More Gun Crimes, Less Sanity About Gun Control

Every time a gun crime happens in this country, the mainstream media give it sensationalistic coverage, and liberals cover their mouths with their hands and then remove them and start howling about the necessity of even more gun control legislation than the historically high levels we have now.

As the just published third edition of John Lott's classic More Guns, Less Crime exhaustively demonstrates, liberals are moving in exactly the wrong direction in their zeal to stop gun crime.

Lott's central thesis is that (1) criminals are less likely to commit violent crimes if they know there are significant numbers of concealed carry permit holders with weapons, (2) gun restrictions make it harder for law-abiding citizens to obtain guns for self-defense, (3) gun restrictions have no effect on criminals' intent or ability to obtain weapons, and (4) gun restrictions thus disarm only potential crime victims, whereas reduced gun restrictions arm citizens and frighten off criminals.

Lott supports his hypothesis via mountains of data analyzed at the national, state, and county level, looking at both overall rates of crimes and the more relevant changes in trends before and after permissive nondiscretionary laws are passed. He examines multiple categories of crime including murder, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery. He shows that his results hold, both controlling and not controlling for every demographic variable under the sun, as well as unrelated but important crime rate indicators such as arrest rates, policing strategies, and national trends.

Lott shows that the number of accidental deaths from increased possession of licensed weapons is so minor that it is dwarfed by the number of additional lives saved via increased citizen defense against would-be criminals.

Lott notes the astonishing fact that loosening gun restrictions has had such a positive impact on reducing states' crime rates over the last two decades that not a single state legislature has even scheduled a debate on repealing nondiscretionary gun laws once they have been passed.

In her semiweekly column in The New York Times, Gail Collins frequently mocks pro-gun legislators for opposing the slightest, most seemingly inconsequential gun control restrictions, such as not recognizing permits across state lines, banning guns in national parks, and instituting gun show sales regulations.

In fact, Lott's book just about literally shows that having as many law-abiding citizens with permits as possible, with as few restrictions on obtaining and keeping permits as possible, and the carrying of concealed weapons allowed in as many places as possible, reduces crime to the greatest degree.

For example, Lott finds that murder, robbery, and aggravated assault all increase in states that adopt "one-gun-a-month" rules, and that rape increases after the imposition of a mandatory waiting period. Rape, robbery, and burglary rates increase in states that pass "safe-storage" rules, and rape increased significantly after the adoption of the 1994 anti-gun Brady law. The number of permits in a state significantly predicts reduced crime rates for murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and violent crime overall.

Lott's findings are instructive in light of the recent University of Texas-Austin shooting, in which college sophomore Colton Tooley unleashed a hail of bullets from his semiautomatic weapon onto students in the street, then headed to the library and shot himself. The shooting echoed the infamous 1966 shooting on the university's campus, in which student Charles Whitman climbed to the observation deck of the UT clock tower and fired into the crowd, killing 13 people and injuring 2.

UT Austin, like most college campuses, doesn't allow concealed carry gun permits for students or even security guards. The state legislature introduced a bill to allow such permits in 2009, but Democrats defeated it. Republican state senators plan to reintroduce the bill in the 2011 session. The recent UT Austin shooting could have been prevented or mitigated by the widespread knowledge on campus that guards and possibly students were carrying concealed weapons.

But the Associated Press reported anti-gun advocate and graduate student John Woods saying, "I can't think of any way that the situation yesterday would have been improved by additional guns." Hmm... maybe one of the additional gun holders could have threatened or shot the attacker before he sprayed more bullets into the crowd? Or maybe the gunman wouldn't have pulled his crazy stunt if he had known there were numerous law-abiding permit holders on campus with concealed weapons ready to stop him?

Woods should know better, given that he was attending Virginia Polytechnic Institute during its 2007 mass shooting-another bloody massacre that could have been prevented or mitigated if the school had allowed guns on campus and one in which several of Woods' friends were among the 32 killed.

Lott's book, whose foundational empirical study was comprehensive and prescient enough to be capable of answering virtually every possible objection when it first came out in 1998 (in a chapter containing detailed responses to two dozen hypothetical counterarguments to his work), responded to critics' actual arguments in the second edition in 2000, and to additional arguments in the third edition released this year. Lott did so via references to his original analyses, new analyses done on the original data, new analyses done on new data, and new analyses done on critics' data. Thus, the most recent More Guns bears the distinction of featuring Lott's defense against critics of his defense against critics of his defense against critics of his original study. I think he's pretty well answered any fair and reasonable person's concerns by now.

