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                                                   April 25, 1993

              Children and Guns: Sensible Solutions

By David B. Kopel

One of the first factual monographs recommending a policy strategy for the
emotional and easily misunderstood subject of children and guns, the study
demonstrates that:

     Lawmakers must accurately gauge the problem of children and guns, to
     make sure that any new legislation reduces rather than increases harm.

     Alarmist contentions that "the onslaught of childhood violence knows
     no boundaries" are untrue. Firearms figure in less than 1% of all
     deaths for children under age 15.  Gun-related homicides are, however,
     extremely high for inner-city black males aged 16-19.  Remedies must
     therefore be tailored to the specific problem, rather than being
     sweeping and symbolic.

     Accidental gun deaths by children have declined 50% since the 1970s.
     To reduce accidents further, safety education is preferable to
     government required gadgetry (which might increase accidents), or to
     gun prohibitions.

     Neither the youth suicide rate nor the prevalence of guns in suicide
     have changed substantially since the 1970s. Careful analysis of
     existing research shows no evidence that the presence of guns increases
     suicide risks for mentally healthy teenagers.

     Claims about the frequency with which high school students carry guns
     to school are wildly exaggerated.  At least 90% of teenagers who do
     carry firearms to school are carrying for protection, and not for
     crime.  The best way to reduce the need of students to carry guns is
     to take youthful criminals off the streets, and put them in prison,
     thus reducing the need of other students to arm for protection.

     Confronting the very serious problem of inner-city black male teenage
     homicide requires a direct attack on the social ills which cause so
     many young people to grow up believing that their own lives and the
     lives of others are worthless.  Since severe drug prohibition has not
     reduced the supply of drugs in the inner cities, it is foolish to
     expect that gun controls will reduce guns in the inner-city.
     Legislators should consider several immediate steps to get juvenile
     criminals off the streets, and to begin addressing the social ills
     that breed juvenile crime.

                             Table of Contents


Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 4
Accidents: Few and Getting Fewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 5
     Proposed solutions for Accidents . . . . . . . . . . .Page 10
          Laws regarding "Loaded" indicators would increase
          accidents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 10
          Childproof Devices  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 11
          Decisions about Trigger Locks and Similar Devices
          are Best Made by Each Family . . . . . . . . . . Page 13
          Owner liability laws are superfluous, and
          sometimes cruel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 14
          Harassment lawsuits `succeed' even when they failPage 14
          Safety education is most effective way to
          continue reducing the accident rate . . . . . . .Page 15
          Children are endangered by media imagery showing
          careless gun handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 20
          Social intervention is needed to deal with
          suicides disguised as accidents.. . . . . . . . .Page 20
Suicide: Are Guns the Cause?  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 21
Carrying of Guns at School and on the Streets . . . . . . .Page 27
     Teenagers are often Crime Victims, even at School. . .Page 27
     Most Gun Carrying by Teenagers is for Legitimate
     Protection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 28
     Guns at School are a Symptom of the Violent Conditions
     of Many Cities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 30
     Two Solutions that Won't Work. . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 31
          "Gun-Free School Zones" . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 31
          Metal Detectors in School . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 33
     Two Novel Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 35
          Drop Some Drop-out Laws . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 35
          Let Poor People Choose Their Own Schools. . . . .Page 35
Crime: The Inner City Crisis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 37
     Are Guns the Cause of the Rising Homicide Rate?. . . .Page 40
     What Happened in 1987? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 42
     Who are the Gun Crime Victims? . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 43
     Social decay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 46
Strategies to Reduce Youth Crime. . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 50
     Step One: Implement Effective Juvenile Justice
          Solutions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 50
          Better Juvenile Courts. . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 50
          Open Court Records. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 50
          Restitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 50
          Increased Certainty of Punishment . . . . . . . .Page 50
     Step Two: Educate Children to Have Responsible Attitudes
          Towards Firearms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Page 51
          Media-generated violence. . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 51
          Education and Socialization . . . . . . . . . . .Page 56
          Sports Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 58
          Politically Slanted Education . . . . . . . . . .Page 59
     Step Three: Move Beyond Symbolic and Badly-Conceived
          Anti-Gun Laws. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 60
          Banning Handguns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 60
          Banning so-called "Assault Rifles". . . . . . . .Page 61
          Banning Air Guns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 61
          The Brady Bill. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 61
          Buy-back programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 63
          Banning Gun Possession by Minors. . . . . . . . .Page 63
     Step Four: Start Dealing with Social Pathologies . . .Page 64
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 67



               Copyright - 1993 - David B. Kopel

INDEPENDENCE INSTITUTE is a nonprofit, nonpartisan Colorado think tank.
It is governed by a statewide board of trustees and holds a 501(c)(3) tax
exemption from the IRS.  Its public policy focuses on economic growth,
education reform, local government effectiveness, equal opportunity, and
the environment.

PERMISSION TO REPRINT this paper in whole or in part is hereby granted,
provided full credit is given to the Independence Institute.  DAVID B.
KOPEL is Director of the Second Amendment Project at the Independence
Institute.  He also serves as  an associate policy analyst with the Cato
Institute, a Washington, D.C., think-tank.  His book The Samurai, the
Mountie, and the Cowboy:  Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other
Democracies? (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1992) was awarded the
Comparative Criminology Prize by the American Society of Criminology's
Division of Comparative and International Criminology.

 JOHN K. ANDREWS, JR., is President of the Institute.

                             Introduction

     Did you know that:

          "One child under 14 is accidentally shot to death every day in
          the USA."  (Center to Prevent Handgun Violence).

          "Teen-agers in homes with guns are 75 times more likely to kill
          themselves than teenagers living in homes without guns."
          (Washington Post columnist Richard Reeves.)

          "In the past decade, more than 138,000 Americans were shot just
          by children under the age of 6." (Hartford Courant.)

          135,000 children carry guns to school each day. (Senators Biden
          and Chafee.)

          "Firearms are responsible for the deaths of 45,000 infants,
          children and adolescents per year." (American Academy of
          Pediatrics.)

          "One million U.S. inhabitants die prematurely each year as the
          result of intentional homicide or suicide." (former Surgeon
          General C. Everett Koop).

          "Guns are the leading cause of death among older teenagers
          - white and black - in America." (Newsweek.)

     These statistics are horrifying, and few people who read them can avoid
concluding that some kind of gun control - any kind of gun control - is an
urgent necessity.  Fortunately, every one of the above statistics is false.
(The correct statistics are presented in the relevant sections of this Issue
Paper.) Advocates of severe gun controls and gun prohibition - and their
allies in the media - are frightening America.

     If Americans are to respond effectively to the problems associated with
children and guns - particularly the extremely high murder rate of inner-city
black male teenagers - it will be necessary to understand the true scope and
history of the problems, and to analyze carefully which solutions will make
things better, and which will make things even worse.



                    Accidents: Few and Getting Fewer

     How many children die in senseless gun accidents? One of America's
leading gun control advocates, a physician, puts the figure at "almost 1,000
children" per year.  The National Safety Council, however, reports a consid-
erably lower figure.  In 1988, 277 children under the age of 15 were killed
by accidental firearms discharges.  In 1990, according to the National Center
for Health Statistics, the number fell to 236.

     Most of the children who are involved in fatal accidents are older
children.  In 1990, the most recent year for which data are available, 34
children under the age of 5 died in gun accidents. Among children aged 5-9,
there were 56 fatal gun accidents; and among children aged 10-14, 146 fatal
accidents.

     In recent decades, the American firearms supply has risen, and now
stands about 200 million guns, a third of them handguns.  But as the number
of guns has risen, the number of childhood gun accidents has fallen sharply,
declining by nearly 50% in the last two decades.

     Notably, the overall fatal gun accident rate for the American population
has been declining faster than the rate of most other types of accidents, such
as car accidents or work accidents.  From 1968 to 1988, the rate of fatal gun
accidents fell from 1.2 per 100,000 population per year to 0.6 - a decline of
50%.  In the same period, the motor vehicle fatal accident rate fell from
27.5 in 1968 to 20.1 in 1988 - a 27% decline.  Work deaths declined 47%.

     While there are enormous bureaucracies devoted to reducing work accidents
(the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and automobile accidents
(the Department of Transportation) there is no government body charged with
reducing firearms accidents.  Yet thanks to voluntary, private educational
efforts, including programs sponsored by the National Rifle Association, the
Boy Scouts, 4-H, and other groups, the firearm accident rate has fallen at
least as steeply than the accident rates for which federal bureaucracies are
in charge.

     The true number of childhood gun accidents might be even lower than the
official figures suggest.  Some of the supposed gun "accidents" involving
older teenagers may be homicides, in which the perpetrator claims that point-
ing the gun at the victim's head or torso and then pulling the trigger was
"an accident."  (The "accident" claim is similar to some adult murderers
claiming that they acted in a "fit of passion.") In addition, a number of
"accidents" may be child-abuse homicides perpetrated by adults.

     Few if any causes of childhood death have fallen as steeply as have gun
accidents, and the fall has taken place without any government programs
designed to reduce accidents.  The situation would be considered by many
observers as proof that private safety programs can be more effective than
government regulation, and that there is no persuasive case for restrictive
gun controls designed to fight childhood gun accidents.

     Many gun control advocates, though, are not persuaded.  In the push for
restrictive laws to deal with accidents, they attempt, often successfully,
to create the impression that gun accidents involving children are extremely
common.  While the actual numbers are readily available from government
statistics, and while the government reports have never been challenged for
underestimating true accident numbers, gun control advocates sometimes claim
far higher numbers of childhood accidents, without giving any source for
their data.

     Another approach of gun control advocates is to discuss accidents in a
way that avoids mentioning the actual number of fatalities, and the sharp
downward trend in the number.  For example, it may be pointed out, accurately,
that firearms are the fourth leading cause of accidental deaths for children
aged 5 to 14 (behind auto accidents, drowning, and fires and burns); and the
third leading cause for 15 to 24 year olds.  What is omitted by the emphasis
on ranking is how small a role firearms actually play in accidental deaths,
since the leading causes of accidental deaths (principally motor vehicles) so
hugely outnumber the lesser causes.  Guns account for only 3% of accidental
deaths of children 0-14.

     Compared to the risk of dying in a gun accident, a child aged 0-14 is
four times more likely to drown, four times more likely to die in a fire,
and 13 times more likely to die in an auto accident.

     It is to be expected that accidents and other "man-made" factors would
be leading causes of death for young persons.  Persons aged 1-24 rarely die
of natural causes, especially in a century where medicine has advanced so
far.  Accordingly, any cause of death in this age group - even if it occurs
infrequently - may have a relatively high rank.

     In any case, showing the particular ranking of a cause of injury is
hardly the same as proving that the factor related to the injury should be
outlawed or drastically restricted.  Among children aged 5 to 9, the rate of
reported dog bites is higher than the combined rate of reportable childhood
diseases (such as measles).  The fact does not by itself prove that dogs
should be outlawed, or that the law should require that dogs always be locked
up if children might come nearby.

     A different tactic for creating the appearance of an accident crisis is
to look at a single year in isolation.  The overall fatal gun accident rate
has fallen from 1.2 fatalities per 100,000 population in the late 1960s to
0.6 fatalities in recent years.  While final numbers are available for years
through 1988, the National Safety Council has offered estimates of the acci-
dent rates for 1989-91.  The estimates show the 1989 rate as 0.6, the same
rate as recorded for 1986, 1987, and 1988.  For 1990, the NSC projects a dip
down to 0.5, and for 1991, a return to 0.6.  Thus, for the years 1986 through
1991, the National Safety Council sees the fatal gun accident rate as staying
consistently at 0.6, except for a temporary drop to 0.5 in 1990.  In short,
the figures suggest great stability in the accident rate in recent years. But,
if one looks only at 1991, one sees a 0.6 rate, compared to the 0.5 rate in
1990.  Thus, from 1990 to 1991, the accident rate (according to preliminary
NSC estimates) rose from 0.5 to 0.6, an increase of 20%.

     As a result, persons interested in promoting the appearance of a worsen-
ing gun accident crisis can claim "gun accidents rose 20% from 1990 to 1991."
While factually correct, the statement is a half-truth, since the gun accident
rate from 1986 to 1991 has been quite stable, except for a small dip in 1990,
followed by a return to the norm in 1991.  And besides, the 1990-91 figures
are necessarily imprecise, since they are only preliminary estimates.

     In recent years, some medical researchers have suggested that a firearm
in the home of a normal, healthy family poses a grave risk to the family's
health.  For example, the Journal of the American Medical Association publish-
ed a report which concluded that a "firearm in the home" is a risk factor for
home firearm accidents.  The conclusion was certainly correct, since it was
nearly a tautology.  Having a swimming pool in the home is a risk factor for
swimming pool accidents; having a motorcycle in the home is a risk factor for
motorcycle accidents; and having an appendix is a risk factor for appendicitis.
The report did not prove that the presence of a gun in the home causes a sig-
nificant increase in the risk of accidental death; given the very low rate of
deaths from childhood gun accidents, it would be impossible to prove such a
conclusion.

     Although the number of childhood gun accidents is low, and getting lower,
some gun prohibitionists contend that outlawing or drastically restricting
firearms would be appropriate, "if it saves one life."

     If any object which is associated with about 236 accidental childhood
deaths a year should be outlawed, then it would be logical to call for the
prohibition of bicycles (over 400 child deaths a year).  An even larger
number of children are killed by motor vehicles (3,263).  Four hundred and
thirty-two children die annually in fires caused by adults who fall asleep
while smoking; the 432 deaths would, by the handgun-banning logic, make a
persuasive case for outlawing tobacco.

     If the focus is on children under age 5, then outlawing swimming pools
and bathtubs (350 drowning deaths) or cigarette lighters (90 deaths) would
save many more children under 5 from accidental deaths than would a gun ban
(34 deaths).

     Thus, the "if it saves one life" anti-accident logic applies with much
greater force to bicycles, automobiles, bathtubs, swimming pools, tobacco,
and cigarette lighters than to guns.  Unlike gunowners, owners of these other
objects have no specific Constitutional right of possession.  Thus, there
would little Constitutional objection to a ban on future production of these
items.  And while bicycles, bathtubs, and cigarette lighters make life more
convenient, these objects do not save lives or prevent injury.

     Guns, however, do save lives and prevent crime every day.  According to
data collected by the anti-gun National Alliance Against Violence, handguns
are used about 645,000 times a year for protection against crime.  Separate
polling, by researcher Gary Mauser, finds that guns of all types are used
about 691,000 times annually for protection.

     The data are consistent with polling of felony convicts in state prison
systems conducted for the National Institute of Justice.  Fifty-six percent
of the prisoners said that a criminal would not attack a potential victim who
was known to be armed.  Seventy-four percent agreed with the statement, "One
reason burglars avoid houses where people are at home is that they fear being
shot during the crime."  Thirty-nine percent of the felons had personally
decided not to commit a crime because they thought the victim might have a
gun, and 8% said the experience had occurred "many times."  Criminals in
states with higher civilian gun ownership rates worried the most about armed
victims.

     Even if the figures from the National Alliance Against Violence,
Professor Mauser, and the National Institute of Justice were ten times too
high, the figures are still far higher than the number of times (zero), that
bicycles, bathtubs, and cigarette lighters are used for self-defense each
year.

     Few persons who want to save "just one life" by banning handguns to
eliminate handgun accidents would propose saving many more lives by banning
bicycles, bathtubs, and cigarette lighters. Is it possible that the motivation
for banning handguns is something other than saving lives?


                     Proposed solutions for Accidents

     While safety education has already saved many lives, it is opposed by
many gun control organizations.  These organizations favor instead a variety
of restrictive laws that would impair the rights of all gunowners, ostensibly
out of concern with saving children's lives.

