For other uses, see 

Violence (disambiguation).

U.N. rates of physical violence resulting in death, per 100,000 inhabitants by country in 2002.[1]

  no data
  less than 200
  200-400
  400-600
  600-800
  800-1000
  1000-1200
  1200-1400
  1400-1600
  1600-1800
  1800-2000
  2000-3000
  more than 3000

Violence is the expression of physical force against one or more people, compelling action against one's
will on pain of being hurt.[2][3][4] Worldwide, violence is used as a tool of manipulationand also is an area of
concern for law and culture which take attempts to suppress and stop it. The word violence covers a
broad spectrum. It can vary from between a physical altercation between two beings
to war and genocide where millions may die as a result. The Global Peace Index, updated in June 2010,
ranks 149 countries according to the "absence of violence".[5]

Contents
 [hide]

1 Psychology and sociology

2 Gender and violence

3 Youth and violence

4 Targeted violence

5 Diagnosis of violence related psychiatric

disorder
 6 Law

7 War

8 Religious and political ideology

9 Health and prevention

10 Violence in the media

11 Classification & nomenclature

12 See also

13 References

14 Sources

15 External links

[edit]Psychology and sociology

The causes of violent behavior in humans are often topics of research in psychology and sociology.
Neurobiologist Jan Volavka emphasizes that for those purposes, “violent behavior is defined as
intentional physically aggressive behavior against another person."[6]

Scientists do not agree on whether violence is inherent in humans. Among prehistoric humans, there is
archaeological evidence for both contentions of violence and peacefulness as primary characteristics.[7]

Since violence is a matter of perception as well as a measurable phenomenon, psychologists have found
variability in whether people perceive certain physical acts as 'violent'. For example, in a state where
execution is a legalized punishment we do not typically perceive the executioner as 'violent', though we
may talk, in a more metaphorical way, of the state acting violently. Likewise understandings of violence
are linked to a perceived aggressor-victim relationship: hence psychologists have shown that people may
not recognise defensive use of force as violent, even in cases where the amount of force used is
significantly greater than in the original aggression.[8]

Riane Eisler, who describes early cooperative, egalitarian societies (she coins the term "gylanic", as it is
widely agreed that the term matriarchal is inaccurate), and Walter Wink, who coined the phrase “the myth
of redemptive violence,” suggest that human violence, especially as organized in groups, is a
phenomenon of the last five to ten thousand years.[citation needed]

The “violent male ape” image is often brought up in discussions of human violence. Dale Peterson
and Richard Wrangham in “Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence” write that violence
is inherent in humans, though not inevitable. However, William L. Ury, editor of a book called "Must We
Fight? From the Battlefield to the Schoolyard—A New Perspective on Violent Conflict and Its Prevention”
debunks the "killer ape" myth in his book which brings together discussions from two Harvard Law School
symposiums. The conclusion is that “we also have lots of natural mechanisms for cooperation, to keep
conflict in check, to channel aggression, and to overcome conflict. These are just as natural to us as the
aggressive tendencies."[9]

James Gilligan writes violence is often pursued as an antidote to shame or humiliation.[10] The use of
violence often is a source of pride and a defence of honor, especially among males who often believe
violence defines manhood.[11]

Stephen Pinker in a New Republic article “The History of Violence” offers evidence that on the average
the amount and cruelty of violence to humans and animals has decreased over the last few centuries.[12]

[edit]Gender and violence

"Criminological studies have traditionally ignored half the population: Women are largely invisible in both
theoretical considerations and empirical studies. Since the 1970s, important feminist works have noted
the way in which criminal transgressions by women occur in different contexts from those by men and
how women experiences with the criminal justice system are influenced by gendered assumptions about
appropriate male and female roles. Feminists have also highlighted the prevalence of violence against
women, both at home and in public."[13]

Of all crimes reported in 2006, 76.2 percent of arrestees were men and also there was a huge imbalance
in the ratio of men to women in prison. In 2004, women only made up 7.1 percent of the prison
population.[13]

Men are overwhelmingly the aggressors in certain categories of crime such as domestic violence, sexual
harassment, sexual assault, andrape. Women are mostly the victims in these categories. It is estimated
that 25% of women are victims of violence at some point in their lifetimes.[13]

[edit]Youth and violence

Official crime statistics reveal high rates of offense among young people. These offenses include rape,
assault, and theft. About 34 percent of all offenders arrested for criminal offenses in 2006 were under the
age of twenty-one (Federal Bureau of Investigations 2007b). Rising crime rates are often directly related
to the moral breakdown among young people and vandalism, school truancy, and drug use, which
illustrates societies increasing permissiveness. The mass murder at Columbine High School is an
example of how moral outrage can deflect attention from larger issues.[14]

At the school of Psychology at Birmingham University, links between violence viewed from a young age
can have a dramatic effect on violent youth. Research into media violence with young people has started
as a result of the theory that they are a “vulnerable audience.” [15] Contributing factors such as poverty,
one-parent families, and a lack of parental care support and affection, along with inconsistent discipline
are the most susceptible to be influenced by violent images through the mediums of television, Web 2.0
and more increasingly video games. A 1960’s UNESCO review stated that television viewing is a
contributory factor to delinquency and crime, but it is likely to affect only those children who are already
indifferent and prone to commit crimes. “In any of these cases, television by itself cannot make a normal,
well-adjusted child into a delinquent.” Television was seen as dangerous from the point of view of an
already aggressive child being able to gain hints of how to actually express their hostile feelings, rather
than in terms of it being capable of making a non-aggressive child actually become aggressive.[16]

According to the book, The Effects of Race and Family Attachment on Self Esteem, Self Control, and
Delinquency, children who are raised by both parents and receive proper affection are more than likely to
grow into a non-violent individual. It is believed that a child needs to bond with their parents during the
early ages of childhood. As a result, the child has a higher chance of not growing into a violent person.
Many children who do not receive the affection they need from their parents often turn to other sources to
fill that void with a common source being a gang.

[edit]Targeted violence
Several rare but painful episodes of assassination, attempted assassination and shootings in schools and
universities in the United States led to a considerable body of research on ascertainable behaviors of
persons who have planned or carried out such attacks. These studies (1995-2002) investigated what the
authors called "targeted violence," described the "path to violence" of those who planned or carried out
attacks, and laid out suggestions for law enforcement and educators. A major point from these research
studies is that targeted violence does not just "come out of the blue." (see Fein, R.A., Vossekuil, B. &
Holden, G. Threat Assessment: an approach to prevent targeted violence. NCJ 155000. Research in
Action, September, 1995, U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, Washington, D.C.;
Fein, R.A. & Vossekuil, B. Assassination in the United States: an operational study of recent assassins,
attackers, and near-lethal approachers. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 1999. 50: p. 321-333; Vossekuil,
B., Borum, R., Fein, R.A., & Reddy, M. Preventing targeted violence against judicial officials and courts.
ANNALS, American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2001, 576: p. 78-90; Fein, R.A., Vossekuil,
B., Pollack, W., Borum, R., Reddy, M.,& Modzeleski, W. Threat assessment in schools: A guide to
managing threatening situations and creating safe school climates. U.S. Department of Education and
U.S. Secret Service, May, 2002; Reddy, M., Borum, R., Vossekuil, B., Fein, R.A., Berglund, J., &
Modzeleski, W. Evaluating risk for targeted violence in schools: Comparing risk assessment, threat
assessment, and other approaches in Psychology in the Schools, 2001. 38 (2): pp. 157-172; Borum, R.,
Fein, R.A., Vossekuil, B. & Berglund, J. Threat assessment: Defining an approach for evaluating risk of
targeted violence. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 1999. 17: p.323-337)

