
  • Police and guns
  • The Second Amendment
  • Gun owners and public opinion
  • and more

This work uses and cites such impeccable sources as the National Safety Council, National Center for Health Statistics, The U.S. Department of Justice,the United States Treasury and Justice Department Report 1999, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the FBI Uniform Crime Statistics and others.

Point Blank : Guns and Violence in America (Social Institutions and Social Change) by Gary Kleck ISBN: 0202304191

Stopping Power: Why 70 Million Americans Own Guns by J. Neil Schulman, Gary Kleck (Afterword), J. Neil Shulman ISBN: 1584450576

More Guns, Less Crime : Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws (Studies in Law and Economics (Chicago, Ill.).) by John R., Jr. Lott ISBN: 0226493644

Guns : Who Should Have Them? by David B. Kopel (Editor) ISBN: 0879759585

The Best Defense : True Stories of Intended Victims Who Defended Themselves With a Firearm by Robert A. Waters ISBN: 1888952970

Armed & Female by Paxton Quigley ISBN: 0312951507

Back