          Laws regarding "Loaded" indicators would increase accidents - -

     Sen. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), the U.S. Senate's leading gun control advocate,
proposes giving the Consumer Product Safety Commission Authority over fire-
arms.  If the CPSC had jurisdiction of firearms, it would have authority to
order manufacturers to initiate recalls of any or all privately owned firearms
and ammunition that did not meet the Commission's criteria for safety.  Like-
wise, the Commission could, by unilateral administrative action, ban the
future production of any and all firearms and ammunition.  Currently the
Consumer Product Safety Commission is forbidden to regulate firearms precisely
because Congress was afraid that regulation could become a subterfuge for gun
prohibition.

     One proposed federal safety criterion which tens of millions of gun
would fail (and hence be subject to recall) is for the gun to have a "loaded
indicator."  The loaded indicator, as the name implies, signals whether a gun
is loaded.  The General Accounting Office claims that 23% of accidental
firearms deaths could be prevented by "loaded" indicator.

     It is  more likely that requiring guns to have loaded indicators would
increase fatal accidents.  First of all, unless the requirement for a loaded
indicator were made retroactive, so that the entire United States gun stock
were recalled for retrofitting, some guns would have loaded indicators and
many would not.  Accordingly, persons who had learned to rely on loaded
indicators might treat a loaded gun without the "loaded" signal as if the
gun were unloaded.

     In addition, it is foolish to expect that the 50% of households which
own guns would turn over their firearms for retrofitting.  When the Sturm,
Ruger company did a recall of some old revolvers, offering a free retrofit
to prevent accidental discharges, only about 10% of the guns that had been
sold were returned for the free modification - even though Ruger wrote to
all known owners, and to this day advertises the free retrofit.  A government-
ordered retrofit would probably be less successful than Ruger's 10%, since
government involvement might raise fears about gun confiscation or regis-
tration.

     Even assuming that most guns could be retrofit, reliance on a "loaded
indicator" is contrary to safe firearms handling rules.  Using a loaded
indicator legitimates treating a gun as unloaded, and thus engaging in all
sorts of inappropriate behavior, such as pointing the "safe" gun at a person.
The more cautious approach, fostered by safety training, is to treat every
gun as if it were loaded.  Even if a person is certain that a gun is unloaded,
the gun should never be pointed at anyone, except in self-defense.

     Finally, the loaded indicator is meaningless except to persons who have
taken firearms safety classes and been taught its import, or who have careful-
ly read an owner's manual for the gun.  Anyone who has taken a safety class
will have been drilled never to point a gun at a person, and to treat every
gun as loaded.  Anyone who reads the safety manual will have read safety
instructions.  Accordingly, the loaded indicator is a superfluity for the only
population segment which would learn of it.  And of course people who read
safety manuals and take safety classes are the type of people least likely to
cause accidents in the first place.


                        Childproof Devices

     Another gun redesign program suggested by the General Accounting Office
is that all firearms include a device, such as a pressure-sensitive grip,
which could prevent them from being fired by young children.  GAO estimates
that 8% of gun accidents could be prevented by some kind of child-proof device.
(The GAO estimate was probably twice as high as it should be, since the GAO
study included twice as high a percentage of young children as the population
data mandated.)

     Of course a childproof device of any type could only reliably be expected
to deter children under 6 (or thereabouts), who would have neither the strength
nor the ingenuity to defeat a safety device.  Even then, the device might not
work if the child pulled the trigger with a thumb, rather than a finger (as a
child could do if pointing the gun at himself).  Design standard modifications
would be of little benefit in reducing the more common type of childhood gun
accident, that involving pre-teen and older boys.

     During the 1880s, Daniel Baird Wesson, head of the Smith & Wesson gun
company, ordered his engineers to produce a child-proof gun, after he read a
newspaper account of a child killed in a gun accident.  The new gun, with a
safety lever in the grip, and a very hard trigger pull, was brought to market
as the New Departure Model Safety Hammerless.  It is said that one evening Mr.
Wesson was entertaining guests in his mansion, and seeking to demonstrate his
safety innovation, handed a boy a loaded Safety Hammerless and told him "Go
ahead and pull the trigger."  The boy did, and a bullet instantly tore through
an expensive Persian carpet, lodging itself in the floor underneath Mr.
Wesson's feet.

     Although the GAO report builds the case for a recall of all handguns,
child-resistant devices are readily available as after-market items, and can
be easily attached to a gun by a consumer who needs one.

     Interestingly a large number of modern handguns already incorporate
child-resistant design, but these guns are the guns which the anti-gun groups
wish to see banned and confiscated.  Most semiautomatic handguns have a safety
switch, to prevent the gun from being accidentally fired.  Only if the safety
switch is turned off can the trigger mechanism be operated.  In addition, to
load a round into a semiautomatic, a person must pull back on the top part of
the gun (the slide) to chamber the round.  Pulling the slide requires substan-
tial physical force, more than many young children can muster.  And of course
many children will be unaware of how to engage the slide at all, and thus
unable to load the gun.

     Partly because semiautomatic handguns are so accident-resistant, a
loaded, accessible handgun is statistically less likely to be involved in a
fatal accident than a loaded, accessible long gun.

Decisions about Trigger Locks and Similar Devices are Best Made by Each Family

     Many gunowners store their gun with a "trigger lock," a device which
prevents the trigger from being squeezed until the lock is removed with a key.
Other gunowners store their guns in safes, or in "quick-lock" safety boxes
which pop open when a combination of buttons is pressed.  Some gunowners store
their gun separately from their ammunition, or with a critical component (such
as the bolt) removed.  Any of these steps may be a sensible way to deal with
the presence of guns and children in the same house.  NRA safety training
strongly urges that any gun which is kept only for sporting purposes be stored
in a condition so that it cannot be readily fired.

     Does it makes sense legally to mandate such storage conditions?  No. In
the United States, it is generally recognized that it is legitimate to own
firearms for protection.  The United States Constitution and most state
Constitutions guarantee the right to own a gun for defense, and mandatory
trigger locks nullify that right.  A gun which must be locked up may not be
readily available in an emergency.

     Moreover, the circumstances of protection in each individual home are too
variable to mandate any one policy.  A mother of a three-month-old baby, who
lives in a dangerous neighborhood, could safely keep a loaded gun in a bedside
drawer.  When the child grew older, she might store the gun's magazine (the
device containing the ammunition) on a high closet shelf, with the hope that
she could retrieve and insert the magazine if she heard someone breaking into
her home.  If an ex-boyfriend started harassing her by phone, and threatened
to come over that night and kill her, it would be sensible for her to keep the
loaded gun on top of her bedside table while she slept, and even to carry the
gun in holster when she was awake.  No single safety rule, written in the
crime-free confines of a legislative chamber, can determine what the best
practices for gun storage will be in all likely situations.

     In addition, safe storage laws are often vague, and gunowners have diffi-
culty discerning what kind of storage, short of a massive safe, will satisfy
the requirements.  A gun can be hidden, but just as most children can find
hidden Christmas presents, they can eventually find a hidden gun.

     Interestingly, the advocates of requiring all firearms to be locked up do
not propose that parents be forced to lock up, or otherwise render inaccess-
ible to children, substances such as liquor, household cleansers, or automobile
keys.  Every year children die from the poisonous effects of rapid ingestion
of hard liquor and household cleansers, or from attempting to "drive" their
parents' car.  Certainly no adult has a self-defense "need" for rapid access
to an unlocked liquor, cleansers, or car keys.  Is it possible that persons
who want to force all firearms to be locked away are less concerned with
reducing childhood injuring than with attacking legitimate gun ownership?

         Owner liability laws are superfluous, and sometimes cruel

     Another approach to dealing with childhood gun accidents is to enact laws
making the owner of the gun involved in the accident guilty of a crime.  For
example, California makes the offense a three year felony.  Florida, New
Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut, are among the states with similar laws.
These laws are generally superfluous gestures.  Existing laws against reckless
endangerment provide ample authority for prosecution in cases where it is
warranted.

     Does significant good come from handcuffing the grieving parent of a dead
child, and adding even more pain and sorrow to that which the grief-stricken
family must already bear?  Sending the involved adult to prison may satisfy a
social desire for revenge, and may generate newspaper stories warning against
careless behavior.  At the same time, it may be asked whether the brothers and
sisters of the deceased child should also lose their parent to a three-year
prison term.

     Owner liability laws sometimes prevent children from engaging in lawful
self-defense.  In Colorado in 1992, a gunowner liability law was introduced
which would have made a teenage girl and her parents guilty of a crime if the
teenager shot a rapist as he broke into the family's home.


              Harassment lawsuits "succeed" even when they fail

     Lawsuits against gunowners, gun stores, and gun manufacturers have become
a potent tool of anti-gun organizations.  Such suits have met with limited
success to date, since they are based on the theory that the manufacturer knew
that the gun would be a crime weapon, and in fact a very small percentage of
handguns, of any type, are ever used in crime.

     Taking a different tack, Texas attorney Windle Turley sued the Boy Scouts
of America, claiming that the Boy Scouts magazine Boys' Life had enticed a 12-
year-old boy into fatal play with a .22 rifle, because Boys' Life had run a
16-page advertising supplement involving firearms.

     Yet while the anti-gun lawsuits are rarely found to have merit, they
succeed on another level.  Even in cases where the defendant prevails, it must
spend huge sums on defense costs, with no hope of recovering the costs after
the lawsuit has been thrown out.


Safety education is most effective way to continue reducing the accident rate

     When a teenage girl in Colorado found a loaded gun at a friend's house,
picked it up, began playing with it, pointed it at her brother, squeezed the
trigger, and saw her brother die, the children's parent explained, "We talked
to our kids about AIDS, about alcohol, about drugs - but not guns.  In our
wildest dreams, we never thought they'd pick up a gun at a party."  Just as
parents who do not drink and have no alcohol in the house have a responsibil-
ity to teach their children about alcohol, all parents have a responsibility
to teach their children about the dangers of guns.  Similarly, parents who do
not own swimming pools should still "drownproof" their children.

     A third to a half of fatal gun accidents occur outside the child's own
home.  Thus, a parent's removing guns from a home, or never acquiring guns, is
not enough to protect a child from gun accidents.  Since there are 200 million
firearms in the United States, there is a real possibility that a child may at
some point encounter an unattended gun.  "Child-proofing" guns is not an ade-
quately safe approach, since any safety device can be defeated.  What is more
important is to "gun proof" every child.  Every child - whether or not she
lives in a home where guns are present - ought to be taught the fundamentals
of gun safety.

     Only a minority of accidental deaths could be prevented by modifying
gun design.  In contrast, safety education addresses the vast majority of
gun accidents, for about 84% of accidental shootings involve the violation of
basic safety rules.  The owners of guns involved in accidental deaths of
children are unlikely to have received safety training.

     Groups such as the Boy Scouts of America, 4-H, the American Camping
Association, and the National Rifle Association have long instructed children
in the safe use of sporting arms.  Junior target shooting programs and the
like have helped millions of children and teenagers learn that guns must
always be handled with extreme care, according to a strict set of safety
rules, from which no deviation is ever permitted.

     Sadly, some of the groups which complain the most about childhood gun
accidents also complain about programs to prevent such accidents. The misnamed
Educational Fund to End Handgun Violence bemoans the fact that "nearly 23 per-
cent of the accredited camps in the country offer some kind of shooting pro-
gram.  The affiliation of these programs with the National Rifle Association
can run from the camp purchasing badges and certificates from the organization
to a much more involved relationship."

     Programs which teach the safe sporting use of guns are beneficial, but
they can reach only a fraction of the childhood population.  Children of
parents with no interest in the sporting use of firearms will never hear these
safety lessons, and it is these children - ignorant of the actual mechanics of
guns, and bereft of instruction in gun safety - who are most at risk of caus-
ing a gun accident.  Accordingly, it is necessary that gun safety programs be
expanded to reach the broadest group of children possible.

     One successful effort to promote safety training for all children is the
NRA's "Eddie Eagle" Elementary Gun Safety Education Program.  The Eddie Eagle
Program offers curricula for children in grades K-1, 2-3, and 4-6; and uses
teacher-tested materials including an animated video, cartoon workbooks, and
fun safety activities.  The hero, Eddie Eagle, teaches a simple safety lesson:
"If you see a gun:  Stop! Don't Touch.  Leave the Area.  Tell an Adult."  The
Eddie Eagle program is a more elaborate version of the approach taken by the
Pennsylvania Division of the American Trauma Society.  The Trauma Society
gives away a coloring book warning children about various potential dangers;
for firearms, the children are warned, "If you find a gun, don't touch it.
Tell your parents.  Remember - no gun is a toy!"

     Eddie Eagle includes no political content, no statements about the
Second Amendment, and nothing promoting the sporting use of guns.  It has been
adopted in 42 of Florida's 67 counties, and endorsed by the Police Athletic
League.  The Georgia legislature and the Oklahoma City City Council (as well
as some smaller bodies) have enacted resolutions urging schools under their
supervision to adopt the Eddie Eagle program.

     Unfortunately, some anti-gun activists in positions of authority over
school safety programs have refused to allow Eddie Eagle to be used in their
schools, because they disagree with the NRA's position on policy questions.

     While safety education in general would seem to be non-controversial,
some groups actively oppose it.  Some anti-gun advocates warn that safety
education may promote interest in firearms.  While no one has ever studied
whether educating children about guns promotes interest in guns, research of
adult-oriented safety education has not found evidence that education promotes
gun use.

     The American Academy of Pediatrics dismisses safety education, asserting
"No published research confirms effectiveness of gun safety training for
adolescents.  Most preventative gun safety education is directed at hunters
and marksmen, but hunting and target-shooting are a small part of the
adolescent firearms problem."  Thus, claims the AAP, only a complete ban on
handguns can deal with the problem of childhood gun accidents.

     The AAP's point about published research, while technically true, is
meaningless.  No formal research has been done on whether gun safety programs
for children or teenagers reduce gun accidents.  Research involving adult
training has shown that it promotes safer firearms practices for adults.
Based on common sense, most parents believe that education reduces accidents;
that is why schools teach young children about staying out of traffic, and
teach teenagers about how to drive safely.

     Notably, hunter safety programs have been proven to reduce hunting
accidents.  In the last several decades, states have required new hunters (but
not persons who were already hunters) to pass a safety certification class
before being granted a hunting license.  Today, the majority of hunters have
completed safety training, and this group is involved in disproportionately
fewer accidents than hunters without training.  Hunting accident fatalities
have fallen by 75% since the late 1960s, which also suggests that education
programs are helpful.  There is no reason to assume that safety education
suddenly becomes worthless when removed from the hunting context.  The AAP's
anti-education reasoning is equivalent to advocating a ban on swimming pools
because some people may not pay attention to water safety instruction.

     The anti-education attitudes of American gun prohibitionists starkly
contrast with the approaches elsewhere.  In New Zealand, the Mountain Safety
Council (the leading outdoor sports organization), has worked with the police
to produce a pamphlet which promotes responsible gun use by children.  The
booklet observes that "airgun ownership can contribute in a positive way to
growing up."  The Council also publishes, again in conjunction with the po-
lice, a gun safety comic series called "Billy Hook" which teaches children gun
safety rules.  The comic endorses supervised gun use by children. The official
police instruction book for gunowners, the Arms Code, advises parents:  "While
children should not handle a firearm except under the supervision of a fire-
arms license holder, it can ease their curiosity to show them your firearm and
explain that it must never be touched except when you are there."  Over the
last halfcentury, there has been a significant decline in firearms deaths and
injuries in New Zealand, even as the number of guns has soared.