[edit]Diagnosis of violence related psychiatric disorder

The American Psychiatric Association planning and research committees for the forthcoming DSM-
5 (2012) have canvassed a series of newrelational disorders which include Conflict Disorder Without
Violence or Marital Abuse Disorder (Marital Conflict Disorder With Violence).[17]Couples with marital
disorders sometimes come to clinical attention because the couple recognize long-standing
dissatisfaction with theirmarriage and come to the  clinician on their own initiative or are referred by an
astute health care professional. Secondly, there is serious violence in the marriage which is -"usually the
husband battering the wife" .[18] In these cases the emergency room or a legal authority often is the first to
notify the clinician. Most importantly, marital violence "is a major risk factor for serious injury and even
death and women in violent marriages are at much greater risk of being seriously injured or killed
(National Advisory Council on Violence Against Women2000)."[19]  The authors of this study add that
"There is current considerable controversy over whether male-to-female marital violence is best regarded
as a reflection of male  psychopathology  and control or whether there is an empirical base and clinical
utility for conceptualizing these patterns as relational." [19]

Recommendations for clinicians making a diagnosis of Marital Relational Disorder should include the
assessment of actual or "potential" male violence as regularly as they assess the potential for suicide in
depressed patients. Further, "clinicians should not relax their vigilance after a battered wife leaves
her husband, because some data suggest that the period immediately following a marital separation is the
period of greatest risk for the women. Many men will stalk and batter their wives in an effort to get them to
return or punish them for leaving. Initial assessments of the potential for violence in a marriage can be
supplemented by standardized interviews and questionnaires, which have been reliable and valid aids in
exploring marital violence more systematically."[19]

The authors can conclude with what they call "very recent information"[20] on the course of violent
marriages which suggests that "over time a husband's battering may abate somewhat, but perhaps
because he has successfully intimidated his wife. The risk of violence remains strong in a marriage in
which it has been a feature in the past. Thus, treatment is essential here; the clinician cannot just wait and
watch."[20] The most urgent clinical priority is the protection of the wife because she is the one most
frequently at risk, and clinicians must be aware that supporting assertiveness by a battered wife may lead
to more beatings or even death.[20]

It is also important to this topic to understand the paradoxical effects of some sedative drugs.[21] Serious
complications can occur in conjunction with the use of sedatives creating the opposite effect as to that
intended. Malcolm Lader at the Institute of Psychiatry in Londonestimates the incidence of these adverse
reactions at about 5%, even in short-term use of the drugs.[22] The paradoxical reactions may consist
of depression, with or without suicidal tendencies, phobias, aggressiveness, violent behavior and
symptoms sometimes misdiagnosed as psychosis.[23][24]

[edit]Law

One of the main functions of law is to regulate violence.[25]

Sociologist Max Weber stated that the state claims, for better or worse, a monopoly on violence practiced
within the confines of a specific territory. Law enforcement is the main means of regulating nonmilitary
violence in society. Governments regulate the use of violence throughlegal systems governing individuals
and political authorities, including the police and military. Civil societies authorize some amount of
violence, exercised through the police power, to maintain the status quo and enforce laws.

However, German political theorist Hannah Arendt noted: "Violence can be justifiable, but it never will be
legitimate ... Its justification loses in plausibility the farther its intended end recedes into the future. No one
questions the use of violence in self-defence, because the danger is not only clear but also present, and
the end justifying the means is immediate".[26] In the 20th century in acts of democide governments may
have killed more than 260 million of their own people through police brutality, execution, massacre,
slave labor camps, and sometimes through intentional famine.[27]

Violent acts that are not carried out by the military or police and that are not in self-defence are usually
classified as crimes, although not all crimes are violent crimes. Damage to property is classified as violent
crime in some jurisdictions but not in all.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation classifies violence resulting in homicide into criminal

homicide and justifiable homicide (e.g. self defense).[28]

[edit]War

War is a state of prolonged violent large-scale conflict involving two or more groups of people, usually
under the auspices of government. War is fought as a means of resolving territorial and other conflicts,
as war of aggression to conquer territory or loot resources, in national self-defense, or to suppress
attempts of part of the nation to secede from it.[citation needed]
Since the Industrial Revolution, the lethality of modern warfare has steadily grown. World War I
casualties were over 40 million and World War II casualties were over 70 million.

Nevertheless, some hold the actual deaths from war have decreased compared to past centuries. In War
Before Civilization, Lawrence H. Keeley, a professor at the University of Illinois, calculates that 87%
of tribal societies were at war more than once per year, and some 65% of them were fighting
continuously. The attrition rate of numerous close-quarter clashes, which characterize endemic warfare,
produces casualty rates of up to 60%, compared to 1% of the combatants as is typical in modern warfare.
[29]
 Stephen Pinker agrees, writing that “in tribal violence, the clashes are more frequent, the percentage of
men in the population who fight is greater, and the rates of death per battle are higher.”[30]

Jared Diamond in his award-winning books, Guns, Germs and Steel and The Third Chimpanzee provides
sociological and anthropological evidence for the rise of large scale warfare as a result of advances in
technology and city-states. The rise of agriculture provided a significant increase in the number of
individuals that a region could sustain over hunter-gatherer societies, allowing for development of
specialized classes such as soldiers, or weapons manufacturers. On the other hand, tribal conflicts in
hunter-gatherer societies tend to result in wholesale slaughter of the opposition (other than perhaps
females of child-bearing years) instead of territorial conquest or slavery, presumably as hunter-gatherer
numbers could not sustain empire-building.[citation needed]

[edit]Religious and political ideology

Main article:  Religious violence

1819 anti-Semitic riots in Frankfurt. On the left, two peasant women are assaulting a Jew with pitchfork and broom. On the
right, a man wearing spectacles, tails, and a six-button waistcoat, "perhaps a pharmacist or a schoolteacher,"[31] holds
another Jew by the throat and is about to club him with a truncheon. A contemporary engraving by Johann Michael Voltz.
Religious and political ideologies have been the cause of interpersonal violence throughout history.
[32]
 Ideologues often falsely accuse others of violence, such as the ancient blood libel against Jews,
the medieval accusations of casting witchcraft spells against women, caricatures of black men as “violent
brutes” that helped excuse the late 19th century Jim Crow laws in the United States,[33] and modern
accusations of satanic ritual abuse against day care center owners and others.[34]

Both supporters and opponents of the 21st century War on Terrorism regard it largely as an ideological
and religious war.[35]

Vittorio Bufacchi describes two different modern concepts of violence, one the “minimalist conception” of
violence as an intentional act of excessive or destructive force, the other the “comprehensive conception”
which includes violations of rights, including a long list of human needs.[36]

Anti-capitalists assert that capitalism is violent. They believe private

property, trade,interest and profit survive only because police violence defends them and that capitalist
economies need war to expand.[37] They may use the term "structural violence" to describe the systematic
ways in which a given social structure or institution kills people slowly by preventing them from meeting
their basic needs, for example the deaths caused by diseases because of lack of medicine.[38] Free
market supporters argue that it is violently enforced state laws intervening in markets - state capitalism -
which cause many of the problems anti-capitalists attribute to structural violence.[39]

Frantz Fanon critiqued the violence of colonialism and wrote about the counter violence of the "colonized
victims."[40][41][42]

Throughout history, most religions and individuals like Mahatma Gandhi have preached that humans are
capable of eliminating individual violence and organizing societies through purely nonviolent means.
Gandhi himself once wrote: “A society organized and run on the basis of complete non-violence would be
the purest anarchy.”[43] Modern political ideologies which espouse similar views include pacifist varieties
ofvoluntarism, mutualism, anarchism and libertarianism.

