Guns
"Guns, Fear, the Constitution, and the Public's Health, Garen J. Wintemute, M.D., M.P.H. - NEJM 4/3/08"
Interpreting the Right to Bear Arms — Gun Regulation and Constitutional Law Mark Tushnet, J.D. - NEJM 4/3/08
Handgun Violence, Public Health, and the Law, Gregory D. Curfman, M.D., Stephen Morrissey, Ph.D., and Jeffrey M. Drazen, M.D.
See also: Violence
Directory
The United
States has
by far the highest rate of gun deaths --
murders, suicides and accidents -- among the world's 36 richest nations,
according the CDC. Among children, the rate is particularly
high relative to other countries:
11.5 children on average killed by firearms each DAY in the United
States. The United States
has the highest youth homicide and suicide rates
of the 26 wealthiest nations. "Homicide and suicide have become the second
and third leading causes of death of teen-agers" and the leading cause of
death among black youngsters, the statement says.
Even conservative
European papers such as the Economist
find our obsession with firearms difficult to understand.
There are 270 million
guns in the United
States,
almost as many guns as people. The per state gun death rate
correlates highly but
not perfectly with gun ownership rates.
More
Americans die every 2 years from gun violence in the United States than died in
combat in 10 years in Vietnam. More
Americans have been killed by guns than by war in the 20th century.
The
Virginia Tech massacre was carried out by a gunman with a 9-mm semi-automatic
pistol and a .22-caliber handgun
Until
then, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history
was in Killeen, Texas, in 1991,
when George Hennard
plowed his pickup truck into a Luby’s Cafeteria and shot 23 people
to death, then himself. [Editor's note: personally, I take issue with this, since the Fort Pillow Massacre,
although occurring in the midst of the Civil War, led to the loss of far more
(277 to 297) lives.]
The
deadliest previous campus shooting
in U.S. history took place in 1966 at the
University of Texas, where Charles Whitman
climbed to the 28th-floor observation deck of a clock tower and opened fire. He
killed 16 people before he was gunned down by police...
On
April 20, 1999, at Columbine
High near Littleton, Colorado, two teenagers killed 12 of their
fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives. The Virginia Tech massacre took place almost
eight years to the day after the Columbine High bloodbath.
Some
myths about mass casualty killers:
“He’d never touched a gun.”
Most
attackers had access to weapons, and had used them prior to the attack. Most of
the attackers acquired their guns from home...
“School violence is rampant.”
It
may seem so, with media attention focused on a spate of school shootings. In
fact, school shootings are extremely rare. Even including the more common
violence that is gang-related or dispute-related, only 12 to 20 homicides a
year occur in the 100,000 schools in the U.S. In general, school assaults and
other violence have dropped by nearly half in the past decade.
-
MSNBC 4/16/07
Despite the media
attention to mass casualty killings, they are not representative statistically
of most firearm victims.
- 40-50% of murder victims are killed by
someone they know;
- 2/3 of murders are committed with firearms.
- Richard Rosenfeld, 6/10/06, per an
Interview on NPR
Homicides are most
often committed with guns, especially handguns. In 1998,
52% of homicides were committed with handguns, 13% with other guns, 13% with
knives, 5% with blunt objects, and 17% with other weapons.
- Source:
US Department of Justice
Guns
were used in 71% of murders committed in 2003, the most recent year with comprehensive data.
- Reuters 9/25/05
More
than a dozen leading health groups, including the American Academy of
Pediatrics, the Physicians for Social Responsibility and the American College
of Emergency Physicians jointly called for the [assault weapon] ban's extension
on Tuesday, describing gun violence as a public health crisis.
- Reuters 9/8/04
Guns
and Suicide
Of
238,292 people who bought handguns in
California in 1991:
- risk of suicide
was 57 times as high as the general rate
for the first week following the purchase (644 v 11.3 per 100k);
- suicide
was leading cause of death among handgun buyers, outranking heart disease;
- 6 years later, risk of suicide was still double
that of the general population;
- 90% of those who attempt
suicide by gun succeed v. 10% w/ pills or poison.
