Alex Wong: The link between guns and less crime

It is inevitable that an event as monumental as Sept. 11 will have an effect on almost all aspects of society. One of those aspects will be crime.

Although our country is currently gripped by a sense of insecurity unmatched since the Cuban missile crisis, in the long run this fear will indirectly translate into a lower crime rate and thus a safer, more secure society. But the chief reason that this will happen may not be so apparent.

Politicians and the media alike will praise increased building security and a more observant, vigilant citizenry for their effect on criminal activity, but the true driving force behind the drop in crime will be something much less politically appealing: the sharp rise in gun sales across the nation after Sept. 11th.

According to The Washington Post, applications to buy handguns in Virginia doubled the week after the attacks while background checks for larger weapons shot up 32 percent. Connecticut saw sales rise 41 percent compared to last year, California 42 percent and in Colorado, requests for concealed weapon permits jumped 172 percent from August to October.

While this dramatic rush on firearms will do little if anything at all to deter large-scale terrorism, it will have a profound effect on everyday crime. In state after state, evidence shows that when citizens gain greater access to guns, criminals think twice about their actions.

According to the book More Guns, Less Crime -- a rigorous, county by county study of guns and crime by Yale Law School researcher John Lott -- states with restrictive concealed weapons laws have dramatically higher crime rates in every category than those states that freely issue concealed weapons permits.

On average, murder rates are 81 percent higher. Aggravated assault is 82 percent higher. The incidence of rape shows a 25 percent difference and robbery is higher by a whopping 105 percent.

Lott's study goes even further. It looks at three states that have recently relaxed concealed weapons laws and, controlling for a national trend in decreasing crime, finds that the new laws resulted in even more precipitous drops. In Florida, Pennsylvania and Oregon, occurrences of murder went from a peak of 10.1 per 100,000 people to 7.1 in six years, rape 1.69 to 1.55, robbery 119 to 100 and aggravated assaults 71 to 49.

Lott's statistics illustrate the truth that gun control laws only serve to disarm law-abiding citizens, leaving them defenseless against criminals who don't bother with legal procedures when obtaining their weapons.

But you won't see any similarly hard statistics from gun control advocates, unless they are distorted beyond relevance.

A favorite of theirs is to state that 13 children die every day from guns. The truth is, however, that for children under 10, there are fewer than 0.4 deaths per day. Seventy percent of the "children" killed by guns are between the ages of 17 and 19, predominantly involved in gang activity and who were most likely killed by guns obtained illegally.

Gun control backers also like to cite that death by firearms is virtually non-existent in some countries with strict gun-control laws. This is true, but the countries they choose for comparison do not have a history of legalized firearms, making the comparison irrelevant for an America containing over 200 million guns.

More apt comparisons are with countries like Russia and Brazil, in which gun ownership was legal until recently. With guns still on the streets, those nations now endure murder rates four times as high as that of the United States.

Another argument gun control advocates trot out is that more guns mean more accidental deaths. While inadvertent gun deaths are horrible, some perspective is needed when talking about fatal accidents.

According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, automobile accidents killed 42,000 in 1998. Accidental falls killed 9,600 people. Accidental drowning, 4,400.

Accidental gun deaths? 886.

And that was down 13 percent from 1997 and 44 percent from 1993. At the same time, the number of firearms sold in the United States went up, so the idea that more guns means more accidents is baseless.

When looking at an issue like gun control, one must weigh the net benefits. The number of lives saved by guns' crime deterrence far outnumbers those lives lost to accidents.

The increase in gun purchases after Sept. 11 highlights a rarely acknowledged -- but crucial -- truth about our society's system of self-defense and protection. Law enforcement bodies not only cannot protect everybody, but doing so is not their duty.

According to New Jersey attorney Sheldon Platt, the legal duty of police is not to protect people, but to investigate crimes. That is why they can be held liable for botching an investigation but cannot be held liable for failing to arrive on the scene in time to prevent a robbery.

The duty of protecting the people falls to the people themselves. Because of Sept. 11, more people are aware of that. And -- as the statistics show -- it's for the better.

Alex Wong is a senior English major from Wyckoff, N.J.

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