[edit]Health and prevention

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines violence as "Injury inflicted by deliberate
means", which includes assault, as well as "legal intervention, and self-harm".[44] The World Health
Organization ( “WHO”) in its first World Report on Violence and Healthdefined violence as "the intentional
use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person or against a group or
community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm,
maldevelopment or deprivation."[45]

WHO estimates that each year around 1.6 million lives are lost worldwide due to violence. It is among the
leading causes of death for people ages 15–44, especially of males.[46]
Recent estimates for murders per year in various countries include: 55,000 murders in Brazil,[47] 25,000
murders in Colombia,[48] 20,000 murders in South Africa, 15,000 murders in Mexico, 14,000 murders in
the United States,[49] 11,000 murders in Venezuela, 8,000 murders inRussia, 6,000 murders in El
Salvador, 1,600 murders in Jamaica,[50] 1000 murders in France, 500 murders in Canada, and 200
murders inChile.[51]

[edit]Violence in the media

Further information: Media violence research

[edit]Classification & nomenclature

 Abuse
 Child abuse
 Domestic violence
 Psychological abuse
 Cyber-bullying
 Sexual abuse
 Structural violence
 Symbolic violence
 School bullying
 Targeted violence
[edit]See also

 Aggression
 Aggressiveness
 Anarchism and violence
 Consensual violence
 Genetics and violence
 Meekness
 Response based therapy
 Terrorism
 Violence against women
 Violent crime
 War crime
 War
Home > Health Resource Center > Violence and Abuse > Web Content
Violence and Abuse
Common Reactions to Experiencing the Violence of Rape, Battering, Incest,
Abuse or Harassment

When we experience violence it is frequently a private crisis. Many survivors feel isolated because of a lack of
support or because sexuality or victimization is surrounded by shame in our culture. This creates a difficult set of
reactions that may be experienced by women who have been raped, battered, sexually harassed, abused as
children, robbed violently, or hurt by other forms of violence. Many of these reactions are common to all people --
soldiers in wartime, robbery victims, friends and families of murdered loved ones-- who have experienced trauma.

It can help to recognize the commonality in our experiences. Mental health professions have classified some of the
common reactions listed below as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is a term used to describe the re-
experiencing of trauma and the recurrent, intrusive, and distressing recollection of the event in images, thoughts, or
perceptions. It can include flashbacks, hallucinations, nightmares, a lack of connection to one’s body or surroundings,
an intense negative response to things that remind you of the trauma, troubled sleep, irritability or outbursts of anger,
difficulty concentrating, hyper vigilance, and an exaggerated startle response. For some of us, having a name to give
to this constellation of reactions is helpful. Yet it is important to note that the  reactions of one person may vary
greatly from those of another, and that our reactions may increase or decrease in intensity at different times in our
recovery.

Some of the feelings we may have as we move through the healing process:

 Self-blame and feelings of shame and guilt

We may feel ashamed or guilty about violence done to us or what we were forced to do because we are
taught that our job is to make others happy. If they aren't happy, we--not they--are to blame. If anything goes
wrong, it must be our fault. Blaming the victim releases the individuals who commit violence from
responsibility for what they have done. Friends or family may blame the victim in order to feel safe
themselves: “She got raped because she walked alone after midnight. I'd never do that, so rape won't
happen to me.'' 

 Fear, terror, and feeling unsafe

There is nowhere that feels safe anymore. When I'm home I'm afraid that someone will break into my house;
when I'm out, I'm afraid that I'll be attacked. My guard is always up.

 Anger and rage

While it is normal to feel anger and rage, these emotions are often hard for women to express. We have
been socialized to be nice and hide our anger. For many of us, directing anger toward the perpetrator may
generate intense feelings of terror. We may sometimes direct our feelings of anger toward others in our life,
where it feels safer. While this can be confusing for us and our loved ones, it is, unfortunately, quite normal.

 Anger turned inward, depression, and suicidal feelings

If we have a hard time realizing our anger or expressing it, we may turn it inward. This can lead to
depression and self-destructive feelings, or even a desire to take our own life.

 Substance abuse

Many of us who experience violence find no outlet for the feelings associated with the trauma and may self-
medicate with alcohol or drugs to help cope with overwhelming feelings of terror, grief, and anger. This can
 lead to addiction and the need for help with a substance abuse problem. Survivors in treatment may find that
the feelings related to the violence come up when they stop relying on the substance. If this happens, it is
essential to have support for the feelings connected to the abuse and violence and for recovery from
substance abuse.

I thought that everything would be better once I stopped drinking, but now I have nightmares about the
abuse I went through as a child. It makes it hard to keep my promise to myself to stay sober.

 Eating disorders

Survivors often develop eating problems in the wake of violence and abuse. These may take several forms,
including bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating, and other forms of disordered eating. Each of these can
develop into serious threats to one's health.

 Physical symptoms

These may include headaches, body aches, stomach and intestinal problems, fatigue, or chronic illnesses.

 Self-harm

Some survivors engage in various self-destructive behaviors as a way to deal with the pain. These may
include risk-taking, cutting oneself with sharp objects, or hitting or burning oneself. Many of us feel that the
physical pain evoked by self-injury diminishes the intense emotional pain. Self-injury can also be a way of
expressing anger and other strong emotions that were repressed. For others who feel totally numb, self-
injury may be a way to convince ourselves that we feel something. For still others, self-injury is a way to
replay an abusive experience in order to regain control of it emotionally.

 Grief and loss

The violence we have experienced may challenge our ideas of whom we can trust or where we are safe.
Throughout the healing process, we may experience grief over parts of our life that  we fee we missed.
Some of us feel a loss of innocence or a loss of our basic sense of self.

 Loss of control, powerlessness

Violence against us robs us of power and control.  We may feel powerless in general or in certain situations.

 Isolation

We may feel as though no one can possibly understand. Or we may feel embarrassed that our healing
process is taking as long as it is. Family members may be encouraging us to “just put it in the past” or “get
on with your life” while our feelings are still very real and troubling. We may not want to talk to anyone about
the violence for fear of being disbelieved or rejected.

 Flashbacks and nightmares

Flashbacks and nightmares can feel overwhelming and frightening, although they are common after
experiencing violence. A flashback is a memory that is experienced with one or more of the physical senses.
A nightmare is a dream that sometimes involves aspects or pieces of the assault but can be combined with
other events or aspects of the person's life.

I close my eyes to go to sleep and all I can see is the rape. I feel as though it is happening to me over and
over. 
  Sensory triggers

Survivors may re-live violence with all of our senses. Triggers are circumstances that are the same or similar
to those that occurred during the violence and that bring up feelings related to what happened. Certain
smells, sights, sounds, places, or even times of the year may bring about feelings related to the assault.

 Dissociation

During the violence or afterwards we may feel like we have left our bodiesy, or are numb and cannot feel
anything.  These feelings of detachment are a psychological defense mechanism that helped us to cope with
a traumatic situation in the past but may create difficulties in the present. For many of us, finding a way to
reintegrate these feelings is part of the process of healing.

When my uncle had sex with me, I felt like I was above the bed, looking down at a little girl who looked like
me.

When I am with a john, I just blank out. It is not the real me. 

 Changes in sexuality and intimacy

While some of us experience fear and aversion to sex and intimacy, others  find we want more relationships
or sex than before. This may change throughout our healing process.

 Spiritual crisis

Violence against us often results in an intense spiritual or religious crisis. We may feel a death of our spirit.
We may feel angry toward a supreme being or lose our faith completely. 

Written by: Margaret Lazarus with Renner Wunderlich, Diane Rosenfeld, and Stacey Kabat. 
Last revised: March 2005 

Solutions to Violence
Sep 1, 2001 - © Wendy Kudlicka

Where do children learn that violence is a solution? Their parents? Their peers? Their siblings? Children learn
violence from many sources, but as adults and parents we need to teach them other solutions to anger or offensive
behavior of any kind. Sure it’s okay to be angry, but as adults we need to help them channel that anger into
something more productive than violence. When we become angry what do we do to channel that anger? We clean
house, play basketball, take up exercise or running. These are beneficial ways to channel excess energy caused by
anger.

