Do Guns Cause Crime? Reply to Mr. Lambert

1. CRITICISM OR MEANINGLESS QUIBBLES?
Mr. Lambert charges I "pretend to provide [HNN readers] a criminologist's perspective on the guns-crime question, but only quotes from pro-gun criminologists.... nowhere does he address or even the mention the work of Zimring and Hawkins or Cook and Ludwig...."

In evaluating these charges it is important to bear in mind that the object of my article was not summarizing the American gun debate but discussing Prof. Malcolm's topic, "Do Guns Cause Crime?" -- primarily in terms of international evidence. Unlike Mr. Lambert, I have published articles on firearms subjects in peer-reviewed journals. I have appeared with Frank Zimring and Phil Cook in debates, and on the same platforms in criminology meetings. Anyone interested in my (often positive) views of Phil's and Frank's work can look up those articles and books.

Anyone interested in my article on the specific Zimring-Hawkins book Mr. Lambert mentions should consult my response to it which takes up 27 pages (with 158 footnotes) in vol. 69 of the UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO LAW REVIEW. Two important differences between that article and my HNN article include: that HNN gave me a 3,000 word limit; and that the starting point of the HNN article was not a book by Frank or Phil etc., but Malcolm's book on English history -- a subject on which they do not purport to speak ex cathedra.

It bears emphasis that Mr. Lambert's criticisms are delivered naked of even one instance of my citing a "pro-gun criminologist" saying something Frank, Phil and their co-authors deny. Given that omission, are Mr. Lambert's complaints that I don't "even mention the existence of any pro- control scholars," anything more than meaningless quibbles?

2. MISCOUNTING "PRO GUN" CRIMINOLOGISTS
In any event, his criticism is simply false. Reading my HNN endnotes will show that they cite: 4 scholars whom Mr. Lambert would (misleadingly) describe as "pro-gun" (including me) [see my notes 1, 16, 20, 23]; 20+ of whom are known to me to be "anti-gun," [citations in my notes 4, 6, 9 (four articles), 11, 13, 22]; two statements from anti-gun lobbying groups [note 2] -- and numerous other scholars whose sentiments on gun issues are completely unknown to me.

As to this last group, Mr. Lambert offers no evidence of what their sentiments actually are, but just a bald allegation that I discuss and rely only on odious "pro-gun" criminologists. Unless he has some knowledge I lack of the sentiments of 15-20 scholars whose work I cited, his bald allegations about their sentiments are made in reckless disregard of their truth or falsity.

2. "PRO-GUN" VS."ANTI-GUN" ?????
Looking more closely at my HNN notes discloses some anomalies in Mr. Lambert's concepts of such things as "pro-gun," "anti-gun" and "scholarship." Though he does not actually name them, he clearly applies his classification "pro-gun criminologist" to at least Hans Toch, Gary Kleck, and James Wright & Peter Rossi. Tellingly, 'twas not always so -- for ANY of these very distinguished scholars.

Mr. Lambert unaccountably omits to mention that the Toch article is a recantation of anti-gun views he held and championed for decades. Long a major figure in American criminology, Prof. Toch, was a consultant to the 1968 Eisenhower Commission. He quotes as his own former belief its recommendation of anti-handgun policies and its "conclusion 'that the heart of any effective national firearms policy for the United States must be to reduce the availability of the [handgun, the] firearm that contributes most to violence.... [R]educing the availability of the handgun WILL reduce firearms violence." (Emphasis by Prof. Toch and the Commission.)

But, Prof. Toch continues, decades of subsequent research has persuaded him that,

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

(Quoting Toch's, "Research and Policy: The Case of Gun Control", in PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL POLICY, edited by Peter Sutfeld and Philip Tetlock (NY Hemisphere, 1992) at p. 234 & n. 10.)

In other words, what causes Mr. Lambert to consider Toch a "pro-gun criminologist" is not that Prof. Toch has ever owned a gun or sympathizes with gun ownership -- which he does not! It is that, having come to very anti-gun conclusions in 1968 based on the then-available evidence, when the much stronger evidence available 24 years later justified different conclusions, Toch adopted them. That is not bias, but rather honest scholarship.

Next consider Mr. Lambert's attack on my co-author Gary Kleck, the most important and prolific scholar in this field over the past two decades. Kleck is yet another criminologist who began as what Mr. Lambert would call "anti-gun" but amazingly (to Mr. Lambert) revised his views just because of the accumulation of evidence. Contrary to his current position, Kleck's first paper concluded that homicide is increased by widespread gun ownership. Gary Kleck, "Capital Punishment, Gun Ownership and Homicide," 84 AM. J. SOCIOLOGY 882-910 (1979). Moreover Kleck was an endorser of the Brady Law, his only criticism being that it should go beyond handguns to restrict long gun sales as well.