     While schools and other social institutions have an important role to
play in gun safety, the primary responsibility rests with parents.  Children
should learn how to unload guns (a useful skill if a playmate picks up a
loaded gun).  Further, a child who can, under parental supervision, invite a
classmate to shoot a .22 rifle at a target range will be considerably less
awed by the possibility of surreptitiously playing with a friend's father's
old pistol.  Children are endangered by media imagery showing careless gun
handling.  While children can be affected by affirmitive programs which teach
gun responsibility, they can also be influenced by media images which glamorize
recklessness.

     Consider a child whose exposure to firearms consists of television
imagery.  Studies have shown that even very young children learn skills by
watching television demonstrations.  What do children learn about guns from
television?  That the first thing you do when you get a gun is to put your
finger on the trigger, and then point the gun at someone.  These television
demonstrations violate two key gun safety rules: keep your finger off the
trigger unless you are ready to shoot; and never point a gun at another person
(except in self-defense).

     While the media can at least claim to be ignorant of actual gun safety
rules, the anti-gun organizations have less excuse.  No matter how important
a lobbying group believes its political goals to be, those goals should not
be furthered through advertising which directly endangers children.  One of
the most famous posters of the anti-gun movement shows a baby looking down
the barrel of a gun.  Even presuming that the gun was unloaded (or was an
imitation gun) the baby/victim in the poster has been taught that looking
down the barrel of a gun is interesting.  And so have all the children who
see that poster.

     The poster was also extremely misleading in its attempt to create an
image of a widespread and frequent problem.  About one child under the age
of one dies in a gun accident in an average year.


  Social intervention is needed to deal with suicides disguised as accidents.

     Education can further reduce the already low number of accidents
involving younger children.  Most of these accidents result from ignorance
of elementary safety rules.

     For some of the older teenagers and adults involved in accidents, the
problem is less one of ignorance than of extreme recklessness. Older teenagers
involved in firearms accidents tend to be like adults involved in firearms
accidents, and both groups are quite unlike the rest of the population.  They
are "disproportionately involved in other accidents, violent crime and heavy
drinking."  Without guns, they would likely find some other way to kill them-
selves "accidentally", such as by reckless driving.  Indeed, they tend to have
a record of reckless driving and automobile accidents.  Accordingly, social
strategies that deal with the root conditions that make some people suicidally
reckless with various dangerous objects would be the most effective approach
to dealing with accidents involving older teenagers and adults.

     The problem of gun accidents which are in essence suicide is taken up in
the next section, which discusses teenagers and firearms suicide.  The problem
of genuine gun accidents involving children is, fortunately, relatively small.
Sensible safety programs can make it even smaller.

                      Suicide: Are Guns the Cause?

     "Teen-agers in homes with guns are 75 times more likely to kill them-
selves than teenagers living in homes without guns," claims Washington Post
columnist Richard Reeves.  The figure has no basis in fact, and has been
disavowed by its original source; but it does have an interesting genesis,
which illustrates how readily factoids blossom in the gun control debate,
and how they can survive even repudiation by their creators.

     In an article for the Journal of the American Medical Association, a pair
of authors studied western Pennsylvania homes where there had been a teenage
suicide, an attempted teenage suicide, or a non-suicidal teenager who had been
admitted to psychiatric hospital. A home with a teenager who had committed
suicide was twice as likely to contain a gun as was a home where a teenager
had attempted suicide or where a teenager with a psychiatric problem lived.
The study did not analyze any homes where teenagers without psychiatric/
suicide problems lived.

     Nothing in the study had analyzed normal teenagers, or the risks associ-
ated with gun availability to non-mentally-ill teenagers.  In an editorial
accompanying the article, three employees of the federal Centers for Disease
Control wrote:  "the odds that potential suicidal adolescents will kill them-
selves go up 75-fold when a gun is kept in the home."  But nothing in the
article supported a "75-fold" claim.  In fact, the article suggested that the
risk could increase more than two-fold.  The Journal later published a retrac-
tion stating that instead of "75-fold", the editorial should have said "more
than double."  And in any case, the data did not reveal anything about normal
teenagers.

     Unfortunately, anti-gun advocates who noticed the incorrect "75-fold"
claim do not appear to have noticed Journal's correction.  Senator John Chafee
(R-RI), the prime sponsor of a bill to confiscate all handguns, repeated the
"75-fold" figure to a Congressional committee.  And columnist Reeves took the
figure one step further, by telling his readers that the "75-fold" figure ap-
plies to all teenagers, rather than only to the severely troubled teenagers
that the Journal article had studied.  Over ninety percent of persons who com-
mit suicide have a psychiatric illness at the time of their act.

     Yet while suicides are usually committed by persons with mental illnesses,
it is also true that a large percentage of adolescents report planning a sui-
cide (19%), and a significant percentage claim to have actually attempted
suicide (7%).  Accordingly, cautious parents of teenagers may well choose to
keep their guns locked and disassembled, even if their teenagers do not suffer
from mental illness.  But is the research evidence about suicide strong enough
for legislatures to turn every parent who has a teenager and a handgun in the
same home into a criminal?  Or to force every gun be locked up, regardless of
the particular families' circumstances?  A careful review of the evidence sug-
gests not.

     First of all, gun prohibition advocates' leap from data regarding
mentally ill teenagers to conclusions about teenagers as a whole is illogical.
By analogy, it is likely true that convicted felons who own cars are more
likely to commit bank robberies than those who have less access to ready means
of escape.  Such a finding would demonstrate that cars facilitate robbery (as
guns can facilitate suicide).  The car and robbery information might suggest
prophylactic legislation such as cross-referencing automobile ownership and
felony records, or even restrictions on felons owning cars.  But the informa-
tion would not suggest that any such law would have a significant impact in
reducing robbery, or that cars "cause" robbery, or that law-abiding citizens
should be forbidden to own cars.

     Senator Chafee and Mr. Reeves are not the only persons who have gotten
confused about the data regarding teenage gun suicide.  The American Academy
of Pediatrics told a Congressional Committee, "Every three hours, a teenager
commits suicide with a handgun."  The Educational Fund to End Gun Violence,
and Handgun Control, Inc. also repeat the "every three hours" figure, although
they claim the figure is for "firearms" rather than just handguns.  But the
"every three hours" figure is correct only if one counts all suicides, not
just gun suicides, or if one calls every person under age 25 a "teenager."
The teenage gun suicide rate is only half what the anti-gun organizations
contend.

     Gun prohibition advocates insist that America is suffering a teenage
suicide epidemic.  In 1992, the American Academy of Pediatrics endorsed a
handgun ban while claiming "Adolescent suicides are rising sharply, and most
involve handguns."

     In fact, youth suicides are not rising sharply.  The youth suicide rate
has been relatively stable during the 1980s and 1990s, after rising sharply
in the 1960s and 1970s.

     The data suggest that nothing happening in recent years regarding youth
suicide should encourage hasty measures based on panic about a "sudden"
crisis.  As Dr. L.D. Hankoff, of the New Jersey Medical Center wrote in the
Journal of the American Medical Association:

     While there has been a rise in youth suicide in the past two decades,
     the rates for ages 15 to 24 are lower than for any older age group. It
     is important to take the long view of what may appear as an epidemic.
     The suicide rate of persons 15 to 24 took a sharp rise around 1905 and
     dropped off sharply by 1920, and there is a suggestion that the rate in
     that group has begun to level off now after a peak increase. More impor-
     tantly, the rush to school-based programs for youth suicide prevention
     has lacked an empirical base, produced no measurable benefit, and
     consumed precious health care resources.

     During the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, when teenage
suicide was rising, most of the increasing suicide rate was attributable to
gun suicides.  Accordingly, some physicians have contended that increasing
handgun availability is associated with increased teenage suicide.

     But the data do not necessarily support this conclusion. The rise in
teenage suicide began before handgun availability began to rise sharply. When
the rate of handgun increase was at its highest - in 1980 - teenage suicide
had leveled off.  The percentage of guns involved in teenage suicides has
remained stable since the mid-1970s.

     Moreover, the evidence does not support the conclusion that gun control
will reduce suicide.  The increase in teenage suicide with firearms that
occurred in the late 1960s and the first part of the next decade occurred at
the same time as the greatest increase in gun control laws in American history.
Congress outlawed interstate gun sales (with a few exceptions), required that
all guns be registered at the point of sale, and banned the import of cheap
handguns. Sales of handguns to persons under 21 were prohibited, as were sales
of any gun to persons under 18.  At the same time, many states and cities
enacted substantially more restrictive laws, with the laws falling most
heavily on handguns, the gun used most in suicide.

     Some researchers believe that removing one method of suicide can lower
the overall suicide rate.  Other researchers believe that removing one means
will simply result in potential suicides choosing another means.  One of the
most famous efforts to remove a means of suicide has been the detoxification
of household gas.  Some researchers have found a major life-saving effect from
the detoxification, while other researchers have found no impact at all.

     In regards to firearms, the research becomes even more difficult, for no
American community has ever completely removed firearms, the way many commun-
ities could completely remove toxic household gas.  (Since household gas is
must be continuously supplied from a central source, gas is much easier than
guns, which are privately owned.)


     Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck (a liberal Democrat and
an ACLU member), analyzed gun control laws and suicide rates in every American
city with a population over 100,000.  Cross-tabulating the various cities to
account for all the factors that might affect suicide, such as race (whites
are more likely to be suicides), religion (Catholics are less likely), econom-
ic circumstances, and 19 gun control laws, ranging from waiting periods to
handgun bans, Kleck found no statistically significant evidence that any of
the gun control laws affected the suicide rate.

     Data from other countries appear to support Kleck's conclusion that gun
control is not an effective method for reducing suicide.  While teenage
suicide has remained stable in the U.S. in the last 15 years, teenage suicide
has risen sharply in Europe, where gun control is much stricter.  In Great
Britain, where gun control laws are extremely severe, and the gun ownership
rate is less than 1/10th of that in America, adolescent suicide has risen by
more than 25% in just five years.

     Similarly, Japan outlaws handguns and rifles, and makes shotguns
extremely difficult to obtain.  Yet teenage suicide is 30% more frequent in
Japan than in America.

     Perhaps one reason that gun controls do not reduce suicide is that
equally lethal methods are commonly available.  Hanging, carbon monoxide
auto exhaust gas, and drowning are all about as likely as guns to result in
a "successful" suicide.

     Canadian gun controls are sometimes cited as having reduced suicide,
although the evidence is not so clear as gun prohibitionists contend.  In
1977, Canada enacted a law requiring a person wishing to buy a long gun to
acquire a government license.  Handguns were already subject to a fairly
strict licensing system.  According to a Canadian government study, suicides
involving firearms dropped noticeably after 1978, reversing the previous
trend.  Unfortunately, the overall Canadian suicide rate increased slightly.
America's suicide rate declined slightly in the same period (while American
gun control laws were being relaxed).

     One study in the New England Journal of Medicine compared the suicide
rates of Seattle and Vancouver.  While Seattle's handgun suicide rate was
five times higher than Vancouver's, Vancouver's overall suicide was greater.
The suicide rate in Vancouver was higher for all age groups except one. That
one group was persons aged 15-24.  In reporting the research, the authors
emphasized the lower youth suicide rate in Vancouver.  The authors asserted
that gun control might reduce young people's suicide, even if it had no
overall effect on total suicide rates.

     Logically speaking, the study's assertion was untenable.  The fact that
Vancouver has stricter gun laws and a lower teenage suicide rate does not
prove that the strict laws caused the low youth suicide rate.  The error is
referred to as Argument from False Cause.  To say:  "Vancouver has severe gun
laws, and Vancouver has a lower youth suicide rate.  Therefore, gun laws
reduce youth suicide," is no more logical than to say:  "New York City has
more churches than any other American city; New York City has more crime than
any other American city.  Therefore, churches cause crime."  It would have
been just as (il)logical to say "Vancouver has strict gun laws; Vancouver has
a higher suicide rate in most age groups.  Therefore strict gun laws cause
suicide."

     The simplistic assertion that strict gun control somehow lowered the
Vancouver youth suicide, while having no responsibility for the higher suicide
rates in other age groups, was hardly persuasive.  The assertion about the
benefit of Vancouver's stricter laws was further undermined by the fact that
at the time of the study, gun controls in Canada for teenagers were actually
less formally restrictive than American laws for teenagers.

     Although the New England Journal article received extensive media
publicity, another study which came out the same year was little noticed
outside of scholarly circles.  That study analyzed suicide rates in Toronto
and San Diego.

     The Toronto portion of the study found that the 1977 Canadian gun laws
had decreased firearms suicide by men.  The San Diego portion of the study
looked only at mental patients, who are forbidden by California law to possess
guns, and also found that the law reduces firearms suicide by men.  (The
firearms suicide rate for women was already low.)  But while firearms suicide
in Toronto and San Diego declined, suicide did not.  "[T]he difference was
apparently offset by an increase in suicide by leaping."

     The Canadian data are consistent with American data, which show that
areas with fewer guns do have fewer gun suicides - but they do not have
overall lower suicide rates.

     In sum, the assertion that gun control is a sure method of reducing
teenage suicide is not nearly as certain as the gun prohibition lobbies
insist.  Too often, the difficult topic of teenage suicide is made even more
difficult by the introduction of erroneous statistics and sloppy research.


                 Carrying of Guns at School and on the Streets


     The Number of Teenagers who Carry Guns to School is Far Lower than
     Commonly Claimed

     Every day 135,000 children carry guns to school, we are informed by the
American Bar Association, by Senators Joseph Biden and Christopher Dodd (who
raises the ante to "186,000"), and by USA Today.  A frightening figure to be
sure, but, again, one that is not true.

     The figure appears to be loosely extrapolated from Centers for Disease
Control surveys asking children if they carried a gun for protection in the
last 30 days.  The estimate of 135,000 assumes that every child who said
"yes" carried a gun to school every day.  In fact, the data suggested that
most of the students did not carry a gun every day, but only occasionally.
And as the summary of the report explained, "Students were not asked if they
carried weapons onto school grounds."  Accordingly, the "yes" answers applied
to occasional carrying anywhere, such as in an automobile when driving at
night in dangerous neighborhoods.  Accordingly, Florida State University
criminologist Gary Kleck estimates that, realistically, about 16,000 to 17,000
students carry a gun to school on a given day.  The figure translates into
about 1 in every 800 high school students.

     It is sometimes said that there has been a large increase in the number
of weapons found on school grounds.  What has clearly increased is the number
of metal detectors, locker searches, and other searches for student weapons.
An increase in searches will inevitably lead to an increase in reports of an
object being found.  For example, the year before airport passenger screening
was established, no explosive devices were found in airports.  The next year,
with screening in place, there was a large "increase" in the number of explo-
sives found.  Were more people carrying explosives?  More likely, more people
were just getting caught.


             Teenagers are often Crime Victims, even at School

     Teenagers are more likely than other Americans to be the victims of vio-
lent crime. In 1986, one out six persons aged 12-19 was the victim of a street
crime, compared to one of nine adult Americans.  Youths are twice as likely to
be assaulted, robbed, or raped as are adults.  In a six-month period in 1988-
89, more than 400,000 students were victims of violent crimes at school.  An
Illinois survey found that 1 in 12 public high school students was the victim
of a physical attack at school, or on the way to or from school.  About the
same number (1 in 12), sometimes stayed home from school because of fear of
physical attack.  Interestingly, although teenagers are more likely to be
crime victims, they regularly carry firearms for protection at only about 1/3
the rate of older population groups, who are less likely to be crime victims.