Children can learn violence from their parents at a very young age. Living with an abusive parent in any form;
physical, mental, sexual, is not healthy. Children learn what they see, hear, and feel. Adults with issues should seek
help before they pass their abusive behavior onto their children, or opt to not have children to begin with.

Children involved with siblings, friends, teachers, or anyone else that may regard as their peer, who shows out bursts
of anger, or appears out of control, should also seek help. Keep your child separated from this person as much as
possible, or completely.
Television and video games are sometimes the blame for warping a child’s mind and causing acts of violence. Please
help your child select their games and television programs by investigating before allowing them to play or view.

Music can also spark violent behavior. Listen to your child’s music with them. Determine whether or not it is
appropriate to listen to, and discourage unappealing music videos.

The above explanations are examples of things that can flare a child’s desire for violence. Try to curb their urges for
unnecessary roughness. The main solution for violent acts would be to teach children the standards of right and
wrong. Start teaching this from the day they are born and instill in them the capability of distinguishing right from
wrong. Never allow them to act against another person with physical force, but with appeal to character. Show them
the consequences of violent behavior by viewing television shows on prison reform education. Raise them to be
responsible for their own actions. Give them confidence, courage, and virtue with out the need to violate or offend any
person, or other life form with extreme brutality. Lets try to abolish youth violence by following these simple rules. Lets
raise the next generation to be peace-loving citizens who respect the rights of all human life.

The copyright of the article Solutions to Violence in Youth Violence is owned by Wendy Kudlicka. Permission to
republish Solutions to Violence in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Violence in America - Effective Solutions

[Authors]

Treating the weapon

In 1662 the Armarium Urguentum advised physicians on the treatment of gunshot and
other wounds:

If the wound is large, the weapon with which the patient has been wounded should be
anointed daily; otherwise, every two or three days. The weapon should be kept in pure
linen and a warm place but not too hot, nor squalid, lest the patient suffer harm.[1]

Three centuries later some physicians are still treating the weapon instead of the
wound.

It is increasingly common to hear "guns are a virus"[2] or discussion of "the bullet as

pathogen."[3] According to Koch's Postulates of Pathogenicity, the criteria used to
assess disease-causing potential, any observation of the peaceful use of firearms is
sufficient reason to reject the hypothesis that guns or ammunition are pathogens. The
half of American homes with guns offer a multitude of such observations. Further
still, review of the literature shows that guns and ammunition meet none of Koch's
Postulates of Pathogenicity.[4] As appealing as the claim may be to some, guns are
not pathogens and crime is not a disease. Crime is a social problem that does not lend
itself to analysis or treatment under the medical model.
Treating crime as a disease - the essence of the "public health" approach to gun
violence - is as illogical and ineffectual as the converse, treating disease as a crime.
We would mock any criminologist who advocated criminalizing disease by measures
such as fines for obesity or jail time for tobacco-related emphysema. We would
condemn the police if they invaded bedrooms to ensure the use of condoms in the
crusade against AIDS. The silliness of such proposals are readily apparent, yet are no
more illogical and insupportable than the proposals by advocates of the "public
health" model of gun violence, banning or severely restricting good citizens' access to
guns simply because a tiny fraction of guns are misused by predatory aberrants. It is a
distorted concept, indeed, that the rights of good people, the most virtuous and
productive citizens, should be defined - more precisely, restrained - by the criminal
actions of predators in our society.

"Do no harm!"
Reducing violence is a laudable goal we share with many of our colleagues, but the
evidence suggests that the gun control proposals made by many of our colleagues will
be worse than ineffectual. The weight of evidence suggests that gun bans and
draconian restrictions will not reduce criminals' access to guns, but will instead
disproportionately disarm good citizens who cannot be effectively protected by the
police - in so doing, gun control will do more harm than good.

It may seem a harsh claim, indeed, but there is considerable documentation that
zealous advocacy of gun prohibition by some high-profile researchers and editors has
been associated with a panoply of sins - a spectrum of trangressions ranging from
simple unfamiliarity with the literature, through bias, incompetence, and even outright
mendacity.[4,5,6,7,8,9,10] The most common transgression, however, is the medical
literature's refusal to recognize or address the majority of the literature on guns and
violence which is in sociological and criminological literature. Several acclaimed
reviews are available.[11,12,13,14,15] The second most common flaw is the "costs
only" approach to gun violence, neither acknowledging nor analyzing the evidence
that many more lives are protected by guns than are taken by guns.

Certain authors' unfamiliarity with guns and gun safety jeopardizes not only the
quality of their work, but has also caused them to advance potentially dangerous
"solutions." For example, it has been proposed that gun manufacturers make
"childproof" triggers - heavy trigger pulls - to enhance safety.[16] Such a proposal
enhances safety neither for adults nor for children. For adults, a heavy trigger pull is
not conducive to good marksmanship and increases the chance that an innocent
bystander, rather than an assailant, would be injured. A child frustrated by a stiff
trigger pull will attempt to obtain greater mechanical advantage than available from
the natural shooting grip by inserting a thumb into the trigger guard and gripping the
gun's handle with four fingers. This grip points the pistol at the child, increasing the
risk of death or injury. It is education in a few infallible safe gun handling habits, not
a myriad of fallible devices, that enhance gun safety.

Since the promotion of stringent gun regulation and gun bans is so familiar in the
medical literature, it would be redundant to repeat such advocacy here. Instead, we
will examine what is unfamiliar, a few representative flaws in common gun law
proposals. We will also identify promising areas of research to reduce violence in our
society - a problem that takes a terrible toll, but a problem that is often overstated as
being an "epidemic."[4] Our research and policy proposals focus upon the root causes
of violence, rather than upon the instruments or symbols of violence. We expect that
solutions will be neither simple, quick, nor cheap.

Cost-without-benefit analysis (Doctors or Guns - Which is

the deadlier menace?)
Amongst the most pervasive flaws in the medical literature on guns is the discussion
of the "costs" of gun violence without any consideration of the innocent lives saved by
guns. These and other benefits of guns are not so "intangible" as has been
dogmatically claimed.[17] We would be mortified if our colleagues' cost-without-
benefit analysis[18,19] became the standard for evaluating the medical profession.
The 1990 Harvard Medical Practice Study quantified non-psychiatric inpatient deaths
from physician negligence (excluding outpatient, extended care, and inpatient
psychiatric deaths) in New York State.[20] "If these rates are typical of the United
States, then 180,000 people die each year partly as a result of iatrogenic injury, the
equivalent of three jumbo-jet crashes every two days."[21] - almost five times the
number of Americans killed with guns. One might fairly conclude from such a "costs
only" analysis that doctors are a deadly public menace. Why do we not reach that
conclusion? Because, in balance, doctors save many more lives than they take and so
it is with guns.