Another eminent scholar meeting Mr. Lambert's anomalous criteria for being "pro-gun" is the late Marvin Wolfgang, the doyen of American criminologists. This would surprise colleagues who knew Wolfgang's actual feelings: "I am as strong a gun control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country. If I [had the power] ... I would eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even from the police. I hate guns...." Marvin E. Wolfgang, "A Tribute to a View I Have Long Opposed", 86 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOL. 188 (1995) (emphasis added).

But under Mr. Lambert's criteria Wolfgang would nevertheless have to be deemed "pro-gun" because, faced with Kleck's seminal research on the defensive use of handguns, Wolfgang proceeded in that article to unqualifiedly praise Kleck and endorse his results -- without seeing any of the horrendous defects that Mr. Lambert sees in that work. 86 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOL. id. (Perhaps Mr. Lambert would characterize Wolfgang as only "subjectively anti-gun" but "objectively pro-gun." If so, I would actually find a point of agreement with Mr. Lambert.)

I also cited two eminent sociologists, Professors Jim Wright and Peter Rossi. Having comprehensively reviewed the entire corpus of gun control literature for the National Institute of Justice, they concluded that, while many people think guns cause murder, and that without them there would be less murder, "there is no persuasive evidence that supports this view." For this Mr. Lambert brands them odious "pro-gun criminologists." But, as they candidly confess, when they began their study they themselves endorsed

The progressive's indictment of American firearms policy [including the following propositions:] 2) In other countries with stricter firearms laws and fewer guns in private hands, gun crime is rare.... 5) If there were fewer guns around, there would obviously be less crime.... 7) Only the gun lobby prevents us from embarking on the road to a safer and more civilized society. [Yet, t]he more deeply we explored the empirical implications of this indictment, the less plausible it has become.

(James D. Wright, Peter Rossi, Kathleen Daly, UNDER THE GUN: WEAPONS, CRIME AND VIOLENCE IN THE UNITED STATES (N.Y., Aldine: 1983) at page 319, emphasis added.)

In passing I note a point that may interest some readers, however unintelligible Mr. Lambert will find it: There are many scholars who, when they began researching firearms issues had anti-gun sentiments, but found the evidence required what Mr. Lambert would describe as a pro-gun outcome. See, e.g., Robert Weisberg, "Values, Violence, and the Second Amendment: American Character, Constitutionalism and Crime," 39 HOUSTON LAW REVIEW 1-51 (2002), Laurence H. Tribe, 1 AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 901-902, n. 221 (2000); L. A. Scot Powe, Jr., "Guns, Words and Interpretation," 38 WM. & M. L. REV. 1311-1403 (1997); Samuel Walker, SENSE AND NONSENSE ABOUT CRIME AND DRUGS: A POLICY GUIDE chs. 10 and 13 (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994); Steven B. Duke & Albert C. Gross, AMERICA'S LONGEST WAR: RETHINKING OUR TRAGIC CRUSADE AGAINST DRUGS 113 (N.Y. Putnam, 1993); Ted R. Gurr, (ed.) 1 VIOLENCE IN AMERICA 17-18 (1989); George P. Fletcher, THE TRIAL OF BERNHARD GOETZ 156 (N.Y. Free Press, 1988) James D. Wright, "Second Thoughts About Gun Control, 91 PUBLIC INTEREST 23 (1988); Chris Eskridge, "Zero-Order Inverse Correlations Between Crimes of Violence and Hunting Licenses in the United States", 71 SOCIOLOGY & SOCIAL RESEARCH 55 (1986).

I should also note that many of those listed in the preceding paragraph would indignantly deny being "pro-gun," insisting that they are affirmatively anti-gun in their sentiments, and came to what Mr. Lambert would deem "pro-gun" conclusions only because that was where the evidence compelled them to go.

3. MY QUARRELS WITH THE GUN LOBBY
As Mr. Lambert portrays it, I am a mendacious puppet of the gun lobby. In fact, I have often rebuked the gun lobby for myopic, constitutionally unwarranted opposition to a variety of moderate controls; e.g. Don B. Kates, "Minimalist Interpretation of the Second Amendment" in E. Hickok (ed.), THE BILL OF RIGHTS: ORIGINAL MEANING AND CURRENT UNDERSTANDING 130 (U.Va. Press, 1991) ("the gun lobby's obnoxious habit of assailing all forms of regulation on Second Amendment grounds."); Don B. Kates, "The Second Amendment and the Ideology of Self-Protection" 9 CONSTITUTIONAL COMMENTARY 87, 88 (1992) ("the gun lobby's obnoxious pretension that the [Second] amendment bars any gun control it happens to oppose, however moderate or rational."), Don B. Kates, "Gun Control: Separating Reality from Symbolism", 20 J. CONTEMP. LAW 353, 365 (1994) ("the gun lobby position may be briefly dispatched by noting that the Amendment does not read: 'Congress shall make no law of which the gun lobby disapproves.'" -- emphasis in original).