        Most Gun Carrying by Teenagers is for Legitimate Protection

     While anti-gun officials may sometimes insist that there is never any
legitimate reason for anyone under 18 to possess a gun, teenagers may possess
firearms for the same legitimate reasons that older persons do.  Foremost
among these reasons is self-defense.  "A lot of parents in my district are
telling their children to carry weapons", observed the superintendent of a
Brooklyn public school.  "They give their children weapons to protect them-
selves when they leave the tenements".  Or as one student wrote to the
Washington Post:

     To put it bluntly, I think students bring weapons to school to save
     their own lives.  They have a constant fear of being attacked, whether
     for money, for drugs, or for some other reason.  They feel they need
     to bring a weapon with them to school.  To the outsider, this infor-
     mation may seem all blown out of proportion, or just a plain lie. The
     truth is that there are drugs in the schools.  There are kids robbing
     other kids of their money and personal belongings.  And these kids who
     are committing these crimes also carry weapons such as knives and hand-
     guns and they are not afraid to use them.  There's no doubt that we
     have a serious problem on our hands. I just hope we can find some way
     to solve it.

     National statistics suggest that at least 90 percent of students who
carry guns to school carry for legitimate protection.  In 1986, there were
about 1,700 armed crimes in which the criminal used a gun in American schools.
If it is assumed that each crime was perpetrated by a different armed criminal,
and that each armed criminal was a student, then about 1,700 students perpe-
trated a crime with a firearm at school.  In actuality, the number of fire-
armed-criminals is likely lower, since some criminals committed more than one
crime, and some of the criminals were not students.

     In addition, let us make the conservative assumption that only 16,000 or
17,000 students ever carry a gun to school. The 16-17,000 figure is the real-
istic estimate of the number of students who carry a gun to school on a given
day.  Since not every person who carries a gun carries it every day, the 16-
17,000 figure underestimates the total number of students who carry a gun to
school sometime during the year.

     Making these two conservative assumptions - which artificially maximize
the number of students assumed to be criminals, and artificially minimize the
total number of students carrying guns - we find that only about 10% of the
students carrying guns (1,700 out of 16,000 or 17,000) commit crimes with
them.  In other words, at least 90% of the students carrying guns to school
do so for legitimate, non-criminal purposes.

     If we use the figure supplied by gun prohibition advocates - 135,000
students carrying a gun to school each day - then the number of students
carrying for criminal purposes drops to less than 2% of the number of students
carrying.

     The statistical analysis is supported by a recent in-depth study of
the weapons-carrying behavior of male students in inner-city schools in
California, Illinois, Louisiana, and New Jersey.  The survey also surveyed
incarcerated juvenile males in those states.  For both the schoolchildren
and the teenagers in jail, the study found that "Carrying a gun has become
strictly functional behavior meant to support survival."

     There were important differences between the students and criminal
sample. For example, when asked, "Do you carry a gun all/most of the time?"
fifty-five percent of the inmates said "yes," but only 12% of the students.

     For both groups, obtaining a firearm was seen as easy.  Only 13% of the
inmates and 35% of the students said that obtaining a gun on the street is
difficult.  Asked of they could "get a gun with little/no trouble?" 87% of
the inmates, and 65% of the students said "yes."

     While some researchers have asserted that the reason so many teenagers
have access to firearms is that their parents leave guns unlocked, the study
found that parents, gun stores, and other sources subject to law enforcement
controls did not appear to be major sources of the firearms.  One researcher
noted, "They told us with humor how easy it was to steal a gun."  Many of the
guns were obtained for far less than their retail price, indicating that they
were stolen.  Cars were considered easy targets for stealing a gun.

     Contrary to the assertion of some gun control advocates that small, cheap
handguns (so-called "Saturday Night Specials") are responsible for modern
youth being armed, the researchers found that among the criminals, "The
preference, clearly, was for high-powered hand weapons that are well-made,
accurate, easy to shoot and not easily traced - guns suitable for serious work
against well-armed adversaries."

     For both students and inmates, protection was the leading reason for
obtaining a gun, "easily outpacing all other motivations."  As other research-
ers have reported, self-defense by victims was common.  For example, 70% of
the inmates had been "scared off, shot at, wounded or captured" by an armed
victim at least once.


     Guns at School are a Symptom of the Violent Conditions of Many Cities

     While the fact that any gun crimes are committed at school is awful, as
is the fact that so many students feel they need to carry a firearm for pro-
tection, guns play a relatively small role in the overall problem of violence
in school.  In 1986, for example, there were 41,500 aggravated assaults in
schools, and 44,000 robberies.  Firearms were used in 1,700 of these crimes -
a little under 2 percent.  Thus, even a program which eradicated all guns from
school (and prevented their perpetrators from using alternative means), would
fail to deal with the 98% of violent felonies at school that do not involve
firearms.

     To focus on "guns in school" is to miss the larger picture of the violent
communities that spawn violent students.  And to focus only on one instrument
of violence, the gun, is to begin the search for gun control laws which have a
superficial appeal, but will do nothing to remove the causes of violence.  As
Dr. Joseph Sheley and his co-authors wrote in the American Journal of Diseases
of Children, after presenting their findings about violence involving inner-
city high school students:

     It is clear that the problem of violence in inner city schools cannot
     be isolated from the problems of violence in larger society; violent
     neighborhoods and violent communities will produce violent schools,
     whatever measures the schools themselves adopt.  It is equally clear
     that this "larger" problem will not yield to simplistic, unicausal
     solutions.  In this connection, it is useful to point out that every-
     thing that leads to gun-related violence is already against the law.
     What is needed are not new and more stringent gun laws but rather a
     concerted effort to rebuild the social structure of inner cities.

     Another commentator traces school violence to the coercion and regimenta-
tion prevalent at so many schools today.

     It is horrific that any students in and around American schools feel a
need to arm for protection.  The solution to the problem is not to disarm the
victims who are trying to protect themselves, but to take actions against the
violent aggressors who threaten the students, and the conditions that breed
the violent aggressors.

     The great majority of students carrying weapons to school are not bad
kids.  A 17 year old female has just as much moral right to use a firearm to
resist a rapist as does a 40 year old female.  A 16 year old male has the same
right to escape crippling assault by a gang of thugs as does a 60 year old
male.  The students who carry weapons are simply coping with a terrible situa-
tion which they do not have any other idea how to deal with.

     It is irresponsible - indeed childish - for adults who fixate on guns to
say, in effect, "We haven't got any solution for your problems, so we are just
going to take away the only solution you could figure out and leave you on
your own to figure out some other solution."

     It is also hopelessly impractical.  A society which cannot protect child-
ren from rampant crime is also unlikely to be able to disarm them.  Moreover,
the only result of disarming students while failing to offer alternative means
of protection would be to drive them into gangs for self-protection.  And the
result of that will be not that they eschew guns, but rather that they are
exposed by their peers to guns and drugs together.


                       Two Solutions that Won't Work

"Gun-Free School Zones"

     The catchy legislation for "Gun-Free School Zones" is a lineal descendant
of the "Nuclear-Free Zones."  In the nuclear-free zones movement, pacifist
city councils, as well as trendy colleges and prep schools, voted to declare
themselves "nuclear free zones," and outlaw the placement of nuclear missiles
and nuclear research within their boundaries.  The premise of nuclear-free
zones was that by declaring themselves above the cold war, cities or schools
could escape its effects.  But of course the nuclear-free zones were merely
symbolic gestures, which offered the appearance of peace, without doing any-
thing to remove the causes of nuclear tension, such as the totalitarian system
in the Soviet Union.

     Advocates of "gun-free school zones" suffer from a similar myopia.  Their
premise is that schools can become safe merely by the legislative declaration
that they are a gun-free zone.  Until legislatures and the rest of the commun-
ity begin addressing the root causes of why students (and many teachers) feel
a need to carry a firearm for protection, the schools will remain as violent
as ever.

     In some cases, a bill for a "gun-free school zone" may impose a weapons
prohibition far more sweeping than its innocuous title suggests.  For example,
a "gun-free school zone" proposal in Maryland would have outlawed the posses-
sion of kitchen knives in private homes within a thousand feet of a school.

     Maryland did enact a narrower bill, but even that legislation criminal-
ized innocent behavior.  One of the more celebrated prosecutions involved a
popular music teacher who inadvertently left a .22 caliber pistol on the floor
of her car when she parked in her high school's parking lot one day.  She was
suspended without pay for two months, and forced to plead guilty to a misde-
meanor in order to avoid felony charges.  The students in her school were
deprived of one of their best teachers, and the limited resources of the
county's criminal justice system were expended to punish a good citizen who
was no threat at all to public safety.

     The tendency to expand "gun-free school zones" beyond school property
raises problems of its own.  The typical distance for expanded "gun-free
school zones" is a 1,000 foot radius around school property (including non-
academic investment property, or property owned by correspondence schools).
The school zone bills never require that signs making citizens aware of the
school zone be posted.  To the contrary, if "gun-free school zone" signs are
posted at all, they are posted on school buildings - creating the misleading
impression that the school zone ends where school property does.  In addition,
many schools have an "End School Zone" sign (for traffic purposes) quite close
to the school - again creating the impression that laws relating to school
zones apply only in and around the school.

     While purporting to deal only with safety near schools, the 1,000-foot
bills may radically alter existing law regarding the carrying of firearms.
Many states, such as Colorado, allow a loaded firearm to be carried in an
automobile for protection.  The thousand-foot school zone bill would abolish
that right, except in open space areas a thousand feet from any school.

     Whether states should outlaw the carrying of firearms in private auto-
mobiles for protection is the subject of the legitimate debate - but that
debate should occur in the context of a bill which directly announces its
intention to abolish self-protection carrying - not in a bill which claims to
deal only with school safety.

     While there may be a legitimate policy debate about turning unlicensed
firearms carrying into a felony, that debate should stand on its own terms,
and not be submerged in a bill whose title relates only to school safety.

     The fiscal impact of felonizing a frequently-committed act is likely to
be heavy. In times of budgetary constraint, when state governments are having
trouble keeping violent felons in state prison, it may be asked whether it is
wise to create an entirely new class of non-violent felons-whose only offense
is to carry a firearm for protection hundreds of feet away from any school,
in an unmarked "school zone."


                        Metal Detectors in School

     The effective use of metal detectors requires a large number of security
officers, since huge numbers of students have to be scanned in a short time.
A high school of 3,000-4,000 students requires 20 officers to scan and to
monitor doors.  The detectors cost $3,000 to $7,000 each for the walk-through
detectors, and $15,000 for an x-ray machine for bags and purses.  Salaries
for the personnel to run them may be an even larger expense.

     Besides being expensive, metal detectors may be illegal.  While the U.S.
Supreme Court has ruled that students may be searched based on individualized
"reasonable suspicion" (in contrast to the "probable cause" standard for
adults),  there is no Constitutional authorization for mass searches of indi-
viduals without any suspicion at all.

     Although the courts have upheld the use of metal detectors at airports,
the searches have been justified on the grounds that the passenger can avoid
the search by checking baggage rather than carrying it in the passenger com-
partment, or by traveling through some other means.  In contrast, attendance
at public school is not voluntary; it is required by government.

     Despite the arguments that might be offered based on the actual words
of the Constitution, California Attorney General Dan Lungren (who has helped
raise funds for gun control organizations) has issued an attorney general
opinion finding that metal detectors are Constitutional, and encouraging
their use.

     Widespread use of metal detectors in school acts as a kind of social
conditioning that poses a serious threat to the Fourth Amendment right to
freedom from searches without probable cause.  Searching a teenager's purse,
or making her walk through a metal detector several times a day, is hardly
likely to instill much faith in the importance of civil liberties.  Indeed,
students conditioned to searches without any suspicion at all in high school
are unlikely to resist such searches when they become adults.

     And just as metal detectors have moved from airports into schools, there
will be pressure to move them from schools into the streets.  The Police
Foundation, one of the leading supporters of metal detectors in schools,
advocates abolishing citizen handgun ownership (but not for the police), and
has urged that metal detectors be set up on streets and other public places.

     Putting aside Constitutional scruples, it is simply unjust for the state
to compel a student to attend school, fail to provide a safe environment at
school or on the way to school, and then prohibit the student from protecting
himself or herself.

     Perhaps the most harmful effect of the metal detectors is their debili-
tating message that a community must rely on paid security guards and their
hardware in order to be secure.  It does not take much imagination to figure
out how to pass a weapon past a low-wage security guard, with trickery or
bribery.  Once past the guard, weapons could simply be stored at school.

     Instead of relying on technology to solve social problems, the better
solution would be to mobilize students and teachers inside the school.  A
first step is to ensure that responsible adults are assigned to monitor play-
grounds and other areas where trouble is possible.

     Another step would be for school administrations to foster volunteer
student patrols, which would change the balance of power in the schoolyard,
ending the reign of terror of outside intruders and gangs.  In Israel, the
police operate a volunteer armed citizen patrol called the "Civil Guards,"
which patrols dangerous neighborhoods at night; many of the volunteers are
high school students who, after a short period of training, are issued fire-
arms, like any other volunteer.

     If Israel can give its high school students firearms with which to con-
duct civil patrols, surely it is not asking too much for American high school
administrators to allow their own students to form voluntary, supervised, un-
armed patrols.  The idea of voluntary patrols, while perhaps radical in some
eyes, is much more firmly rooted in American traditions of community self-help
and responsibility than are metal detectors, a technological fix that will
radically undermine traditional standards of privacy, while doing little to
promote real safety.


                        Two Novel Approaches

Drop Some Drop-out Laws

     On an experimental basis, mandatory attendance laws for older high school
students should be reconsidered.  Schools, after all, should not be modeled
after prisons.  Forcing students who do not want to learn to be present on
school premises anyway may do little good for the student, and may cause sub-
stantial trouble for the students who do want to learn.

     The most common objection to re-examining truancy laws is that letting
the older teenager out of school merely transfers the problem from the school
to the street.  But on the street, the drop-out will have no opportunity to
disrupt the peaceful education of dozens of other children every day.  For at
least some drop-outs, the experience away from school might prove a sobering
experience, and awaken an interest in the benefits that school attendance can
provide. Other drop-outs might pass their days more happily and usefully work-
ing at a convenience store or loading dock than passing time in an overcrowded
classroom from which they would graduate functionally illiterate.

     Of course some teenagers will waste their lives out of school with as
much determination as they wasted their lives while in school.  But at least
they will not prevent dozens of other students from learning.

Let Poor People Choose Their Own Schools

     What could be more unfair than being forced into a dangerous situation,
denied effective protection by the government, and then forbidden by the
government to protect oneself?  That is the situation many thousands of public
school students face every day.  Parents who are wealthy, such as Bill and
Hillary Clinton, rarely send their children to the dysfunctional, dangerous
public schools of cities such as Washington, D.C.  Is it fair that poorer
families do not have the same choice?

     Many inner-city parochial and private schools educate children who are
just as disadvantaged as the children in the nearby government schools.  Yet
violence in these schools is virtually unknown.  Schools that are run by
principals, parents, and teachers - rather than by distant bureaucracies -
have proven time and again that even in the most difficult circumstances,
children can be provided a good education in a safe environment.

     Wisconsin State Representative Polly Williams, sponsor of a successful
choice program for disadvantaged students in Milwaukee, notes that a number
of problem children from the Milwaukee government schools have turned into
well-behaved students in alternative schools.

     The students who are "left behind" in the government schools (by parents
who did not choose an alternative school) will be better off too.  For the
first time, the school administration will have to deal with students and
parents as clients who must be offered good reasons for choosing the govern-
ment school - rather than as a captive source of tax revenue subject to being
hauled into school by the police.

     There are many proposals for choice in education, including charter
schools, choice plans allowing parents to select any government school in a
particular district, and choice plans allowing parents to select government or
non-government schools.  Choice will not solve everything, but it can play a
major role in improving our school system.  Not only can choice help resolve
the immediate problem of violence in government schools, choice can raise the
overall level of learning, thereby improving economic opportunities, and
making a substantial long-term contribution to addressing the root causes of
hopelessness and violence.