A conservative estimate from the largest scale, methodologically sound study to date,
the study by Kleck and Gertz, suggests that there are 2.5 million protective uses of
guns by adults annually.[22] As many as 65 lives are protected by guns for every life
lost to a gun. For every gun tragedy sensationalized, dozens are averted by guns, but
go unreported. Whether or not "newsworthy," scientific method begs accounting of
the benefits of guns - enumeration of the lives saved, the injuries prevented, the
medical costs saved, and the property protected. Such an accounting is absent from
the medical literature. The protective benefits of guns - and the politicized "science"
that has been used to underestimate or totally deny those benefits and to exaggerate
the costs of guns - have been extensively reviewed.[4-12]

As ten studies have shown, in any year, about 1 to 2.5 million Americans use guns to
protect themselves and their families. and about 400,000 of those defenders believe
that they would almost certainly have lost their lives if they had not had a gun for
defense.[11,22] Even if only one-tenth of those defenders are correct, the lives saved
by guns would still be more numerous than the lives lost to guns. The flaws in the
only study to suggest otherwise, the outlier data of the National Crime Victimization
Survey (NCVS), have been discussed elsewhere.[22,23] Briefly, the NCVS is a study
of victimization, not defense, and, by its design, undercounts the most numerous types
of defensive gun use (e.g. women protecting against domestic attacks). As additional
sources of undercount error, the NCVS is the only such survey conducted by law
enforcement and the only study in which the respondents are denied anonymity. When
any statistic, such as the NCVS count of defensive gun use, is at odds with every other
measurement, it is discarded.[22]

Nonetheless, even those US Bureau of Justice Statistics samples show that defense
with a gun results in fewer injuries to the defender (17.4%) than resisting with less
powerful means (knives, 40.3%; other weapon, 22%; physical force, 50.8%; evasion,
34.9%; etc.) and in fewer injuries than not resisting at all (24.7%).[11] Guns are the
safest and most effective means of self defense. This is particularly important to
women, the elderly, the physically challenged, those who are most vulnerable to
vicious and bigger male predators.

These benefits can be weighed against the human costs of guns - recently about
38,000 gun deaths from all causes and about 65,000 additional serious injuries
annually (the remainder of gun injuries were so minor as to require no hospital
treatment at all). Totaling all gun deaths, injuries, and criminal mischief with guns
leads to a generous estimate of about 1 million criminal misuses of guns annually
(involving less than one-half of 1% of America's more than 200-million guns)[7,11]
So, all things considered, the human benefits of guns at least equal and likely exceed
the costs of guns to society by a factor of 2.5.

Of the 38,000 gun deaths, a majority are suicides. This has caused advocates of gun
prohibition to note that gun bans result in lower gun suicide rates, but they fail to note
a compensatory increase in suicide from other accessible and lethal means of suicide
(hanging, leaping, auto exhaust, etc.). The net result of gun bans? No reduction in
total suicide rates.[11] People who are intent in killing themselves find the means to
do so. Are other means of suicide so much more socially acceptable that we should
cede resources to measures that only shift the means of suicide, but do nothing to
reduce total suicide deaths?
"Friends and Family"
It is common for the "public health" advocates of gun bans to claim that most murders
are of "friends and family." The medical literature includes many such false claims,
that "most [murderers] would be considered law abiding citizens prior to their pulling
the trigger"[24] and "most shootings are not committed by felons or mentally ill
people, but are acts of passion that are committed using a handgun that is owned for
protection."[25]

Not only do the data show that acquaintance and domestic homicide are a minority of
homicides,[26] but the FBI's definition of acquaintance and domestic homicide
requires only that the murderer knew or was related to the decedent. That dueling drug
dealers are acquainted does not make them "friends." Over three-quarters of
murderers have long histories of violence against not only their enemies and other
"acquaintances," but also against their relatives.[27,28,29,30] Oddly, medical authors
have no difficulty recognizing the violent histories of murderers when the topic is not
gun control - "A history of violence is the best predictor of violence."[31] The
overwhelming majority of the perpetrators of acquaintance and domestic homicide are
vicious aberrants with long histories of violence inflicted upon those close to them.
This reality belies the deceptive imagery of "friends and family" murdering each other
in fits of passion simply because a gun, an evil talisman, was present "in the home."

Economic analysis
The actual economic cost of medical care for gun violence is approximately $1.5-
billion per year[32] - about 0.16% of America's $900-billion annual health care costs.
To exaggerate the costs of gun violence, the advocates of gun prohibition routinely
include estimates of lost lifetime earnings - assuming that gangsters, drug dealers, and
rapists would be as socially productive as teachers, factory workers, and other good
Americans - to generate inflated claims of $20-billion or more in "costs."[32] One
recent study went so far as to claim the "costs" of work time lost while workers gossip
about gun violence.[33]

What evidence is there that the average homicide decedent can be fairly compared to
the average worker, that average wages should be attributed to homicide victims?
What fraction of homicide victims are actually "innocent children" who strayed into
gunfire? Far from being pillars of society, more than two-thirds of gun homicide
"victims" are involved with drug trafficking or have evidence of ante-mortem illicit
drug use.[34,35] In one study, 67% of 1990 homicide "victims" had a criminal record,
averaging 4 arrests for 11 offenses.[35] Such active criminals cost society not only
untold human suffering, but also an average economic toll of $400,000 per criminal
per year before apprehension and $25,000 per criminal per year while in prison."[36]
It is not a slander on the few truly innocent - and highly sensationalized - victims to
note that the overwhelming predominance of homicide "victims" are as predatory and
socially aberrant as the perpetrators of homicide. Cost-benefit analysis is necessarily a
bit hardhearted, and, though repugnant for physicians to consider monetary savings
alone, the advocates of gun prohibition routinely force us to address the "costs" of gun
violence. So, we are forced to notice that, in cutting their violent "careers" short, the
gun deaths of those predators and criminals may actually represent an economic
savings to society on the order of $4.5 billion annually - three times the declared
"costs" of guns.

Those annual cost savings are only a small fraction of the total economic savings from
guns, because the $4.5 billion does not include the additional financial savings from
the innocent lives saved, injuries prevented, medical costs averted, and property
protected by guns. If we applied the prohibitionists' methods[33] to compute the
savings by guns, we would find that the annual savings approach $1/2 trillion, about
10% of the US Gross Domestic Product. We perform this exercise only to
demonstrate that all such "virtual reality" estimates of "indirect" costs and savings are
inflated and to condemn them all as meaningless.

Whether by human or economic measure, we conclude that guns offer a substantial

net benefit to our society. Some "quality of life" benefits, such as the feeling of
security and self-determination that accompany protective gun ownership, are not
easily quantified. There is no competent research that suggests making good citizens'
access to guns more difficult (whether by bureaucratic paperwork, exorbitant taxation,
zoning laws, contrived application of environmental or consumer product safety
statutes, reframing the debate as a "public health" issue, or outright bans - the current
tactics of the anti-self-defense lobby[37]) will reduce violence. No matter what tactics
are used by the anti-self-defense lobby to incrementally achieve citizen disarmament,
it is only good citizens who comply with gun laws, so it is only good citizens who are
disarmed by gun laws. As evidenced by jurisdictions with the most draconian gun
laws (e.g. New York City, Washington, DC, etc.), disarming these good citizens
before violence is reduced causes more harm than good. Disarming these good
citizens costs more - not fewer - lives.

Imagery and fact collide

Mountains of scholarly data on guns and gun laws[11] including the work of
Presidential Commissions and the National Institute of Justice,[12,13] are available,
yet the medical literature frequently cites instead editorials and articles by avowed gun
control advocates. Besides failing to perform a true risk-benefit assessment, our
colleagues commonly make errors of fact easily preventable by a literature search.
Consider false assertions about "assault weapons." Over two dozen studies overlooked
by those who advocate the prohibition of such guns show that these false icons of
violence are rarely used in crime.[10,38] Pejoratively and inaccurately named,
"assault weapons" are, in fact, civilian firearms that fire one shot per trigger pull, but
share cosmetic similarities with true military weapons (e.g. black plastic stocks,
bayonet lugs, corrosion resistant finishes, and similar features that do nothing to
enhance the criminal use of such guns). Claims of "sheer destructive power"[18] are
only unscientific and inflammatory imagery refuted by peer-reviewed research in the
medical literature.[10,39,40,41] Discredited theories of wounding, "watermelon
wound ballistics,"[42] should have no place in the medical literature. Unfortunately,
particularly when coming from physicians, the political effectiveness of such
embarrassingly unscientific hyperbole cannot be denied.