- source: Dr. Garen J. Wintemute
= emergency room physician at UC Davis, as published in NEJM 11/15/99
"THOSE
WHO BEAT THEIR GUNS INTO PLOWS WILL PLOW FOR THOSE WHO DON'T"
- bumper sticker (along
with "FIRE BUTCH RENO") found on the pickup truck of Francisco Martin
Duran, who fired up to 30 rounds with a Chinese-made SKS semiautomatic assault
rifle at the front door of the White House on October 29, 1994
Article: Shop Slows US Inquiry Into Rifle
Used in Washington, DC, Sniper Attacks
Studies
of the illegal gun market have found that a very small number of the nation's
gun dealers account for a disproportionate number of the guns that are used in
crimes.
One
study, issued by the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department last
year concluded that "Just 1.2 percent of dealers — 1,020 of the
approximately 83,200 federally licensed retail dealers and pawnbrokers —
accounted for over 57 percent of the crime guns traced to federally licensed
firearms dealers in 1998." …
Only
a tiny number of gun dealers are prosecuted for failing to keep a record of a
sale or for keeping false records. According to data compiled by Americans for
Gun Safety, another gun control group, there were only 26 such prosecutions in
2000 and 28 in 2001, though there are 85,000 federally licensed gun dealers.
- Dean E. Murphy & Fox Butterfield, "Shop Slows
U.S. Inquiry Into
Rifle" The New York Times, October
29, 2002
The
owner of a gun shop that was the last recorded stop for a rifle used in the
D.C.-area sniper killings yesterday defended his business as a reputable firm
that aims to provide constitutional options for victims -- not weapons for
"psychos."
A
red-eyed and visibly drained Brian Borgelt, owner of Bull's Eye
Shooter Supply now under audit by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms, said the likelihood his firm "might have a connection" to
the snipers "is just hard for me to describe."
"If
anybody should've been a customer here, it should've been his ex-wife -- the
one with the restraining order against him," Borgelt said.
"We're a victims
advocate. Victims are the people who we cater to -- not psychos."
…
Neither
Muhammad nor Malvo
should have been legally able to buy the rifle from the store.
A
domestic violence restraining order against Muhammad should have prohibited him
from possession of any firearm. Malvo is a non-citizen and a minor.
A check of the FBI's National Instant Background Check System, which licensed
gun dealers must consult before legally selling a firearm, should have blocked
any sale to either one.
What
investigators want to know is whether Bull's Eye did the check, whether the
system could have failed to show the restraining order or whether the rifle
left the shop in some other way.
- Lewis Kamb, "Tacoma gun shop's owner
defends trade", Seattle
Post-Intelligencer Reporter
MORE GUNS
EQUAL MORE MURDERS IN U.S.
STATES: STUDY
Fri 12 Jan, 2007
2:58:44 GMT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American states where more
people own guns have higher murder rates, including murders of
children, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health reported on
Thursday. The study, certain to provoke arguments in a country where gun
ownership is an important political issue, found that about one in three U.S.
households reported firearm ownership.
"Our findings
suggest that in the United
States, household firearms may be an
important source of guns used to kill children, women and men, both on the
street and in their homes," said Matthew Miller, assistant professor of
health policy and injury prevention, who led the study. His team used data from
a U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
survey of 200,000 people in all 50 states.
After dividing the
states into four groups based on how many households had guns, the researchers
found the states in the highest quartile of firearm
ownership had overall homicide rates 60 percent higher than states in the
lowest quartile. In states with the most guns,
firearm homicide rates were 114 percent higher,
the researchers reported in the February issue of Social Science and Medicine.
More than
200 million guns are privately owned in the United States, according to the
Justice Department. In September, the FBI released 2005 figures showing violent
crime had risen 2.3 percent nationally -- the first increase in four years.
- Reuters, 1/12/07