                        Crime: The Inner City Crisis

     One of the central strategies of the gun prohibition advocates has been
to tell Americans that they are all in immediate peril of gun violence.  The
strategy may involve exaggerating the rate of gun accidents, or announcing an
epidemic of suicide among mentally healthy teenagers - caused by gun availa-
bility.  Or the strategy may attempt to place Americans in fear of gun crime.
For example, Fortune magazine touts handgun prohibition while warning its
wealthy readership that the recent rise in youth homicide puts all Americans
at imminent risk, for "this onslaught of childhood violence knows no boundaries
of race, geography, or class."  The Journal of the American Medical Associa-
tion insists "It's not limited to the inner city."

     To the contrary, the problem of youth homicide is very heavily concen-
trated in Black males aged 15-19.  That fact, of course, is no reason to be
less concerned about the youth homicide problem.  Since many problems, includ-
ing violence, suffered by the urban Black community are the long-term result
of governmental and societal racism, the moral obligation for all Americans
to respond to the crisis is all the greater.  In order to respond effectively
to the crisis, we must, however, attempt to understand its nature, and must
not be misled by the efforts of some gun prohibition advocates to distract
attention from the most important factor in any homicide:  the motivations of
the person perpetrating the crime.

     For inner-city black teenagers, the homicide rate is astronomical.  The
huge rise in gun crime perpetrated by older urban teenagers has not been
replicated in other areas.  In the suburbs, where legal restrictions on guns
are generally less severe, the mortality rate has stayed about the same.

     Gun control advocates sometimes convey the impression that current
murder rates are dramatically higher than ever before.  And if one looks at
statistics for particular age groups, one finds a substantial rise in murder
arrests.  From 1985 to 1991, arrests for adults for murder declined, but
arrests for murder of 17 year old males rose 121%; arrests of 16 year old
males rose 158%; arrests of 15 year old males rose 217%; and arrests of boys
12 and under rose 100%.


     But it is important to note that the American homicide rate is still
reasonably stable.  The homicide rate has stayed at about 9 or 10 homicides
per 100,000 population for the last three decades.  And happily, preliminary
major city figures indicate that most cities saw a leveling off of homicide
rates in 1992.  Analysis of homicide figures should also keep in mind that
roughly 7 to 13% of American firearms homicides involve legitimate defense
against criminal attack.

     While homicide overall is stable, homicides among youths have definitely
risen.  To look simply at the category "youth," however, is to miss the real
story.  The white youth homicide arrest rate has remained stable, while the
black rate has skyrocketed.  The murder arrest rate of whites aged 10 to 17
was the same in the 1989 as in 1980 (having dipped in the middle of the decade,
and then risen to its former level).  But whereas in the 1980 the black arrest
rate was four times the white rate, by 1989 the black rate was eight times the
white rate.

     The conflation of black and white crime statistics is, incidentally, a
common tactic of gun control advocates.  The conflation produces the erroneous
impression of a widespread serious problem with gun crime, rather than of a
disastrous problem with gun crime among racial minorities.  For example, Dr.
Katherine Christoffel, of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told Congress,
"A resident of Seattle is five times likelier to be murdered with a handgun
than is a resident of Vancouver, just 140 miles to the north."  Actually, a
white resident of Seattle is at no greater risk of gun violence than a white
resident of Vancouver, despite Vancouver's more restrictive gun laws.  A Black
or Hispanic resident of Seattle, however, faces a much higher risk of gun
violence.  (There are few Blacks or Hispanics in Vancouver.)

     All this is not to say that America does not have a serious homicide
problem.  But America cannot begin addressing the murder problem without a
realistic understanding of the issue.  The crisis of America's rising teenage
murder rate is directly linked to the crisis of America's inner-city Black
youth.  Unless the problems of inner city are addressed, the murder crisis
will continue.


              Are Guns the Cause of the Rising Homicide Rate?

     Some public officials argue that the problem of teenage homicide is
directly related to the availability of firearms.  In a narrow sense the argu-
ment is accurate, because the majority of murders are committed with guns.

     Yet it is not accurate to claim that there is a correlation between the
availability of guns and the frequency of homicide.  If there is any relation-
ship between gun density and homicide in the United States, it is an inverse
one.  In other words, the regions with the most guns are the regions with the
lowest homicide rates.  And while whites are have a higher rate of gun owner-
ship than blacks, they have a much lower homicide rate.  Time periods in which
gun ownership increases heavily are not necessarily periods when homicide
rates increase; conversely, periods of increasing homicide are not necessarily
periods of increasing gun ownership.  For example, while homicide rates were
rising in the late 1980s, firearms sales were stagnant.

     The fact that American homicide rates are often lowest among regions and
population groups where gun ownership is highest should at least give pause
to theorists who insist that gun prohibition is the only rational response
to rising murder rates.  Professor Hans Toch, of the State University of New
York's School of Criminology served, in the late 1960s, on the Eisenhower
Commission, whose purpose was to investigate the causes and cures of American
violence.  Professor Toch fully endorsed the Commission's conclusion that
"reducing the availability of the handgun will reduce firearms violence."
(emphasis in original).  But based on modern research, Professor Toch has
found:

     when used for protection, firearms can seriously inhibit aggression
     and can provide a psychological buffer against the fear of crime.
     Furthermore, the fact that national patterns show little violent
     crime where guns are most dense implies that guns do not elicit
     aggression in any meaningful way. Quite the contrary, these find-
     ings suggest that high saturations of guns in places, or something
     correlated with that condition, inhibit illegal aggression.

One way in which high density of guns can, as Professor Toch concludes, be
associated with lower levels of violence is that armed citizens provide a
substantial deterrent to criminals.  (See discussion on Page 9.)

     Another, perhaps more important factor in the association of high gun
ownership rates with low crime rates is that American areas with the highest
rate of gun ownership tend to be rural and small-town.  In rural and small-
town America, family structures are relatively strong, and communities are
often more stable and unified.  Thus, the problem of violence in American
inner cities may have less to do with the fact that guns are available there
(as they are everywhere else) than with the fact that so many families are
dysfunctional, and that so little sense of community can be found.

     Whatever may be said about rates of gun ownership in America, it is
obvious that America has more guns - and more gun murders  than other indus-
trial democracies.  As a widely-reported study by Centers for Disease Control
researchers noted, the American murder rate for teenagers is much higher than
the rate in most industrial countries, where gun control laws are generally
stricter.  The researchers concluded that the United States need tougher gun
laws.

     While the authors of the study did an excellent job of compiling data
(as they have done on other studies), their conclusion that the international
data proved that America's gun laws were the cause of its high teenage homi-
cide rate was perhaps overstated.

     For example, England has harsh gun laws and a low homicide rate, but the
historical evidence seems to show no cause and effect between the former and
the latter.  The lowest rates of violent crime and homicide in England did not
occur in the period with the strongest gun laws (the late 1980s and 1990s),
but in the era with the weakest gun laws.

     At the turn of the 20th century, there was virtually no violent crime in
England, and virtually no gun control. Anyone (children included) could buy
any type of gun, no questions asked. There were no background checks, no forms
to fill out, and no safety training. All that was needed was ready cash.

     Yet gun homicide and other crime was only a small percentage of the
current British rates.  At the turn of the century, Victorian social morality
was strong; it was a more effective check on British criminal impulses than
are the rigid gun laws of today.

     Overall, comparative data shows little relation between the severity of
gun laws and the homicide rate.  Scotland has rigorous gun laws, and its
murder rate for males aged 15-24 is over three times as high as the rate in
Switzerland.  In Switzerland, the government issues every adult male a fully-
automatic Sig-Sauer assault rifle to keep at home, and trains him to use it.
The American states that impose waiting periods on gun buyers suffer killings
at the same rate as the states that do not.

     By looking only at firearms, the Centers for Disease Control study did
not consider other factors which might explain why American males aged 15 to
24 are so much more likely to kill each other than their counterparts in other
nations.  America is the only country studied that has a three-and-a-half-
century history of enslaving and degrading a major part of its population.
And America is the only country studied where demand for drugs is sky-high,
and the only country with an all-out drug war, the topic of the next section.


                       What Happened in 1987?

     After declining for several years, the black teenage homicide rate began
soaring upward in 1987.  That year was not marked by any sudden increase in
the availability of guns (sales were flat).  What did happen in 1987 was that
the drug war suddenly intensified, at the same time that drugs themselves
became more dangerous.

     The 1987 cocaine overdose death of college basketball star Len Bias and
the popularization of crack cocaine produced an unprecedented media and poli-
tical determination to fight a "drug war" in the United States.

     Some drug policy scholars trace the sudden upsurge in violence to the
pharmacological effects of crack/cocaine.  They note that crack (like PCP and
alcohol, but unlike hemp and heroin), often reduces inhibitions against vio-
lence and stimulates aggressive behavior.

     Without denying the destructive effect of crack, other scholars trace
the roots of the violence to governmental drug policy.  They note that the
"war on drugs" has lived up to its name by producing a genuine war in inner-
city America.  Economist Sam Staley argues that the war on drugs and the
criminalization of the drug trade generate levels of violence that make the
inner city unlivable, with levels of violence far higher than would occur in
a world where drugs were controlled by means other than the criminal law.
Since drug dealers are likely to be carrying large sums of money, they are at
serious risk of robbery.  Since they cannot rely on the police for protection,
they must, to survive, protect themselves.  When drug dealers engage in com-
mercial transactions with each other, there is no Uniform Commercial Code and
state district court for resolving disputes about the quality of goods sold.
Disgruntled buyers, having no other means of redress, may resort to violence.
Similarly, the addicts who sell drugs often end up consuming the drugs which
should have been sold; higher-level dealers having no legal means of handing
salespersons who stole the merchandise with which they were entrusted; because
violence often results. Other drug users buy goods on credit, but fail to pay
their debt.  Since the seller has no lawful means of debt collection, violence
again may result.  In addition, when disputes are settled violently, they are
often settled in the most vicious manner possible, for acquiring a reputation
for being willing to "exert maximum force" may assist the resolution of future
disputes.

     The tendency of current drug laws to promote violence can be seen in
a study of cocaine-related homicides in New York.  Eighty-seven percent of
the homicides were related to territorial disputes, debt collection, or
cocaine deals gone bad.  Only 7.5% of the homicides were related to the
pharmacological effects of drugs.

     While there are many reasons that teenagers join gangs, the lure of
income from the drug trade is certainly an important factor.  If currently-
illegal drugs were sold in liquor stores, gangs would no longer be able to
profit from selling substances at the artificially high prices created by
prohibition laws.

     Despite the youth violence engendered by drug prohibition, it may be that
the prohibition strategy yields benefits that outweigh its negative effects.
Any realistic analysis of American drug policy should, however, acknowledge
the substantial toll of violence that is a, perhaps necessary, price that
America is paying for current laws.


                      Who are the Gun Crime Victims?

     Almost anytime a child is murdered with a gun, or dies in a gun accident,
the event is at least a statewide news story - as such a tragedy should be.
But it is not accurate to conclude on the basis of news coverage that gun-
related deaths of children are among the major killers of children; it is not
correct to assume that the amount of press coverage devoted to any event cor-
relates with the frequency of the event.  Coverage of professional football
games saturates many cities' media, but in an average year in most cities,
there are fewer than a dozen professional football games.

     Homicides account for about 5% of the deaths of children 1-4, and 4% of
children aged 5-14.  The number is about the same as the children in those age
groups who die of heart disease.  The relatively small fraction of homicides
perpetrated against children is not likely to be solved through gun control.
The most common form of homicide against younger children is child abuse mur-
der by a relative or caretaker.  The availability of firearms has little to do
with such crimes, since the murderer will generally have limitless opportunity,
and vastly superior strength. (Reduced availability of firearms might, however,
reduce the not insignificant number of younger teenagers who lawfully shoot
abusive relatives in self-defense.)

     For older teenagers (15 and up), the number of firearms murders is
higher, especially for urban minority teenagers.  Under what circumstances do
those teenage murders take place?  The American Academy of Pediatrics writes:
"A common misperception is that teen homicides are largely related to crime,
gang activity, or premeditated assault.  The most common event precipitating
a shooting is an argument, often over something later seen as trivial.  Such
shootings are usually impulsive, unplanned, and instantly regretted."

     The American Academy of Pediatrics' assertion about the non-criminal
nature of teenage homicide cited only one study as support for its conclusions.
That study, however, did not claim that teenage homicides did not involve
"crime, gang activity, or premeditated assault."  Nor did the cited study
claim that teenage shootings were "impulsive, unplanned, and instantly regret-
ted."  The cited study only discussed the relationship between murderer and
victim, and showed (not surprisingly) that murderers generally target people
who have offended them, rather than total strangers.

     A Philadelphia Inquirer investigation of teenage murderers in Philadelphia
casts some doubt on the proposition that homicides are "instantly regretted".
Of the 57 teenage murders studied, "With few exceptions, the teenagers felt
little remorse or regret."  More typical were stories such as these:

     Yerodeen Williams, 17, killed a man who resisted a robbery at an
     automatic teller machine.  "He brung it on himself," Williams later
     said, blaming the victim for resisting.  "It must have been his time
     to go...I feel as though it wasn't my fault this thing happened. I
     ain't seen no blood or nothing."

     Kerry Marshall, 17, attempted to rob a woman and her four-year-old
     son.  When the victim pulled out a gun of her own, he shot her dead.
     "I know the values," he said, blaming her for her death. "If somebody
     was threatening me, I'd give it up 'cause material things come and go."
     Marshall complained about his long sentence, because "I don't even
     think of myself as a criminal...Everybody is vulnerable for mistakes.
     Mistakes will happen."

     Richard Carabello, 17, took a taxi ride, but had no money to pay for
     it.  When the driver grew angry, Carabello killed him.  "I'm not a
     violent person," Carabello explained, "I didn't kill nobody.  He
     killed himself."

     Kenyatta Miles, 18, shot a 15 year old honor student, and took his
     new Air Jordan sneakers. "I killed him, but not in cold blood," Miles
     said. - "I didn't shoot him two, three, four times.  I shoot him once
     ...I wouldn't call myself no murderer...I'm not violent.  I'm the
     easiest person to get along with...I'm not really a violent person...
     I look at my right hand 'cause it pulled the trigger.  I blame my
     right hand."

     Daniel Maurice White, 16, shot a stranger in a crack house who was
     resisting a robbery.  Again, the victim was to blame: "If somebody
     see you with a gun, they gonna turn the other way -- if not, they
     must want to get shot...It's not like I'm no serial killer. I didn't
     kill a lot of people."

     It is not implausible that the older teenagers who commit murder share
many characteristics with persons over 18 who commit murder.  The studies of
adult murderers have shown that murderers are not "nice" people who happened
to get too emotional in the presence of a handgun.  Rather, murders are
generally people with long records of criminal violence.

     Two-thirds to four-fifths of homicide offenders have prior
arrest records, frequently for violent felonies.  A study by the
pro-control Police Foundation of domestic homicides in Kansas City
in 1977 revealed that in 85 percent of homicides among family
members, the police had been called in before to break up violence.
In half the cases, the police had been called in five or more times.
Thus, the average murderer is not a non-violent solid citizen who
reaches for a weapon in a moment of temporary insanity.  Instead, he
has a past record of illegal violence and trouble with the law.
Such people on the fringes of society are unlikely to be affected by
gun control laws.