Unlike hunting weapons which, by definition, are designed to kill, military weapons
are designed to wound,[39] our colleagues' claim of "designed to kill human beings at
close range"[18] notwithstanding. In military doctrine, wounding is more useful than
killing because it removes not only the injured enemy, but also removes personnel and
resources necessary to transport and care for the injured. "Assault weapons" using
typical military ammunition actually have reduced lethality when compared to
sporting weapons, reduced lethality that is comparable to handguns using non-
expanding ammunition.[39]

Our colleagues briefly noted that "these weapons account for only a small percentage
of firearm deaths."[18] More pointedly, ten times more Americans die annually from
attacks using hands and feet than die from military-style rifles.[43] Let us emphasize
that, in the worst areas of gang and drug crime, over two dozen studies show that
military-style, semiautomatic guns account for generally 0% to 3% of crime guns.
[10,38] Unfortunately, our colleagues completely overlooked the legitimate and
constitutionally protected uses of these guns.[10,38]

Police protection
Criminals do not announce their intentions and police resources are stretched, so it is
unsurprising that the police rarely arrive in time to prevent death or injury from much
violent crime. Many are surprised, however, to discover that the police do not have
any legal obligation - not even a theoretical obligation - to provide protection to
individuals, even if in immediate danger. The police are only obligated to provide
some unspecified level of general protection to the community at large.
[44,45,46,47,48] It is a bitter irony indeed that, at the same time the police are relieved
of responsibility for our protection, we are forced to depend upon their protection. We
are often told that we may not and should not have the same tools that the police say
they need to protect themselves from the same criminals who threaten us.

Gun ban advocates routinely portray good citizens with guns as inept and dangerous,
but good citizens use guns about seven to ten times as frequently as the police to repel
crime and apprehend criminals[11] and they do it with a better safety record than the
police. About 11% of police shootings kill an innocent person - about 2% of shootings
by citizens kill an innocent person. The odds of a defensive gun user killing an
innocent person are less than 1 in 26,000.[49] Citizens intervening in crime are less
likely to be wounded than the police.[49] We can explain why the citizen record is
better than the police (the police usually come upon a scene in progress where it may
not be clear who is attacker and who is defender; also, the police, unlike defenders,
must close to handcuff the arrestee), but the simple truth remains: citizens have an
excellent record of protecting themselves, their families, and their communities.

Some polls claim that Californians support "more restrictive" gun laws, yet many
Californians were surprised to discover that existent "waiting period" law thwarted
their attempts to arm themselves for protection during the1992 Los Angeles riots. The
police department was so overwhelmed that residents discovered that they were
virtually abandoned to a "let burn" policy. Indeed, without causing even a single death
or injury, it was those good citizens displaying their fearsome "assault weapons" who
turned back mob and gang violence, protecting their lives, their families, and their
livelihoods. It was good citizens displaying such weapons who turned back looting
police and out-of-control US Army National Guardsmen during Hurricane Hugo.[50]
It was armed African-Americans that protected themselves and their families from Ku
Klux Klansmen and other racist terrorists (terrorists that often included local law
enforcement officers).[51,52,53]

When faced with multiple assailants, mob and gang violence, terrorism, or civil
insurrection, it is precisely high-capacity "assault weapons" that are necessary for
good people to defend themselves - particularly when police resources are stretched to
the breaking point. It is not only protection from criminals and lunatics about which
we must be concerned. Governments are the worst mass murderers. Not including
wars, as a conservative estimate, in this century 65 million people have been killed by
their governments - after first being disarmed.[54] Protection, not "sporting use," is
the issue.

The automobile model of gun ownership

Advocates of increased gun restrictions have promoted the automobile model of gun
ownership, however, the analogy is selectively and incompletely applied. It is
routinely overlooked that no license or registration is needed to "own and operate" any
kind of automobile on private property. No proof of "need" is required for automobile
registration or drivers' licensure. Once licensed and registered, automobiles may be
driven on any public road and every state's licenses are given "full faith and credit" by
other states. There are no waiting periods, background checks, or age restrictions for
the purchase of automobiles. It is only their use and misuse that is regulated.

Although the toll of motor vehicle tragedies is many times that of guns, no "arsenal
permit" equivalent is asked of automobile collectors or motorcycle racing enthusiasts.
Neither has anyone suggested that automobile manufacturers be sued when
automobiles are misused by criminals, as they frequently are, by drunk and reckless
drivers, in drive-by shootings, bank robberies, car bombs, and all manner of crime and
terrorism. No one has suggested banning motor vehicles because they "might" be used
illegally or are capable of exceeding the 55 mph speed limit, even though we "know"
speed kills. Who needs a car capable of three times the national speed limit? "But cars
have good uses" is the usual response. So too do guns have good uses, the protection
of 2.5-million good Americans every year.[22]

Importantly, the proponents of the automobile model of gun ownership fail to note
that controls appropriate to a privilege (driving) are inappropriate to a constitutional
right (gun ownership and use).

Constitutional issues
An important nexus exists where public policy touches the constitution. Television
violence has been deemed a cause of violence,[55,56,57] but outlawing entertainment
violence and sensationalized newscasting is precluded by First Amendment
guarantees. The spread of AIDS might be reduced by draconian measures that,
thankfully, are precluded by our inherent enumerated and unenumerated civil rights
guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Analogously, even if gun bans could be demonstrated
to be effective in reducing violence, such measures are precluded by our right to keep
and bear arms, our inherent and irrevocable right to protection against criminals,
crazies, and tyrants.

We are alarmed that the constitutional impediments to gun bans, draconian

restrictions, and confiscatory levels of fees and taxation, if discussed at all, are
offhandedly and mistakenly dispatched.[58] No "need" must be demonstrated or
license obtained in order to exercise a constitutional right; such "prior restraint" is a
patently unconstitutional denial of civil rights. To support purportedly "reasonable"
restrictions, the claim is often made that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is a only a
collective right of states to maintain militias.[58,59,60] Such a claim is incongruous
with Supreme Court case law,[61,62] the history of the right,[63,64,65,66] and legal
scholarship.

In fact, the Supreme Court has explicitly acknowledged a _pre-existent_ ("pre-

existent," rather than "granted" by the Constitution) _individual_
right[67,68,69,70,71] to keep and bear _military-style_71weapons. The familiar
contention that there is no individual right to arms derives partly from a common
misunderstanding of the constitutional "militia." Advocates of "broad-based gun
control"[58] emphasize merely the mention of "militia," but historians, legal scholars,
and Supreme Court Justices agree that, "The 'militia' was the entire adult male
citizenry," so that "one purpose of the Founders having been to guarantee the arms of
the militia, they accomplished that purpose by guaranteeing the arms of the
individuals who made up the militia."[61]

Adherents of the "states' right only" theory of the Second Amendment assert their
position without examining the implications of their own theory. A full understanding
of the "states' right only" theory leads to conclusions that will make its proponents
even more uncomfortable than if they accepted the individual right theory.[72 ] An
honest application of the "states' right only" theory, according to the rationale
advanced by its own adherents,[58-60] demands not merely armed state militias, but
full military parity for the states. In these times of tension between the states and the
federal government, gun prohibitionists should rethink the advisability of promoting a
theory that would return the US to armed confederacy. Further, as Reynolds and Kates
discuss, citizen disarmament would not necessarily be an outcome of an honest
application of the "states' right only" theory of the Second Amendment.[72]

That the Supreme Court has acknowledged the individual right, but done little to
protect that right, is reminiscent of the sluggishness of the Supreme Court in
protecting other civil rights before those rights became politically fashionable. It has
taken over a century for the Supreme Court to meaningfully protect civil rights
guaranteed to African-Americans in the Fourteenth Amendment. The claim that "no
court has ever overturned a gun law on Second Amendment grounds" is not only false
(Nunn v. State [73] and in re: Brickey[74] overturned gun laws on Second
Amendment grounds), but is also the equivalent of a morally indefensible claim in
1950 that "no court has ever overturned a segregation law."

