"Scott Lurndal" wrote in message
...
writes:
On Wed, 26 Dec 2012 21:01:01 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:


The political climate surrounding guns is so intense that studies have
been done of studies that have been done about studies. Philip Cook,
the
director of Duke University's public policy institute, has examined
the
data behind the 108,000 and the 2.5 million figures and suspects the
truth lies somewhere in between. "Many of the basic statistics about
guns are
in wide disagreement with each other depending on which source you go
to," says Cook, a member of the apolitical National Consortium on
Violence
Research. "That's been a real puzzle to people who are trying to
understand what's going on."

When Gary Kleck first published his findings on defensive firearm use some
20 years ago ("Point Blank" as I recall) he explicitly stated that the area
of research would benefit from better data, better definitions, and better
research methods. As other researchers, Cook included, started looking into
this phenomena it was clear that significant numbers of defensive firearms
uses occur each year most without a shot being fired. These results pretty
well nullify the argument that "if just one life is saved by banning guns it
is worth it" as banning guns will also cost lives. We can also be sure that
among the defensive uses "assault weapons" were used...

Pull in John Lott's work (e.g., "More Guns, Less Crime") and it is clear
there is positive utility for armed civilians. Overall, armed civilians are
not a risk to society and they provide a public service by raising the
opportunity costs of crime. Given world history, they likely have utility in
maintaining our Constitutional Republic also...

There are other things lost in this discussion on firearms. One is that
handguns are generally less lethal than long guns and from a fatality
standpoint may be preferred for defensive use, i.e., stop the behavior that
led to the shooting without killing. Chicago, with a near total ban on
handguns still has a lot of shootings... children included (the term
"children" is a slippery slope as, as I recall, some have included gang
bangers up to age 20 in their data).

Over the past few decades there has been a huge increase in the number of
trauma centers around the country and improved medical treatments that
improve the odds of surviving guns shots. I think it would be fair to say
that much of the early "anti-gun" research in the medical literature was
written by people associated with the early trauma centers. Most of that
research was conducted in the near vacuum of medicine. As such, Edgar Suter
caused a political uproar in the medical journal world when his "Guns in the
Medical Literature -- A Failure of Peer Review" was published...

The unintended consequences of eliminating one type of gun or ammunition
also changed the survivability dynamics... Saturday Night Specials have all
but disappeared from the rhetoric and the shelves of stores with the result
being that criminals use more reliable and/or more powerful arms. Ban armor
piercing ammo that can defeat body armor (a red herring scenario... recall
KTW) and soft point expanding ammo becomes the norm. One of the medical
examiners in the CT case lamented the fact that expanding ammo was used...
if full metal jacket or armor piercing ammo was used there may have been
more survivors.

The demise of mental health institutions and the lack of mental health
parity in insurance contracts leaves myriad people untreated and
unmonitored. This does not insure that all incidents can be foretold and
prevented. I personally missed one... a roommate in my off campus apartment
bombed the dormitory one night. None of the other three of us had a clue it
was coming. It was by mere chance that nobody happened to be directly in the
area of the explosion though I know someone who saw it from across the
courtyard.

Theft and black market sources of guns will not keep guns out of the hands
of goal oriented attackers such as struck Aurora, Webster and Sandy Hook. If
laws somehow did keep guns out of their hands there are alternatives...
bombs, fire, chemicals all work well when the victims are trapped in
confined spaces.

The strong positions taken on the gun issue are a huge factor in there being
a "no compromise" political environment. Don Kates wrote of this years ago
in "Bigotry, Symbolism and Ideology in the Battle Over Gun Control."

The "sound byte" arguments and political grandstanding may feel good but
they do not address the underlying causes of violence... that being that
there are evil people out there who act either by choice or mental defect.
There are also those who are reckless and those whom suffer depression.
Having taught college level courses inside maximum security prisons I've
meet quite a number of all four types first hand... met lots of them outside
of the prisons too.

Most of the cites I mentioned above can be found on line... in full or as
summaries. ...and of course, there are the university and medical school
research libraries.There is nothing new here... most of the firearms
technology being debated is well over 100 years old as well as are the
arguments.

John
....not over 100, but have read much of the related academic literature from
myriad disciplines!