     It has long been recognized by criminologists that many murder victims,
since they are friends, relatives, and "business" acquaintances of murderers,
are themselves unsavory characters, and frequently criminals.  For example, in
a study of the victims of near-fatal domestic shootings and stabbings, 78 per-
cent of the victims volunteered a history of hard-drug use, and 16 percent
admitted using heroin the day of the incident.

     The pattern for teenage homicides is similar.  The persons who are most
likely to be killed by a teenager with a gun are gang members, gang hangers-on,
and other teenage criminals.  In many killings of inner-city high school-age
persons, the victim is a person who engaged in risky behaviors, such as selling
drugs.

     Studies of trauma center patients with penetrating (bullet or knife)
wounds have found that over a third of such patients are repeat users of trauma
centers.  Surveys of trauma center physicians show that many have negative
feelings towards the practice as a result of the "unsavory" patients who are
the victims of most penetrating injuries.  Many physicians believe these
patients are repeatedly injured because they repeatedly engage in criminal
behavior.  A Baltimore journalist, who investigated his city's emergency rooms
concludes, "it is safe to estimate that seven of every 10 assault victims who
arrive at a Baltimore hospital are in some way culpable in the violence that
has incapacitated them."

     Yet while one teenage gang member killing another teenage gang member may
account for an important fraction of teenage homicides, there are many other
victims of these criminals who have done nothing to put themselves at risk,
except being born in a dangerous neighborhood.  For America as a whole to ig-
nore the teenage murder problem merely because most murders happen in the inner
city would be callous and immoral.

     While there are a great many innocent victims, there are not many inno-
cent murderers.  Although the American Academy of Pediatrics asserts that most
teenage murders are "instantly regretted," in reality, the majority of teenage
killers seem to have no remorse for actions, and are unhappy only because they
were caught.  In Harlem, for example, murderous teenagers coldly refer to
killing as "getting a body."

     If murderers - teenage and adult - are just ordinary people unlucky
enough to be near a gun, then the simple solution to homicide is to remove
guns from society.  In a society with an unacceptably high level of homicide,
such a simple solution may sound attractive.  But if murderers are different
from most other people, then America faces the much more difficult task of
dealing with the social pathologies that turn people into murderers into the
first place.



                               Social decay

     The authors of the most extensive study of the gun-carrying habits of
modern juvenile felons found them to be:

     better armed, more criminally active, and more violent than were the
     adult felons of a decade ago.  Even at that, one is struck less by
     the armament than by the evident willingness to pull the trigger.

          From the viewpoint of public policy, it matters less, perhaps,
     where these juveniles get their guns than where they get the idea
     that it is acceptable to kill.  It may be convenient to think that
     the problems of juvenile violence could be magically solved by
     cracking down or getting tough, but this is unlikely.  The problem
     before us is not so much getting guns out of the hands of juveniles
     as it is reducing the motivations for juveniles to arm themselves in
     the first place.  Convincing inner-city juveniles, or adults, not to
     own, carry, and use guns requires convincing them that they can survive
     in their neighborhoods without being armed...that the customary agents
     of social control can be relied upon to provide for personal security.
     So long as this is not believed to be the case, gun ownership and
     carrying in the city will remain widespread.

     To the enormous crisis of the inner city, many liberals and conservatives
offer the same, seemingly easy solution: use government coercion to remove the
evil item that is the cause of violence.

     Many liberals look to guns as the cause of the inner-city's social
pathologies, and fail to recognize that the willingness of many criminals to
use guns, and the necessity for law-abiding residents of the inner-city to
carry guns for protection, are symptoms of deeper afflictions.  No set of
criminal justice approaches focused on "gun control" are likely to reduce the
inner-city problems regarding guns.  Solutions must be found in dealing with
the more complex pathologies of the lack of hope and economic opportunity, and
the decay of cultural values.

     At the same time, some conservatives make the same mistake with gangs and
drugs that liberals make with guns.  Some inner-city youth are attracted to
gangs because the gangs "give estranged youth something meaningful to which
they can belong, an identity otherwise lacking.  Gangs express the pathology
of inner-city life and the new urban culture of violence, but are the conse-
quences of these developments, not the cause."  The criminal justice system
can continue to incarcerate gang members, but gangs will remain attractive
until better alternatives for identity appear.

     The many youthful lives wasted through illegal drug abuse are tragic.
But if there were no narcotics, these lives would be wasted through alcohol
abuse, or some other method of numbing the mind to the bleakness of ordinary
life.  A century of sternly enforced drug prohibition has resulted in drugs
being more available than ever to inner-city youth.  The fact should offer a
caution to liberals who imagine that gun laws can succeed where drug laws have
failed, and somehow keep a commodity away from a market that demands it.  And
the fact should suggest to conservatives that a better strategy to reducing
drug abuse should be to offer inner-city youth a future brighter than the
false and numbing consciousness offered by drug pushers.

     As long as the debate over the decay of inner-city America focuses only
on symptoms - guns, gangs, and drugs - there will never be a solution.  As
Professors Wright and Sheley put it:

     [U]ntil we rectify the conditions that breed hostility, estrangement,
     futility and hopelessness, whatever else we do will come to little
     or nothing...Widespread joblessness and few opportunities for upward
     mobility are the heart of the problem.  Stricter gun control laws,
     more aggressive enforcement of existing laws, a crack-down on drug
     traffic, police task forces aimed at juvenile gangs, metal detectors
     at the doors of schools, periodic searches of lockers and shake-downs
     of students, and other similar measures are inconsequential compared
     to the true need:  the economic, social and moral resurrection of the
     inner city.  Just how this might be accomplished and at what cost can
     be debated; the urgent need to do so cannot.

     Or as Yephet Copeland, a former member of the Hoover Street Crips in Los
Angeles, put it, "We need better schools and jobs.  That's the way you stop
the killing.  You have to offer hope.  If there~s no hope, the killing will
go on--gun ban or not."

     How to resurrect the inner-city?  Do we need a massive government jobs
programs, or urban enterprise zones?  Should we increase funding for public
schools, or should we end-run the failed public school bureaucracy through
charter schools and education vouchers?  Are welfare payments insufficiently
generous, or is welfare itself a cause of learned helplessness?  All of these
difficult questions must begin to come to the center of the public debate on
the inner-city, and the disastrous condition of so many inner city youth.

     Every day that the public allows legislatures to waste their collective
breath with symbolic laws that merely address the symptoms of social pathology
- laws such as those forbidding the wearing of Los Angeles Raiders clothing,
or gun waiting periods which will supposedly disarm teenagers who are already
forbidden to buy guns - is another day wasted, another day in which the problem
grows worse.  Gun control is not merely a phony solution to inner-city youth
violence.  It is a formidable political obstacle to genuine solutions, because
gun control offers political officials a high-profile (but empty) way to tell
the public that the legislature is "doing something."  Every gun control bill
that is introduced, and every editorial demanding that we "do something about
guns," makes it that much harder to force the political system to do something
real about the desperate conditions of the inner city, to address the funda-
mental social pathologies of modern America.

     Criminologist Gary Kleck summarizes:

     Fixating on guns seems to be, for many people, a fetish which allows
     them to ignore the more intransigent causes of American violence,
     including its dying cities, inequality, deteriorating family structure,
     and the all-pervasive economic and social consequences of a history of
     slavery and racism...All parties to the crime debate would do well to
     give more concentrated attention to more difficult, but far more rele-
     vant, issues like how to generate more good-paying jobs for the under-
     class, an issue which is at the heart of the violence problem.

     There are 200 million guns in the United States ~ more than enough to
supply a black-market gun to anyone who wants one, no matter how severely pro-
hibition and confiscation were enforced.  As William Fox, a former member of
the Brawling Street Rolling Crips observed, "How are you going to get the guns
off the street that are already there?  No. It ain't going to change.  It's
not the guns that have to change.  It's the people that have to change."  It
is long past time to stop fixating on the gun supply, and to start dealing
with the persons who misuse guns, and the social conditions under which inno-
cent babies grow in less than two decades into callous murderers.



                   Strategies to Reduce Youth Crime

     Step One:  Implement Effective Juvenile Justice Solutions

Better Juvenile Courts
     America's juvenile courts should be the best-run part of the judicial
system, but instead they are among the worst.  Juvenile judges rarely have
time to learn about a case in-depth.  Better funding of juvenile courts might
well save public revenue in the long run, through reduced costs in adult
criminal courts, and reduced need for incarceration.

Open Court Records
     Both the states and the federal government already have extremely tough
laws for sentencing of repeat violent offenders. Unfortunately, many criminals
who, in their early 20s, are facing their third or fourth felony conviction
are treated as first-time offenders, because their previous felonies were
committed while they were juveniles.  Changing the repeat offender laws so
that violent, armed felonies committed by juveniles would be counted towards
habitual criminal status for adult offenders is a sensible approach towards
concentrating criminal justice resources on the thugs who have shown a repeated
willingness to commit violent crimes.  In Colorado, House Judiciary Committee
Chair Jeannie Adkins has sponsored such a law.

Restitution
      One of the most shocking attributes of the new generation of criminals
is their lack of human empathy for anyone else, including their victims.
While the current overcrowded condition of most juvenile detention facilities
makes it impossible to incarcerate all juvenile offenders who should be
imprisoned, a minimum step in the resolution of any juvenile criminal case
should be mandatory restitution to the victim or the victim's family.

Increased Certainty of Punishment
     In Arizona, the average juvenile offender has nine encounters with the
criminal justice system before he finally ends up doing time in a penal
facility.  A Pennsylvania study found that nearly half of juvenile offenders
who commit four serious crimes are not even placed on probation.  A juvenile
justice system that lets repeat offenders slip away again and again is worse
than useless; by teaching young thugs that there will be no consequences for
crime, an ineffective justice system reinforces criminal behavior.

     It is true that deterrence may be of little value for some teenage
criminals, since they may have no long-term perspective on their own life (or
anyone else's).  At the same time, the incarceration of violent teenage
criminals can still benefit society, by incapacitating a person who would
likely commit more violent crimes if left to roam at large.

     While American prison capacity has more than doubled since 1980, there
has been no corresponding drop in crime.  Almost all of the new prison capacity
(and much of the original prison capacity) has been soaked up by prisoners of
the war on drugs.  As a result, the levels of punishment for violent crimes
have fallen to record lows.

     Multiplying the risk of apprehension by the average sentence served upon
conviction, Texas A&M economist Morgan Reynolds finds that the average 1990
murderer serves 1.8 years in prison.  The expected punishment for murder fell
by 20% from 1988 to 1990.  Similarly the expected punishment for rape (60 days
in prison) fell by 25% in just two years, expected punishment for robbery fell
by 50% (to a mere 23 days).  Expected punishment for motor vehicle theft is
only 1.5 days in prison.  From 1950 to 1990, the expected punishment for all
serious crimes, taken as a whole, fell by 65%.  Simply put, crime pays.

     Though inner-city teenagers may not have calculated the mathematical
risks of arrest, they are well aware of how minimal punishments are for even
the most serious armed, violent offenses.  They cannot help but infer that
society does not really take violent crime seriously.  Redirecting limited
prison capacity towards violent offenders, and dealing with non-violent drug
offenders through other means (such as expansion of voluntary treatment
programs) would be a major step forward for public safety.

     It is important to remember, however, that juvenile justice programs are
end of the line approaches that can often do little more than incarcerate a
dangerous person.  In the long run, programs which help prevent people from
becoming criminals in the first place will pay for themselves many times over
in juvenile justice savings, and in the savings of young lives.


     Step Two: Educate Children to Have Responsible Attitudes
               Towards Firearms

Media-generated violence
     Every adult who tries to instill in children responsible attitudes
towards firearms must not only teach positive lessons, but must overcome the
many negative lessons taught by America's major television networks and movie
industry.

     Before completing sixth grade, the average American child watches 8,000
homicides and 100,000 acts of violence on television.  A look at the movie
advertisement page of any major newspaper shows that cinematic entertainment
is no better.  At least a quarter of the movie advertising depicts someone
poised to kill.

      Even television shows that do not wallow in violence are still violent.
For example, the heroes of the Adam 12 television series, the friendly police-
men Officers Reed and Malloy, killed more people than an average SWAT team
member kills in an entire career.

     Over the last two decades, a large body of literature has linked exposure
to violent television with increased physical aggressiveness among children,
and to later violent criminal behavior.

     One of the more recent studies was conducted by University of Washington
epidemiologist Brandon Centerwall.  He found homicide rates in the United
States, Canada, and South Africa rose steeply about 10 to 15 years after the
introduction of television in each nation.  He noted that after television was
introduced in Canada, the homicide rate nearly doubled, even though per capita
firearms ownership rates remained stable.  In the United States, the rise in
firearms homicide was paralleled by an equally large rise in homicide with the
hands and feet.  The data therefore implies that the underlying cause of the
homicide increase was not a sudden surge in availability of firearms, since
there was no surge in availability of hands and feet, and hand and foot homi-
cide rose as sharply as firearms homicide.  South Africa allowed the introduc-
tion of television many years after Canada and the United States did (because
the apartheid government feared that television would be destabilizing); in
South Africa too, the homicide rate soared after the first generation of tele-
vision children grew up.

     One method by which violent entertainment may promote criminal violence
is simple imitation.  Two surveys of young American male violent felons found
that 22% to 34% had imitated crime techniques they had watched on television
programs.

     Centerwall's study showing a doubling of the homicide rate a generation
after the introduction of television leads him to conclude that "long-term
childhood exposure to television is a causal factor behind approximately one
half of the homicides committed in the United States, or approximately 10,000
homicides annually."  He further estimates that as many as half of American
rapes and assaults could be related to television.

     It should be noted that another television researcher pegs the figures
far lower.  George Comstock, of Syracuse University's Center for Research on
Aggression, surveyed 230 studies, and concluded that at least 10 percent of
American violence is a result of television and cinema violence.

     Of course not everyone who watches a Rambo movie or its television equiv-
alent becomes a criminal.  The harm of violent television is felt most by the
already vulnerable segments of the population.  Alfred Blumstein, dean of John
Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie-Mellon notes that
"The glorification of violence on television has little effect on most folks,
but it has a powerful effect on kids who are poorly socialized..It dehumanizes
them and becomes a self-fulfilling process."  Repeated exposure to violence
may, through a process of "disinhibition," make violence seem ordinary. Public
health researcher Deborah Prothrow-Stith writes that many boys in low-income,
fatherless households develop unusually close identification with the male
heroes of television shows.  The heroes become imaginary fathers for the boys,
and the boys make up stories about what the heroes would do in the boys' own
poverty-stricken neighborhood.  "They ask their imaginary heroes for advice...
the answer they receive is always the same.  Their heroes tell them to be
tough.  Their heroes tell them to fight."

     It is true that the major television networks have recently announced a
new anti-violence initiative.  But television executives have promised less
violence before, and television has remained extremely violent.

     The problem with the grand statements about violence control by tele-
vision executives is that they fly in the face of entertainment economics.
University of Pennsylvania Communications professor George Gerbner notes that
violent shows require less expensive actors, and can be more readily sold in
foreign markets.  The problem is even more serious for children's programming,
he says.  It is easier for cartoonists (especially those working on a network
assembly line) to depict violence than to depict humor.  Many violent cartoon
plots are recycled from one show to another, with only the characters being
changed.  In a 1993 report delivered to the National Cable Television Associa-
tion, Gerbner noted that cartoons and other children's shows contain more
violence than any other form of programming.  Children's programs created for
the major networks were more violent than equivalent cable programming, and
averaged 32 violent acts per hour.