Lott concludes More Guns, 3rd edition thusly: "The gun-control debate has changed dramatically over the last decade. In the past the question was how much guns caused crime. The debate now is over whether there are benefits from gun ownership and how large those benefits are" (emphasis added).

He's wrong about the debate over whether there are benefits from gun ownership-Lott's work has conclusively settled the matter.

http://www.scottspiegel.com

Crime Control Strategies - Myth, Magic and Metaphor

The latest fad, gadget or gizmo is not the basis for controlling crime. Or, the coolest technique used in some gee-whiz crime drama. Policing communities cannot be driven by polls, ratings or media sensationalism. We cannot address neighborhood crime problems by believing in myth, magic or metaphor. And, techno wizardry is only a small portion of the crime fighting picture. There is no doubt that gadgets and gizmos are important. But, techno-savvy policing, in the real world, is only as good as the cops that have the know how. Crime control strategies boil down to effective and efficient police work. This means the cop on the street or in the jail facility. The man or woman on the front lines, he or she are the people who really count. Effective police work requires competent police officers. To get them, you need high standards, effective recruitment and exemplary training. Once on the job, they need sufficient funding, resources and leadership. After that, the criminal justice continuum relies on inter-agency cooperation and coordination. Within that framework, cops hope there is a huge amount of competence and aggressive dedication on the part of prosecutors and judges. For some officers, that is a lot of wishful thinking. But, aside from politics, fighting crime means responding to the crime with an array of tactical and technical weaponry. Once into the process, identifying the criminal transforms the mission. Ultimately, putting a stop to his or her behavior, by sure and swift means, becomes the goal. Unfortunately, the goal is tainted by misguided perceptions.

Sad but true, we are deceived by our own fantasies. In the process of crime fighting, the entertainment media pursues a relentless quest of myth and magic. Supported by career minded politicians, metaphor becomes the expression of making the myth and magic appear real. Reality is blurred and merged with symbolism over substance. Misleading the public has potentially adverse consequences as it applies to the law enforcement function. People come to believe that policing is magic. And, psychics, profilers and crime solving gurus leap into action to protect us from the forces of evil. By the legerdemain of such antics, all our criminal behavior problems are solved. Sleight of hand skill has become more effective in the modern information age. The American public relies heavily on the airways for all sorts of information. Many people shape their beliefs by what they see and hear from the various media services. From movies to news reporting, the public often assumes the information they receive is based on fact not fiction. We are inundated every day by all sorts of tactics and techniques. Yet, information is transmitted for entertainment purposes, not for educational enlightenment. Lies, myths, and misconceptions become part of a process of changing our reality into sound bites, or staged story scenes. The dividing line between entertainment and news merges with mass marketing and salesmanship. Using those outlets for mass dissemination, politicians, activists and retailers perform clever tricks of the trade to misinform and manipulate. Entertainment comes across as a disguise for sensationalism. Ratings and polls become the barometric pressure of success or failure in an arena of mass media competition.

Law enforcement does not escape the bombardment of media and politics. Often it seems we are deceived by good intentions masquerading as myth, magic and metaphor. Again, looking good, for bureaucrats, the media and politicians, is better than actually being good. Subsequently, our systems of justice falter. Sure and swift prosecution, conviction and punitive retribution fail to reinforce the hard work done by the police work. So, if we are going to have an effective and efficient approach to crime control, then we are going to have to face reality. First, we have to find it. Second, we have to read between the lines by separating the pages where myth and reality merge. Third, we have to be on guard against an over-zealous media, sensational movie productions and career minded politicians. We also have to focus on recruiting, training and educating the best and the brightest law enforcement officers possible. Once on the job, then we have to give them every possible resource available. In the meantime, we try to find exceptional leaders to lead them. In addition, controlling criminal behavior requires that we look at ourselves. From politics to the corporate boardroom, criminal behavior permeates every level of society. Criminals are no different from the rest of us. In fact, they are us.

At the local level, the need for exceptional training for law enforcement personnel is essential. Officers must be highly skilled, educated and well-trained to deal with deviant anti-social behaviors. Crime, and the deviant behavior that goes with it, is typically a local government problem. As a local community issue, the police have to rely on the competence of local politicians. No doubt, a scary thought. Elected officials on city councils, county commissions on so on, decide the budgetary processes. In many cases, local law enforcement relies on low pay and benefits, limited material resources and ongoing shortages of qualified personnel. Such limitations strain police services. Many of the problems concern growth management issues. Growth management problems stem from political decisions. Criminals can easily figure out how this works. The more you grow the more material gain there is. And, if, while growing, you fail to plan for the public service infrastructure, the more there is to steal. In simple terms, budget constraints equal fewer cops and equipment, because that means more taxes to meet growth demands. Fewer cops and equipment mean fewer personnel for street or jail duty. For the criminal, mismanaged community growth and fewer cops mean more opportunities to find vulnerable targets to express criminal behavior. Urbanization of the community, with sprawling shopping centers, miles of highways and endless housing developments invite criminogenic problems. That is because more property and more people provide more targets of opportunity.