My latest book (ARMED, co-authored with Prof. Kleck) condemns extremists on both sides for, like Mr. Lambert, portraying the issues as simply a matter of pro-gun versus anti-gun; and I argue that enactment of moderate, sensible controls is precluded by vituperative extremist rhetoric against gun ownership. See pp. 109-14, 116-22. Among other articles, monographs and books endorsing a variety of gun controls, or condemning gun lobby obstructionism, are: Don B. Kates (ed.), FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 527-35 (1984); Don B. Kates, "The Battle Over Gun Control," 84 THE PUBLIC INTEREST 42-43, 45-46 (1986); Don B. Kates, "Firearms and Violence: Old Premises and Current Evidence" in T. Gurr (ed.) VIOLENCE IN AMERICA, v. 1, at 198 and 207 (1989).

Similarly, the last 20% of my Second Amendment magnum opus is devoted to affirming the constitutionality of gun registration, licensing, and other controls that are anathema to the gun lobby. Don B. Kates, "Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment", 82 MICH. L. REV. 203 (1983). That portion of my article was denounced as "'Orwellian Newspeak'" in the AMERICAN RIFLEMAN. I have debated on these matters against NRA experts, e.g., Don B. Kates, "The Second Amendment: A Dialogue", 49 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS. 143 (1986) versus Stephen P. Halbrook, "What the Framers Intended: A Linguistic Interpretation of the Second Amendment", 49 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS. 153 (1986). (My part of this debate was devoted almost entirely to defending the validity of various gun controls.)

4. WHAT'S THE POINT?
Mr. Lambert deems he has somehow impugned my HNN article by pointing out "that Kleck was forced to correct his claims" in a Kleck-McElrath which Mr. Lambert falsely implies that I cited. My HNN article quoted Kleck's statement (in a presentation to the National Academy of Sciences) that gun robberies result in many fewer victim injuries -- but if a victim is shot the victim is much more likely to die -- than is the case in robberies with other weapons. Mr. Lambert does not dispute, but rather emphatically endorses this which is the statement I quoted. His quibble -- and I use that term advisedly -- is that the statement is even more true than Kleck knew when he made it because the error in his article with McElrath slightly minimized the extent to which it is true.

But I quoted only the unqualified statement that a victim who is shot in a robbery is more likely to die than a victim who is knifed. I neither cited the Kleck-McElrath article nor offered any specific figure of the extent of the death likelihood difference. So why was it incumbent on me to go into a discussion of possible error in the Kleck-McElrath article -- especially given the word limit on my HNN article?

The other "problem" Mr. Lambert claims required correction in my HNN article is that citing Kleck's conclusion that victims who defend themselves with guns from rape, assault or robbery are half as likely to suffer injury as victims who follow Handgun Control's advice to submit without resistance. {"the best defense against injury is to put up no defense -- give them what they want or run." GUNS DON'T DIE, PEOPLE DO, by then-Handgun Control, Inc. Chairman Nelson "Pete" Shields at p. 124-5 (1981). (Nor is this advice limited to Handgun Control. See, e.g., Zimring and Zuehl interview, "Don't Resist Robbery Chicago Study Warns", N.Y. TIMES Dec. 11, 1984; and M. Yeager and the Handgun Control Staff of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, HOW WELL DOES THE HANDGUN PROTECT YOU AND YOUR FAMILY?.) }

It bears emphasis that the ant-gun advice is never to resist -- not with any weapon, gun, knife, blunt instrument, etc. This advice remains as utterly wrong today as at the time of the Kleck speech I quoted. What has changed since the Kleck speech I quoted has to do with a comparison I did not make at all. At the time of the speech, though resistance with non-gun weapons was almost as successful in avoiding robbery, etc. as resistance with a gun, one who resisted with such lesser weapons was much more likely to suffer injury. The much more extensive evidence available today now shows that the injury risk of those who resist with a lesser weapon is only slightly higher than of those who resist with a gun.

Why was it incumbent on me to discuss any of this in the HNN article, given that the Kleck speech (as I quoted it) did not even mention the issue? Is this not another instance of meaningless quibbling?

Yet, anxious as I am not to disappoint Mr. Lambert, let me summarize the matter right now. The anti-gun advice that victims should not resist criminal attack with any form of weapon, is unqualifiedly wrong. Victims who resist with a gun are much less likely to be injured than those who submit, and, of course, far less to be raped, robbed or assaulted. Moreover, a victim who has a knife or other instrument to resist with is almost as likely to avoid rape, etc. as s/he had a gun, and is only slightly more likely to be injured, i.e., much less likely to be injured than if s/he submits.

CONCLUSION
I could go on at great length demolishing Mr. Lambert's other false claims, but I have probably already exceeded readers' (and HNN's) interest. Suffice it to refer to Mark Twain lament that lies can be halfway around the world before the truth even wakes up in the morning.