     While television executives promise less violence, they are simultaneously
pushing the latest fad in violent entertainment, so-called "reality-based tele-
vision."  These shows, while based on case histories of real crimes, are a
poor approximation of reality, for while they show numerous shootings, they
rarely show the suffering that accompanies the shooting.  Indeed, for all the
graphic violence, television and film portrayals of gun fights are highly
unrealistic.  The cameras quickly cut away from dead and dying bodies.  The
fast break to the commercial teaches no lesson about the permanency of death -
or of injury.  Few quadriplegics with shattered spines populate the world of
television shootings.  Accordingly, it is reasonable to consider what steps
that America can take to reduce the harm caused by violent entertainment -
besides trusting the good will of the television networks.

     No matter how compelling a person may find the academic case detailing
the harm of television, there is no evidence that can justify censorship. The
First Amendment (like the other guarantees in the Bill of Rights) is not
subject to revision on the basis of social policy.  The Amendment sets an
absolute bar to certain kinds of government actions - precisely because the
authors of the Bill of Rights knew that broad freedoms sometimes caused social
dislocations, and that cries for "reasonable" restrictions on freedom would
arise.

     As an empirical matter, it would not be hard to build a case for selec-
tive censorship of media crime reports.  The rapid spread of carjacking from
coast to coast, after a publicized incident in Detroit, might suggest that
media reports about crime in one area give ideas to criminals in other areas.

     In Los Angeles, a man dropped concrete from an overpass onto traffic
passing below, and the crime was widely publicized in the local papers.  A
few days later, another man, in a different part of the city, dropped concrete
over another overpass.  The second man's concrete shattered the windshield of
an Iranian student, and the flying glass blinded him for life.  In Italy, the
press often voluntarily chooses not to report suicides, so as to avoid creat-
ing copy-cat suicides.  Would the Iranian student be able to see today if the
Los Angeles media had behaved with similar restraint?

     The number of assassins and mass murderers who perpetrated their crimes
because they knew they would become famous is legion.  Arthur Bremer, whose
assassination attempt put George Wallace in a wheelchair, was motivated by the
publicity that would result. John Lennon's assassin Mark David Chapman decided
to end his status as "Mr. Nobody" by garnering the fame that would come when
he "killed the biggest Somebody on earth."  John Hinckley, who nearly killed
President Reagan and crippled press secretary James Brady, thought that his
act would attract the attention and the affection of actress Jody Foster.
Today, John Hinckley continues to reap the fame of his vicious act, as U.S.
Rep. Charles Schumer cites John Hinckley's claim that a waiting period would
have stopped him from shooting President Reagan.  (The claim is incredible,
and proves little more than Hinckley's desire to continue to be quoted in the
wire services and in Congressional committees.  Hinckley had no felony record
or public record of mental illness when he bought the two guns that he used in
the assassination attempt. He bought both guns five months before perpetrating
the crime, thus placing him far outside the bounds of a one-week "cooling off"
period.)

     Jamie Fox and Jack Levin, of Northeastern University, studied mass murders
in public places during the last three decades; they concluded that the number
of such murders has increased in part because the fame with one murderer
achieves as a result of sensationalist media coverage of the crime inspires
other potential murders to seek similar notoriety.

     Suppose that there were a law that prohibited the press from mentioning
the name of an assassin or mass murderer.  Would Arthur Bremer, Mark David
Chapman, and John Hinckley have perpetrated their crimes if such a law were in
effect?  Does the media need to report the names of every assassins and mass
murderer, or would simply reporting all the other facts of the killing satisfy
a "reasonable" understanding of the Freedom of the Press?  Would press associ-
ations that fought a law against reporting the names of assassins and mass
murderers be accused of a "fixation" on the First Amendment?

     Fictionalized treatments of crime can also lead directly to real crime.
John Hinckley drew inspiration from the dozens of times he watched the movie
Taxi Driver, about an assassin who stalks a Presidential candidate, and wins
a young woman's affection.  The man who murdered 22 people in Luby's Cafeteria
in Killeen, Texas in October 1991 was found with a ticket to the film The
Fisher King in his pocket; the film depicts a mass murder in a restaurant.  In
January 1993, in Grayson, Kentucky, 17-year-old Scott Pennington fatally shot
a teacher and a janitor, and held a class hostage; he had recently written a
book report on a Stephen King novel in which a student shoots a teacher and
holds a class hostage.  The revival of the American Ku Klux Klan (and the
countless violent crimes that resulted) was inspired by D.W. Griffith's 1915
film The Birth of Nation.  Griffith's 12-reel film was the first modern motion
picture, and the first full-length film to demonstrate the immense commercial
potential of cinema (it grossed $18 million).  Based on the Thomas Dixon novel
The Clansman, Birth of a Nation presented a distorted picture of the South
during Reconstruction, and extolled the Ku Klux Klan.

     At least in some cases, censorship of crime reports or crime entertain-
ment could save lives.  That fact, however, is of no consequence against the
clear command of the First Amendment.

     Some controls on television violence, however, would likely not violate
the First Amendment.

     Doctor Centerwall suggests that all new television sets be required to
have built-in time-channel lock circuitry, so that parents could "lock out"
a particular station or a particular set of viewing times, even when they are
not home to supervise television use.  Unless the law mandates that such cir-
cuitry be included with every television, time-locking capability will not be
available to lower-income homes, which are most at risk.  In 1990, Congress
enacted the Television Decoder Circuitry Act, requiring that most televisions
built in 1993 and thereafter have built-in closed-caption circuitry for the
hearing impaired.  There was no objection that the Act's engineering require-
ments for television sets violated the First Amendment rights of television
makers or viewers.  Similarly, requiring a time and channel control to be in-
cluded in new television sets would not seem to violate the First Amendment.
Newer and more expensive, devices employ magnetic cards and card-readers to
allow parents to control how many total hours of television can be watched.
In future years, Congress might also consider requiring that these devices be
incorporated in television design.

     Another useful step would be to require the entertainment industry to
comply with the same gun laws that law-abiding citizens must obey.  The
Hollywood moguls who promote pro-death cinema such as the Terminator and
Lethal Weapon movies series are a much greater threat to public safety than
gun collectors who keep a few war-time souvenirs locked in a case on their
wall.  At the least, the entertainment industry (and Congress too) ought to
live by the same laws which it advocates for the rest of the country. Applying
California's "assault weapon" ban to Hollywood, just as it applies to everyone
else in California, would not violate the First Amendment.

     There may be many other steps that could be taken to deal with violence-
promoting entertainment.  Those steps which do not infringe the freedom of
speech deserve serious consideration.


Education and Socialization
     The most important factor affecting how children deal with guns is how
they are taught about them.  A study of 675 Rochester, New York ninth and
tenth graders contrasted children who had been socialized into gun use by
their family with children who had been socialized into gun use by peers. For
the children whose families had taught them about lawful gun use, the children
were at no greater risk of becoming involved in crime, gangs, or drugs than
children with no exposure to guns.  But the children who were taught about guns
by their peers were at high risk of all types of crime and improper behavior,
including gun crime.

     A survey of felony prisoners in Western Australia seems to validate the
hypothesis that use of firearms in crime depends less on the availability of
guns than on the social conditioning towards them.  Rural Aborigines in north-
west Australia grow up in a culture where they are surrounded by guns; yet
those Aborigines who become criminals are far less likely to perpetrate armed
crimes than are their white counterparts.  As one Aborigine prisoner put, "Guns
are for shooting tucker [food], not people."  Likewise, Aborigine criminals
who had been introduced to firearms by authority figures, such as fathers or
grandfathers, were less likely to commit armed offenses than were criminals
who had been introduced to guns by peers, such as brothers or friends.

     The repressive gun laws of cities such as Chicago, Washington, and New
York are not merely ineffective.  These laws are themselves a cause of gun
violence.  By making gun ownership either illegal, or possible only for wealthy
persons with the clout to move through numerous bureaucratic obstacles, the
anti-gun laws drive most legitimate gunowners underground.

     While a man who operates a bodega on the Lower East Side of New York City
might keep a pistol hidden under the counter in case of a robbery (since he
knows that the police cannot protect him), the man will likely not take the
illegal gun out for practice at a target.  Even if the man acquired a gun
license, he could not take his teenage son to a target range to teach him
responsible gun use.  For the teenager even to hold the gun in his hand under
immediate adult supervision at a licensed target range would require the teen-
ager to acquire his own (expensive) handgun license.

     An airgun (which uses compressed gas to fire a pellet) can be safely fired
inside an apartment, yet New York City makes it illegal for minors even to hold
an airgun in their hands under direct parental supervision.  Thus, the city
closes off one more avenue for children to be taught responsible attitudes
towards guns.

     Having driven responsible gunowners into the suburbs or into hiding, New
York, Chicago, and Washington are raising a generation of children whose only
visible role models of gun ownership are criminals and violent television char-
acters.  In the city where no child can legally shoot a BB gun with his father,
children learn about guns on the street, and shoot each other with .45 pistols.

     In a society with 200 million guns, it is childish to imagine that gun
control laws will prevent children from having access to guns.  To fail to
teach responsible gun use - under the supervision of responsible adults - to
America's young people is to sow the seeds of a public health disaster, the
murder epidemic that too many American cities have created for themselves.



Sports Programs
     One place where young people can be exposed to responsible approaches
towards firearms is school sports.  To require school districts to offer marks-
manship programs would be an intrusion on local prerogative.  On the other
hand, there seems to be no downside to letting the decision about school pro-
grams remain under local control.  State laws taking away such local authority
should be lifted.  In Illinois, laws make it difficult for high schools or
colleges to offer target shooting as an option for student athletes.

     Target shooting has a number of benefits in the context of character
development in a city or school.  The emphasis on mental discipline leads some
students to report improved ability to concentrate.  Target shooting is non-
sexist.  Females play on the same teams as males, and regularly defeat them.
Many differently-abled students (such as those in wheelchairs) can compete on
equal terms with everyone else.  Parents report that the sport helps students
improve their ability to concentrate, and thus builds their study skills.

     The only facility needed can fit into a 20' by 50' room.  A students who
has been the worst player on the junior high football team can take up marks-
manship for the first time in high school and win awards.  And while high
school or college football players do not learn an activity that they can en-
joy for the rest of their lives, target shooting, like golf, is a lifetime
sport; a number of national champions have been nearly 70 years old.

     Target shooting has a lower injury rate than any other sport, and fights
between competitors are nonexistent.  From a safety standpoint, there has never
been an incident of one competitor deliberately harming another in a sanctioned
match.  In baseball, spiked soles and beanballs are used to threaten, and some-
times inflict, serious bodily harm.  Hockey, boxing, and football all involve
the intentional infliction of physical suffering on the opponent.

     According to the National Athletic Trainers Association, about 40% of
American high school football players every year will sustain an injury that
will "require the player to suspend activity for at least the remainder of the
day on which the injury occurred."  Nine thousand three hundred players will
require knee surgery.

     Thomas Jefferson advised his nephew: "Games played with a bat and ball
are too violent, and stamp no character on the mind...[A]s to the species of
exercise, I advise the gun."  Were Jefferson to visit a high school shooting
competition, and then a high school football game where students cheered as a
player was slammed to the ground, Jefferson would deem his view confirmed.

     The surest argument against permitting schools to offer marksmanship
classes is that doing so legitimizes gun ownership.  So it does.  Yet even
America's gun control lobbies insist that they have no quarrel with legitimate
use of long guns.  If there is no campaign against sporting use, and some
sporting uses would reduce the injury rate in school sports, why not allow
schools the choice?

     The promotion of responsible gun habits through school sports programs
will not turn hardcore gang members into law-abiding citizens, any more than
the Police Athletic League programs turn all gang members into law-abiding
football players.  But sports programs can reach the large segment of the
teen population that is susceptible to influence from a variety of sources.



Politically Slanted Education
     Classroom education about responsible firearms attitude can also be
valuable, especially if it does not promote a political agenda of its sponsor.
The Eddie Eagle Elementary Gun Safety program (detailed on Page 18) teaches
young children not to touch an unattended gun.  There is no political content.
Eddie Eagle, however, is limited, in that it is aimed at young children, and
therefore designed to prevent accidents, not intentional crimes.

     While Eddie Eagle has no political content, the Center to Prevent Handgun
Violence, a tax-exempt off-shoot of the anti-gun lobby Handgun Control, Inc.
offers a highly politicized "safety" program called "KIDS+GUNS:  A Deadly
Equation."  The program has been adopted in Florida's Dade County Public
Schools and elsewhere. The curriculum for younger students involves children's
books which extol pacifism.  For example, one book is Dr. Seuss's The Butter
Battle Book, a volume written at the height of the nuclear freeze campaign,
which posits moral equivalence between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The book's allegorical message asserts that the conflict between Communist and
Western society is as trivial as the conflict over which side of the bread
that butter should be placed on.  Accordingly, free societies and Communist
countries should learn how to settle their trivial disputes without violence.

     The many Cuban refugees now living in Dade County would likely be dis-
concerted to learn that their school system, in conjunction with a pacifist
Washington organization, is promoting a curriculum based on the premise that
the struggle against Communism was meaningless.

     In contrast to the political programs, programs used at many other high
schools and junior highs take a politically neutral approach, and employ vio-
lence management classes that help young people deal with anger.  Using role-
playing and other techniques, the programs explain that walking away from a
fight over scuffed sneakers is not dishonorable, and that talking to a friend
about a perceived insult is a better response than a deadly attack.  These
programs have a great deal to offer, and, even in times of budget shortages,
deserve full funding.



     Step Three: Move Beyond Symbolic and Badly-Conceived Anti-Gun Laws

     A large number of gun control measures have been proffered as solutions
to the problems of children and guns.  Whatever may be the merits of these
proposals in regards to adult gun misuse, the programs will take our society
no further to resolving the real problems of children and guns, but will in-
stead offer legislators a convenient stratagem for avoiding real (and expen-
sive) solutions.


Banning Handguns
     In a survey of Washington, D.C. violent criminals confined at the Lorton,
Virginia prison, the criminals (most of them under 30) did not seem to be in-
fluenced by gun control laws.  Seventy-seven percent of them had acquired a
handgun in the District, where handgun sales are illegal and handgun posses-
sion is almost entirely outlawed.  Two out of three agreed that gun control
would not reduce D.C.'s violence.

     The American Academy of Pediatrics proposes that handguns be outlawed for
the entire population, since it is not suitable for children to have handguns.
The Constitution has long been clear that the rights of adults may not be con-
stricted to what is suitable for children.  As Justice Frankfurter put it,
allowing adults to possess only what is suitable for children, "is to burn
down the house to roast a pig."  Or as Justice White wrote, "The government
may not reduce the adult population...to...only what is fit for children."

     After all, alcohol and tobacco are not suitable for children, but these
products remain legal - even though they are associated with tens of thousands
of deaths or crimes annually, and even though these two drugs have (unlike
guns) no capacity to save lives by providing protection against crime.

     Gun prohibitionist Katherine Christoffel, of the American Academy of
Pediatrics, argues that the Second Amendment is obsolete, for "No one can be-
lieve that our Founding Fathers, in crafting the Second Amendment, intended to
leave American children as vulnerable to firearms violence as they are today."
But guns in the late 18th century and early 19th century were actually more
prone to accidental discharge than they are today; guns were owned by a higher
percentage of the population, and guns were more likely to be kept loaded than
they are today.  And then, as now, some persons contrasted the high American
murder rate with the much lower British rate.

     The eagerness of gun prohibitionists to outlaw handguns is based in part
on a determination that handguns are worthless.  The American Academy of Pedi-
atrics claims that a ban on handguns would be appropriate "because of their
very limited ability to provide personal protection."  But in fact, handguns
provide an enormous public health benefit, because they are used so often to
prevent crime; handguns are used for defense 645,000 times a year, or once
every 48 seconds. (See discussion on Page 9).