As communities get larger, with strained public service resources, the local criminal justice system bogs down. Crime control strategies become a matter of survival. In the confusion, we forget the basic reason people commit crimes. People commit crimes because they want to and what they want someone else has. There is no complicated formula, fad or fashion statement to be made about this. Criminals believe in only what they need or desire from others. Their relationships are based on what they can get. People who deviate from accepted forms know the “system” will not move fast enough to interdict. They can rely on politicians to provide “equal opportunity” environments for them.

Police services must be fully staffed and supported with professionals who expertly execute the mission of police work. In this regard, high standards and exception pay and benefits must be in place. In addition, every scientific and technological method must be provided to local law enforcement. High quality personnel and equipment must be deployed in the local community. When a major incident occurs, usually the “first responders” are the local police officers. They are the ones who bear the primary responsibility of dealing with crimes, criminals and crime scenes. Cops need to have all the necessary resources available to them all the time. The police mission includes the necessity of control of crime. Law enforcement operations are directed toward tactical and strategic considerations. To enhance the safety and security of the community, aggressive patrol operations are necessary. The police mission comes to bear on hardening the targets of potential criminality by early interdiction. Quick decisive patrol actions provide a degree of deterrence with respect to criminal activity. The “crime fighting model” of law enforcement, or sometimes called the “crime control model”, gives emphasis to efficiency, effectiveness, detection and prevention of criminal behavior. Within this rubric there is no room for myth, magic and metaphor.

Crime control is not the total responsibility of the police. The police are paid “professionals” who assume a certain level of accountability for dealing with criminal activity. It is primarily the responsibility of each citizen to be knowledgeable and involved the crime solution and prevention process. Citizens need to support their police in every way possible, from funding to recruitment. Adequate staffing is one way to ensure community efforts are directed toward the safety and security of the community. The prevention of crime, detection of criminal activity, and control of deviant behavior become successful through cooperative efforts. The patrol force is the key mechanism by which the community deals with crime control efforts. No other aspect of law enforcement is more important or more critical than patrol operations. Patrol is the “striking force” that is designed deal with criminal behavior. In every sense of the word, patrol is the “backbone” of law enforcement. Aggressive patrol operations are essential to community safety, security and welfare. With this endeavor, crime control strategies require education, training, skill, practical knowledge and experience among the practitioners.

To control crime, a complete overhaul in thinking is required. We have to stop blurring the reality between the real and the reel. Criminals are just like us. They commit crimes because that is what they want to do. Controlling crime, means controlling ourselves. Designing communities with that in mind directs us toward removing opportunities for crimes to occur. To ensure the inclusion of proper safeguards and preventive measures, adequate numbers of well-trained officers must be available. In addition, enforcement cannot be stifled by political influence. Everyone must be treated with equal standing regardless of who they are, or who they know. Myth should be left to the realm of philosophy. Magic should stay in the circus. And, metaphor should remain within the bounds of great literature. So, as a community let’s stop the sensationalism and start the seriousness. Crime can be controlled.

References

http://www.radfordreviews.com/cgi-bin/about.cgi from the book by Benjamin Radford, Media Myth Makers, Prometheus Books, 2003;

[http://www.rppi.org/newurbancrime.shtml]

http://members.cox.net/samenow/conceptapril_06.html

Jeffery, C. R. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1971), page 54;

Biographical Sketch of Randy Gonzalez

P.O. Box 19162

Sarasota, Florida 34276

941-915-8998

http://www.drgonzo.org

http://www.myspace.com/cryptocriminology

Randy Gonzalez has been an active member in the criminal justice field for the past 32 years. As a police officer, deputy sheriff and police instructor, he's taught and written on various criminal justice issues. Dr. Gonzalez is a former police chief. And, as a police academy director, he was responsible for basic recruit training, as well as career development courses for in-service law enforcement personnel. Dr. Gonzalez also serves as an adjunct professor of criminology on the faculties of a state university, community college, private university and local technical institute. He serves as an educational consultant to schools and colleges on matters of law enforcement education.

Dr. Gonzalez holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in Criminology, an M.P.A. degree in Public Administration, a Ph.D. in Philosophy. As well as law enforcement instructor certificates. He's a member of various professional organizations and writers groups.