Supreme Court decisions have been thoroughly reviewed in the legal literature. Since
1980, of thirty-nine law review articles, thirty-five note the Supreme Court's
acknowledgment of the individual right to keep and bear arms[75] and only four claim
the right is only a collective right of the states (three of these four are authored or co-
authored by employees of the antiselfdefense lobby).[76] One would never guess such
a precedential and scholarly mismatch from the casual misinterpretations of the right
in the medical literature and popular press. The error of the gun prohibitionist view is
also evident from the fact that their "states' right only" theory is exclusively an
invention of the twentieth century "gun control" debate - a concept of which neither
the Founding Fathers nor any pre-1900 case or commentary seems to have had any
inkling.[61-65,77]

Though the gun control debate has focused on the Second Amendment, legal
scholarship also finds support for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in Ninth
Amendment "unenumerated" rights,[78] Fourteenth Amendment "due process" and
"equal protection" rights,[79,80,81,82] and natural rights theory.[77] Also, in the
absence of explicit delegated powers, the Tenth Amendment guarantees that the
powers are reserved to the States and the people,[83] making several provisions of the
Brady Law unconstitutional.[84]

Progressive reform
Complete, consistent, and constitutional application of the automobile model of gun
ownership could provide a rational solution to the debate and enhance public safety.
Reasonable compromise on licensing and training is possible. Generally, where state
laws have been reformed to license and train good citizens to carry concealed
handguns for protection, violence and homicide have fallen.[49,85] Even those
unarmed citizens who abhor guns benefit from such policies because predators cannot
distinguish in advance between intended victims who carry and victims who eschew
_concealed_ weapons.

In Florida, as in other states where they have opposed reform, the anti-self-defense
lobby claimed that blood would run in the streets of "Dodge City East," the "Gunshine
State," that inconsequential family arguments and traffic disputes would lead to
murder and mayhem, that the economic base of communities would collapse, and that
many innocent people would be killed[49,88] --- but we do not have to rely on
irrational propaganda, imaginative imagery, or political histrionics. We can examine
the data.

One-third of Americans live in the 22 progressive states that have reformed laws to
allow good citizens to readily protect themselves outside their homes, openly or
concealed.[49,88] In those states crime rates are lower for every category of crime
indexed by the FBI Uniform Crime Reports.[26] Homicide, assault, and overall
violent crime are each 40% lower, armed robbery is 50% lower, rape is 30% lower,
and property crimes are 10% lower.[26] The reasonable reform of concealed weapon
laws resulted in none of the mayhem prophesied by the anti-self-defense lobby. In
fact, the data suggest that, providing they are in the hands of good citizens, more guns
"on the street" offer a considerable _net_ benefit to society - saving lives, a deterrent
to crime, and an adjunct to the concept of community policing.

As of 12/31/93, Florida had issued 188,106 licenses and not one innocent person had
been killed or injured by a concealed weapon licensee in the 6 years post-reform.[49]
Of the 188,106 licenses, 17 (0.01%) were revoked for misuse of the firearm. Not one
of those revocations were associated with any injury whatsoever.[49] In opposing
reform, fear is often expressed that "everyone would be packing guns," but, after
reform, most states have licensed fewer than 2% (and in no state more than 4%) of
qualified citizens.[49]

A recent flurry of pre-publication publicity highlighted an upcoming paper by critics

of reform, David MacDowall, Colin Loftin, and Brian Wiersema of the University of
Maryland Violence Research Group.[86] These researchers are best known for their
1989 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine[87] that, in the face of a tripled
homicide rate, claimed that Washington DC's 1976 handgun freeze had lowered
homicide.[4] In the face of data showing statewide reductions in homicide rates in
many states that have adopted reforms (particularly impressive when compared to
concurrent national trends),[49] these researchers now claim that reform of concealed
weapons laws has raised homicide rates. To contrive such a "day is night" conclusion,
they ignored national trends and rejected the statewide benefits of statewide laws
without credible analysis. Instead they simply selected the few exceptions, the few
urban areas and irregular, shifting time periods that could be contrived to show a
homicide increase. Furthermore, if FBI data is used instead of the researchers'
National Center for Health Statistics data (FBI data culls at least a fraction of lawful
self-defense homicides), MacDowall et al.'s claim collapses.

The anti-self-defense lobby has claimed that violent crime rose 19% in Florida
following reform, but they fail to note that violent crime rose 23% nationally.
Additionally, the data became more difficult to interpret because the accounting of
violent crimes except homicide changed during this period. So, the observed homicide
rate reductions are the best available indicator of the effectiveness of reform.
Following reform, Florida's homicide rate fell from 36% above the national average to
4% below the national average and remains below the national average to this day.
[49]

Notwithstanding gun control extremists' politicized research, histrionics, and

unprophetic imagery , the observed reality was that most crime fell, in part, because
vicious predators fear an unpredictable encounter with an armed citizen even more
than they fear apprehension by police[12] or fear our timid and porous criminal justice
system. It is no mystery why Florida's tourists are targeted by predators - predators are
guaranteed that, unlike Florida's citizens, tourists are unarmed. Those who advocate
restricting gun rights often justify their proposals "if it saves only one lifeI." There
have been matched state pair analyses, crime trend studies, and county-by-county
research[49] demonstrating that licensing good, mentally-competent adults to carry
concealed weapons for protection _outside_ their homes saves _many_ lives, so gun
prohibitionists should support such reforms, _if_ saving lives is truly their motivation.

Conclusion
Insisting that a frog is a cow will not give us milk. Neither will insisting a social
problem is a medical problem give us a solution to violence. If medical researchers
want to investigate violence, they must learn the methods of social science research
and familiarize themselves with the social science literature. Predatory criminals are
neither microbes nor automobiles.

We, too, call for better data collection, but then, on the basis of existing data, we part
company with our colleagues who call for broad-based gun controls and bans. As we
have discussed, guns in the hands of good, mentally competent adults offer a net
benefit to society - whether measured in human or economic terms. Until such time as
we eliminate violence from society, we believe that good people should have
available the safest and most effective means of protection, guns. The rights of good
and moral people, the overwhelming majority of America's citizens, are inherent
rights that are not forfeit as a result of the heinous actions of predatory aberrants.

The predominance of data show that over 20,000 American gun laws, including
national gun laws, have done virtually nothing to reduce violence or to reduce
availability of guns to criminals. Expectedly so! Vicious predators who ignore laws
against murder, mayhem, and drug trafficking routinely ignore those existent
American gun laws. No amount of well-meaning, wishful thinking will cause these
criminals to honor additional gun laws. If "better" data are forthcoming, we are ready
to reassess the public policy implications. Until such time, the data suggest that victim
disarmament is not a policy that saves lives.

Proposals
We note that public health efforts combating AIDS and tuberculosis are most effective
when high-risk populations are targeted. If there is any kernel of truth in the "public
health" model of violence, it is that high-risk populations should be addressed,
specifically, broken, impoverished, young families in the inner cities. Though we
offer proposals to reduce violence in our society, we have realistic expectations. We
know that utopia is not an available alternative. It may take a generation or more to
obtain even incremental reductions in violence. A social problem that has taken
generations to develop, will not disappear quickly or cheaply. We must replace today's
rhetoric of entitlement with values of family life, individual rights, and individual
responsibilities. We must avoid the tempting mirage, the false promises of gun
control. We encourage the following research and policy agenda:

1) Oversight of the competence and integrity of further tax-funded research -

Politicized science costs lives because it leads us down a literal dead-end, the
unilateral disarmament of innocent victims. Of additional importance, politicized
science wastes resources and time that might be spent productively. Editorial
censorship, histrionics, and medical "mob journalism" are equally unsuited to the
development of sound public policy.