Banning so-called "Assault Rifles"
     Of the approximately 300 gun-related homicides committed against children
under 14 in 1990, only 40 involved rifles of any type. Other studies have
shown that for rifle homicides in general, fewer than a quarter involve cali-
bers that could theoretically belong to an "assault rifle."  Accordingly, no
more than 10 of the 300 gun-related murders of children (about 3%) involve
"assault rifles."

Banning Air Guns
     The American Academy of Pediatrics calls for outlawing "deadly air guns",
although only two deaths a year for the entire U.S. population involve air
guns.  In terms of child deaths caused, air guns exact a toll about equal to
that of baby rattles.

The Brady Bill
     The "Brady Bill", requiring that handgun buyers receive police permission
and wait at least 5 government-working-days, would have little effect on access
to firearms by minors.  Ever since the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, it has
been illegal for anyone under 18 to buy a gun of any type, and illegal for
anyone under 21 to buy a handgun.

     Nevertheless, since children and guns are today's hot button for gun
control, Brady Bill supporters claim that the main virtue of the bill is that
it will save children's lives.  "I'm not here to ask Congress to help me,"
announced Handgun Control, Inc. Chair Sarah Brady at a press conference re-
introducing the Brady Bill. "But do it for our kids," she said, "They deserve
a future.  And we owe it to them to see that they have one."  Mrs. Brady point-
ed out that nearly 4,000 persons under the age of 20 had been murdered in 1991.
Acting Attorney General Stewart Gerson chimed in that the Department of Justice
endorsed the Brady Bill because Gerson was "sick of seeing kids gunned down in
random violence."

     Neither Mrs. Brady nor Mr. Gerson suggested how many lives might actually
be saved by the Brady Bill.  Nor did they cite studies showing how state-level
laws like the Brady Bill, in effect in over 20 states, have saved lives, be-
cause their are no such studies; all the scholarly research has found no sta-
tistically significant anti-crime impact from laws such as the Brady Bill.

     Some Brady Bill supporters acknowledge that the bill may have little
impact, but they support it anyway because they believe that there is a need
to "do something" about youth violence.  While there is certainly a need to do
something, enactment of the Brady Bill is worse than doing nothing.

     To allow Congress and state legislatures to debate and enact
waiting periods as if such laws would have a measurable impact on
violent crime is to allow them a cheap political alternative to
addressing the real causes of crime, including the social decay that
has bred a callous ghetto culture, where human life is cheaper than
a pair of sneakers.


     In this context, the Brady Bill is not simply a meaningless gesture; it
is an active obstacle to dealing with the deadly problem of inner-city vio-
lence.  As long as politicians can offer palliatives such as the Brady Bill,
as long President Clinton can get away with telling audiences that the number
one step in dealing with inner city crime is to pass the Brady Bill, then
President Clinton and other politicians will never address the more difficult
solutions that might make a genuine dent in the killing fields of inner city
America.

     It might also be noted that the problems of teenage gun crime are worst
in cities such as New York, Chicago, and Washington with the most severe anti-
gun laws.  Not only are the laws in themselves ineffective, and not only have
the laws repressed the visibility of responsible adult gunowners to set a good
example for the next generation, the laws have enabled politicians such as
Mayor Dinkins of New York and the Mayors Daley of Chicago to avoid dealing with
the root of the violence problem.  As long as Mayor Dinkins can respond to New
York murders by talking about the Brady Bill, he will never be forced to re-
examine the New York City government's disastrous welfare and child protection
system.  And until New York City does reform the policies that encourage the
bearing of illegitimate children, and which provide those children no effective
protection from widespread child abuse, New York City will remain an incubator
for violent crime.

Buy-back programs
     Government or private programs to buy guns from citizens willing to turn
them in do have the advantage of not violating anyone's Constitutional rights.
The buy-backs are well-intentioned, but they are a waste of taxpayer or corpor-
ate money.  Buy-backs allow professional gun thieves a ready market for selling
their stolen goods, no questions asked.  The people who turn in firearms tend
to be the widows of hunters, rather than teenage gang members who have sudden-
ly decided to abandon a life of violence.  Buy-backs also send the social mes-
sage that dealing with violence can be accomplished by removing one instrument
of violence, rather than controlling or reforming violent people and the con-
ditions that create them.

     As long as American cities remain the dangerous places that they are, the
need to carry firearms for protection will persist (see Page 27).  Thus, gun
buy-backs are unlikely to make any significant dent in the numbers of youths
carrying guns.


Banning Gun Possession by Minors
     Some elected officials have proposed laws to more or less outlaw the
possession of firearms by persons under 18.  Oftentimes the laws are badly
drafted, and outlaw activity which cannot rationally be considered
illegitimate.

For example, an ordinance was proposed in Aurora, Colorado that outlawed gun
possession by minors in terms so broad that even minors with a state hunting
license were forbidden to carry a firearm while hunting.  Indeed, the ordinance
even prevented a 17-year-old licensed hunter from another city from carrying
an unloaded rifle in the trunk of his car, while driving along the interstate
highway that passes through Aurora, on the way to go hunting elsewhere in the
state.

     As detailed above, it is already illegal nationwide for minors to buy guns
in stores.  The laws regarding gun possession by minors, then, make it unlaw-
ful for adults to give or loan guns to minors, even though being taught about
guns by adults is the best way for minors to learn responsible attitudes about
guns.

     Because minors are not necessarily as responsible as adults, it might be
Constitutional for laws to require that minors with guns be subjected to re-
strictions that could not Constitutionally be applied to adults.  For example,
a law could require that minors only carry guns if they have permission from
their parents, or if they have passed a safety training class.  The National
Rifle Association has supported such laws in Arizona and Colorado.

     On the other hand, many anti-minor laws unconstitutionally strip young
people of their right to lawful self-defense.  Does it really enhance public
safety to enact laws which command that a 16- year-old female driving home
from the library at night may not possess a handgun to shoot a rapist, or that
a 17-year-old male who works the sales counter at his father's store may not
have the right to resist a robbery with a shotgun - even when the minors have
parental permission, and have passed a safety training class?

     While minors generally are not accorded the broadest range of Constitu-
tional rights applicable to adults, it is clear that the Constitutional rights
of minors may not be wholly abridged.  For example, while school newspapers
may be subject to certain controls not applicable to independently-owned news-
papers (since school papers are part of the school curriculum), juvenile stu-
dents have free speech rights, even on school property.  Similarly, while
lockers of juveniles in public schools can be searched under a "reasonable
suspicion" standard rather than the "probable cause" standard that applies to
adults, juveniles may not be stripped of Fourth Amendment protections and
searched at will.  Students who are suspended from public school have Constitu-
tional due process rights to a fair hearing, albeit not a full-blown
adversarial hearing with a right to counsel.

     Although a Constitutional argument could be made in favor of requiring
minors who wish to carry a firearm for protection to pass a safety class or to
receive written parental permission, there can be no Constitutional argument
for completely abrogating the self-defense rights of minors.



     Step Four: Start Dealing with Social Pathologies

     Improving the juvenile justice system is a first step towards reducing
teenage criminal violence.  (See suggestions on Page 50.)  Taking violent teen-
agers off the streets is a more effective approach than leaving them on the
street and enacting gun control palliatives.  After all, teenagers have ready
access to drugs, despite the severe prohibition of drugs for nearly a century.
It is foolish to pretend that gun control will somehow succeed where drug con-
trol has failed.

     In the long term, the most effective solutions will be found in addressing
the social conditions that have caused so many inner-city youth to value their
own lives and the lives of others so cheaply.  As one author put it, "The solu-
tion is in the playpen, not in the state pen."  Every day hundreds of children
are born to women with inadequate pre-natal care, and hundreds more are physic-
ally and sexually abused.  Many more children, while not directly abused, suf-
fer from "father hunger," growing up in a family where the father has left, or
was never present to begin with.  And today, 18% of American children live in
poverty.  Does it make sense to start spending more money on children today,
knowing that a child who can lead a healthy childhood is much less likely to
need to be incarcerated (at great taxpayer expense) when he becomes a teenager?

     There are no simple solutions to today's social pathologies; if there
were, the solutions would already have been implemented.  Yet the sooner it is
recognized that political discussion about violence must starts debating the
ways to remedy urban decay, and must abandon the focus on useless gestures such
as gun control, the sooner America will begin making forward progress.

     Social programs, unlike gun control, typically involve heavy tax revenue
expenditures.  That is one reason why New York City Mayor David Dinkins makes
a ban on semiautomatic "assault weapons" (used in about 1% of New York City gun
crime) the focus of his anti-crime effort, and why he ignores the shambles at
the City's child welfare agencies, where barely literate city employees do
nothing to save children from being murdered by their parents, even when the
children arrive at city hospitals time and again with broken bones, scars, and
bruises symptomatic of child abuse.

     True, hiring child abuse workers who can write coherent English is more
expensive than New York City's current policy of hiring those who cannot.  And
skimping on early childhood programs also produces short-term savings.  In the
long run, though, these savings are dwarfed by the costs of imprisoning child-
ren who could have been helped, but who have grown into criminals.

     One promising approach to preventing crime is Hawaii's Healthy Start
program.  The state identifies at-risk parents (alcoholics and victims of child
or spouse abuse) and offers them free in-home counseling.  The program helps
parents learn non-abusive approaches to child care, and also assists the par-
ents' application for Medicaid assistance and job training programs.  While
at-risk parents who are not contacted by the program have a 20% risk of per-
petrating child abuse, the abuse rate in homes covered by Healthy Start is
only 2%.  Since child abuse is linked to crime (84% of first-time juvenile
offenders in Denver reported having been abused before age 6), the funds ex-
pended in Healthy Start result in savings many times over in reduced criminal
justice and victim treatment costs.

     Another innovative approach is the Positive Adolescent Choices Training
(PACT) program, which uses role-playing to help teenagers deal with anger
through talking problems out, rather than "getting even" through a physical
attack.  PACT and similar programs aim to help teenagers develop empathy for
other persons.

     There are many other ways that American government can work to remediate
the social ills that lie at the heart of America's problem of inner-city teen-
age violence.  Fixing the present government schools system would certainly be
a start. (See discussion on Page 35.)

     While Americans must insist that the government begin confronting the
real causes of crimes, the problem is ultimately not within the government's
sole power to solve.  The problem can only be solved one child at a time, as
America's more affluent population reaches out to its neighbors through Big
Brother programs, literacy tutoring, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, church
programs, and the great range of private endeavors that have worked for America
in previous decades.  As the African saying puts it, "It takes a whole village
to raise a child."  Such an approach requires far more effort on the part of
every citizen than simply watching the evening news and nodding in agreement
as President Clinton promises that enacting the Brady Bill will reduce teenage
gun violence.  Perhaps that is why President Clinton, and so many other poli-
ticians, are so eager to offer voters the placebo of gun control, rather than
to challenge voters with the moral obligation to lead the moral and social
reconstruction of urban America.


                            Conclusion

     America does have a problem with children and guns, but the problem is
very different from the one invented by the anti-gun lobbies.  These lobbies
distribute booklets with a cover of an infant playing with a gun.  Yet while
there are 40,000 infant deaths every year, perhaps one is a gun accident.  Gun
accidents have declined by 50% in the last two decades, and can continue to
fall even more unless anti-gun bureaucrats succeed in quashing safety education
programs.

     Contrary to the assertions of gun prohibitionists, there is no epidemic
of teenage gun suicide; the teenage suicide rates and gun suicides rates have
been stable since the 1970s.  The most persuasive social science research
indicates that gun controls will not impact teenage suicides.

     America has a terrible problem of teenage gun crime, both in and out of
schools.  Despite the sometimes hysterical claims of the national media, the
problem is not uniform throughout America, but is very  heavily concentrated
among older adolescent males in large metro areas, and within that group heav-
ily concentrated among urban low-income blacks.  Within this group, the rate
of gun-related death is appallingly large, and calls for immediate action.

     Dealing with the social pathologies that beset inner-city minorities is
the most realistic approach to dealing with the group's very high homicide
rate.

Since drugs are readily available in the inner city, despite extremely severe
national prohibition, it is foolish to expect that gun controls will take guns
out of the inner cities.  The longer that the debate focuses narrowly on one
of the symptoms of social decay - the use of guns in homicide - the longer the
elected officials and American society will postpone the difficult work of
restoring hope to the underclass.

     Gun control advocates, however, attempt to shift the focus away from the
despair of the inner city, and convince America that there is a children and
guns epidemic throughout the United States.  While isolated incidents of fire-
arms homicide are sometimes used as the basis for a claim that teenage firearms
homicide is prevalent throughout America, the claim has no statistical basis
in fact.  As detailed above, some medical organizations misinform the public
through offering wildly inaccurate claims about children and guns.

     At 1966 hearings dealing with the problem of "juvenile delinquents" using
guns, Senators Edward Kennedy, Thomas Dodd, and others wrote a report which
promised, "By prohibiting the mail-order traffic in concealable firearms en-
tirely and restricting the over-the-counter purchase of concealable firearms
by nonresidents, and by regulating the mail-order traffic in shotguns and
rifles, the problem will be substantially alleviated."  Every one of Senator
Kennedy's proposals (and then some) became federal law in the Gun Control Act
of 1968.

     Twenty-five years later, there is no reputable criminological evidence
that the restrictions have "substantially alleviated" the problem of juvenile
delinquents carrying guns.  Yet rather than concede that the Gun Control Act
of 1968 is a failure and should be repealed, gun control advocates call for
more and more restrictive legislation, which they promise - this time for sure
 - will take guns away from juveniles.

     The reality of American history is that juveniles have always had ready
access to firearms, ever since the first old world settlers arrived in
Massachusetts and Virginia.  With 200 million guns (a third of them handguns)
already in private hands, the situation is not likely to change.  What has
changed in recent decades is not the availability of guns to juveniles, but
the way that juveniles have treated those guns.

     "Gun control" became a major national issue in modern times thanks to
Connecticut Senator Thomas Dodd's Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee.  Senator
Dodd had been preparing to hold the television and motion picture industries
accountable for the surge in teenage violence perpetrated by "juvenile delin-
quents."  The industries persuaded Senator Dodd to direct his fire at guns
instead, and Senator Dodd made himself a national celebrity by taking up the
"gun control" cudgel.

     The history of the juveniles and guns issue in the United
States has been three decades of politicians who dislike the idea of
private gun ownership, pushing for "one more" repressive gun control
that will supposedly disarm youthful thugs.  The laws never
succeed, but the sponsors of the failed laws respond by pushing
for yet another law which will supposedly succeed where the last one
did not.  Every time gun control fails, the explanation is that more
gun control is needed; the pattern brings to mind the story Abraham
Lincoln told about the man who sawed a piece of wood three times -
and it was still too short.

     Free-market economists such as Ludwig von Mises have noted that government
intervention in the economy which produces inflation tends to damage the econ-
omy, thus producing calls for yet more intervention, which further damages the
economy, and produces a demand for yet more intervention.  In terms of produ-
cing ever greater governmental intrusion in economic affairs, nothing succeeds
like the failure of previous intrusions.

     The gun prohibitions and near-prohibitions of cities such as Washington,
Chicago, and New York, have not only failed to disarm criminals, they have
substantially worsened gun crime by leaving generations of children with no
positive models of responsible civilian gun use.  The only gun-users that
children in these cities can regularly see are criminals, police (often per-
ceived as a hostile presence), and the most irresponsible set of gun users
possible: television and movie characters.

     Will elected officials continue to offer the public only the empty prom-
ises of gun control, or will they begin the hard work of combatting the true
causes of American violence?  The answer may determine whether the Americans
of the 1990s bequeath to 21st century Americans a society with more violence
and less freedom, or a society that in the 1990s finally began to reverse the
blight of its inner cities.