Much of the shoddy research has been funded by taxpayers through the Centers for
Disease Control and legitimate concern has been raised about the politicization of that
research.[4-9] While we fully support the First Amendment rights of advocates at both
poles of the debate, we do not believe that it is appropriate for tax-payers to foot the
bill for polemics from either pole. There must be Congressional oversight of tax-
funded research to ensure the integrity and competence of tax-funded studies and
steps must be taken to improve the peer review process. Editorial privilege should
entail responsibility and accountability. Editorial license should end far short of the
threshold of carelessness, abuse, and censorship.

2) Enforce existent laws against violent crime - No additional laws or sentence

enhancements are necessary. There are no violent crimes that are "missed" by criminal
codes. If applied, existent sentences prescribed for violent crimes are already far from
trivial, so we support "Truth in Sentencing," rather than early release of or plea
bargaining by violent criminals. If applied, existent sentences prescribed for violent
crimes make inflexible "Three Strikes, You're Out" proposals completely
unnecessary. "The most effective prison reform would be to return prisons to their
primary mission of incapacitating violent criminals."[88]

President Clinton and his administration have spotlighted violent crime and demanded
draconian gun restrictions as a "solution." The administration's lack of action,
however, belies its rhetoric. Senators Orrin Hatch and Robert Dole have inquired of
Attorney General Janet Reno why, according to the Administrative Office of the US
Courts, prosecutions have actually declined 5% overall and, in the case of gun crimes,
prosecutions have declined 23%, under the Clinton-Reno administration).[89]

3) Enforce existent laws against the true sources of criminals' guns - The enforcement
of existent gun laws and the enforceability of proposed gun laws are rarely discussed.
High rates of gun ban non-compliance and the police state tactics necessary for
enforcement are rarely discussed.[10] The Clinton administration and many
politicians, including the "public health" advocates of gun prohibition, call for more
draconian gun laws when existent laws are poorly enforced. Of how little benefit to
public safety can symbolic gestures be? Of what possible benefit can their more
draconian proposals be if those proposals are not - or cannot be - enforced?

Only 7% of criminals' handguns are obtained from retail sources,[13] so controls on

retail gun sales cannot be expected to reduce criminals' access to guns much, if at all.
Despite exaggerated claims of the success of the Brady Law,[90] the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) has acknowledged that the little existent
evidence is only anecdotal.[91] If fact, almost all of Brady Law background check
discoveries of "thousands of _possible_ felons" are false positives. Many are
innocents whose names are similar to felons. Misdemeanor traffic convictions,
citations for fishing without a license, and failure to license dogs are the types of
trivial crimes that resulted in a computer tag that labeled the others as "potential"
felons.[92] Of the minuscule number of actual felons identified by Brady Law
background checks, not one has been prosecuted.[93] Instead, those felons are merely
displaced into the "black market." In such circumstance, the minimal expected benefit
of the Brady Law diminishes to no benefit at all.

Instead of heaping more onerous restrictions upon good citizens or law-abiding gun
dealers who are not the source of crime guns, is it not more reasonable - though
admittedly more difficult - to target the real source of crime guns? It is time to admit
the futility of attacking the supply of legal guns to interdict the less than 1% of the
American gun stock that is used criminally. Instead, we believe enforcement effort
should focus on targeting the long illegal "black market" in stolen guns. It is equally
important to reduce the demand for illicit guns and drugs, most particularly by
presenting attractive life opportunities and career alternatives to the inner-city youth
that are overwhelmingly and disproportionately the perpetrators[94] and victims[95]
of violence in our society.

4) Treat guns like cars, completely, consistently, and constitutionally - Specifically,

enact legislation to license good citizens - mentally competent, law-abiding adults - to
carry concealed firearms for protection in public. No "need" must be demonstrated.
Self-protection is a universally applicable need. Of course, there should be no
licensing or registration of _any_ kind of firearm used on _private_ property. We
believe _this_ is the _reasonable_ compromise, the _reasonable_ gun control this
country needs.

Like for automobiles and prospective drivers, we believe guns should be kept out of
the hands of the mentally incompetent, the criminal, and the irresponsible - adult or
child - and we advocate voluntary safety training programs. We recommend that
every prospective gun owner carefully weigh the responsibility of gun ownership and,
upon purchase, to be certain that gun safety is paramount. It is encouraging to note
that National Safety Council data show that accidental gun deaths have been falling
steadily since the beginning of this century and now hover at an all time low.[96]

5) Welfare reform - End government policy that destroys families and, in turn,
destroys the fabric of society. The "War on Poverty" is another war lost by America.
Welfare aid has climbed from 1.5% of the Gross National Product when Lyndon
Johnson's "Great Society" initiated the "War on Poverty" to 5% of the Gross National
Product ($305 billion) in 1992, yet we have seen crime, substance abuse, divorce,
illegitimacy, and resultant single-parent families skyrocket and the work ethic, family
stability, and educational aspiration erode. To reduce violence, welfare reform must
discourage dependency, encourage responsible, constructive behavior, reduce
illegitimacy and single-parent families, and entail a system of mutual responsibility in
which welfare recipients are expected to contribute to society in return for the aid they
receive.[97]

6) Improve life and career opportunities for the poor - A corollary of welfare reform,
this is certainly the most difficult, the most expensive, and the most important of our
proposals. Violent drug crime has been described as a rational career choice for those
so impoverished that their job choices are virtually non-existent.[98] There must be
attractive and positive alternatives for the poor. Such alternatives are more likely to be
realized through the private sector, than through typically wasteful and inefficient
government programs. Government may best serve us all by getting out of our way
and by letting families, not politicians and bureaucrats, decide how to spend their
earnings.

Of course, the communities most afflicted by poverty and violence, the inner cities,
must begin, through home, church, and school, to promote values that mitigate
violence - among such values, the work ethic, educational aspiration, delayed
gratification, respect for individual and property rights, love of self, family, and
community, and the sanctity of life. Where public schools have brought valueless
bureaucracy, school vouchers hold promise of a renaissance of inner city private and
parochial schools, offering parents a choice, cost effective educational opportunities
that promote values beneficial to society.[97]

To make the alternatives more attractive, it may be helpful to remove profit from the
illicit drug trade. While the decriminalization of personal drug use by adults is
controversial, we believe that we must study such proposals.

7) Mitigate media violence - The role of media violence in exacerbating violence in

society is well documented.[55-57] Rather than unconstitutional infringements of First
Amendment rights, it is parents who must exercise control over children's viewing
habits and who must influence the media. Parents should make their views known to
producers and advertisers when they are offended by sensationalized newscasting and
gratuitous violence in entertainment media.

8) Promote conflict resolution training - To offset the deleterious effects of violence

promoted in the media, we believe that early in life children must learn the non-
violent means of conflict resolution.

9) End the scapegoating of guns and gun owners - It is divisive and counter-
productive to vilify America's innocent gun owners. Those who abhor guns must be
reminded that half of American households find legitimate reasons to own and enjoy
firearms, some for protection, some for recreation.[11] Clearly, the abhorrence of
guns (or gun owners) is _not_ the dominant American paradigm. The vogue of
describing gun ownership as a pathology should pass, since gun ownership is, in fact,
a neutral or positive social phenomenon of half of American households.

Guns are not charms that impel evil, neither are they magically protective talismans.
Guns are only powerful tools. Fortunately, most citizens of our distressed society are
moral and responsible people in whose hands guns are the safest and most effective
means of protection against criminals, crazies, and tyrants. The future will shine more
brightly if compassionate and thoughtful individuals join to promote individual
responsibility, personal freedom, and to develop effective, long-term solutions to
reduce violence in America.

[References]