Should the State Ban Handguns?

The two recently attempted assassinations of President Ford have again made gun control a major political issue. This is especially true here in Massachusetts where a bitter controversy surrounds a well-organized petition drive to place a measure banning handguns on the ballot in 1976.

The leading supporters of this drive are the Massachusetts Council on Crime and Correction (MCCC) and People vs. Handguns, who need almost 60,000 signatures by Nov. 25. If they are successful, the legislature will then have until May, 1976 to approve the proposal. If the legislature does not approve, the petition's supporters would need to gather an additional 9000 signatures to put the measure on the November ballot.

The petition began circulating after the current session of the legislature rejected all gun control bills earlier this year. A bill to ban all handguns was defeated 196-24 in the House and 30-5 in the Senate.

Massachusetts presently has one of the strictest gun laws in the nation. A prospective gun owner must obtain either a license to carry firearms or a firearms I.D. card permit allowing him to keep a gun in his home or business, but not to carry it on the streets. The applicant must prove he is not an alien, felon, drug user, or mental incompetent. In practice, a local police chief can deny a qualified applicant a license to carry firearms if he feels there is not sufficient need for it; anyone without a license or permit caught with a gun faces a mandatory year in jail.

The proponents of the handgun ban claim it will reduce the availability of handguns and consequently reduce crime, murder, violence, suicide, and fatal accidents. John Buckley, Sheriff of Middlesex County and founder of People vs. Handguns, notes that 54 per cent of all murders are committed with handguns, 33 per cent of all robberies, and 25 per cent of all aggravated assaults. "The key to the issue," Buckley argues, "is that banning handguns will prevent crime before it occurs. If we want to make progress in the area of crime we've got to have prevention."

"This is a very emotional issue," Buckley said earlier this month, "Handguns are phallic symbols and many people feel threatened when you talk about banning them. They feel you're talking about castration."

The opponents of the ban do not believe the facts support this position, arguing that the relatively small number of accidents does not provide a compelling reason to ban handguns. The National Safety Council reports that in 1973 less than .005 per cent of all handguns were involved in fatal accidents--in that year there were 2700 accidental firearm deaths in the U.S. or 1.3 per 100,000 persons with less than half of this from handguns. Former Lynn mayor Warren Cassidy of the Gun Owners Action League (GOAL) argues that this rate is no worse than for many other commonly-used articles. He says that in 1973 poisoning, mainly from ordinary household substances accounted for 1.8 deaths per 100,0000, swimming pools for 4.1, and automobiles for 26.6.

MIT Professor Bruce Wedlock of GOAL argues that most gun accidents occur because of a lack of training or proper precaution. Guns, when used properly, do not present any unusual accidental risks or extraordinary danger, he says, and certainly no more than many other commodities that are dangerous when misused.

Opponents also argue that there is little justification for banning handguns on grounds that gun availability leads to suicide. MIT Professor Prescott Crout, also of GOAL, points out that the number of guns in circulation has increased dramatically since 1950 while the suicide rate has remained almost constant. He cites a study by the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence entitled Firearms and Violence in American Life, which concluded, "There is little reason to expect that reducing the availability of guns will cause a signifcant reduction in suicides. A person who really wants to die will find a way of doing so." In countries which have much fewer guns in the population, Crout says, "such as France, Sweden, and Japan, the suicide rate is much higher than in the U.S." Wedlock adds, "Don't come to me and take my gun because somebody else wants to shoot himself with his."

In support of the proposition that reducing the availability of guns reduces crime, the MCC reports that where the rate of gun ownership is low the percentage of gun use in murder is also low. But GOAL members claim that these statistics, if they are correct, are misleading and irrelevant to the real issue. They argue the real issue is whether, in areas where gun ownership is low, the total rate of murder is lower, not just the percentage of guns used in those crimes. Someone who is murdered is dead regardless of whether he was killed by a gun, they say.

On the basis of the total rate of murder, state Senator Jack Backman, sponsor of the bill to ban handguns, compares the United States to other countries where there are much lower rates of gun ownership. The U.S. murder rate, he accurately reports, is five times the rate of Canada, 15 times the rate of England and 221 times the rate of Japan.

Wedlock replies that such comparisons are unfair, arguing that there are vast differences in culture and attitudes toward crime and punishment between the United States and other countries. The U.S. leads the rest of the world in all crime, not just murder. and always had because of these attitudes. One of the major differences, he says, is that prison terms in other countries have always been more certain and lengthy than in the United States.

Victor Anop, executive director of GOAL, says comparing this country to England is "like comparing apples to oranges" and provides an example: In 1972 there were 113 murders in London and 1725 in New York City, but he says gun laws can't explain the difference because there were only 150 privately held legal handguns in New York and 4000 in London.

GOAL draws attention to a study by Alan Krug a Penn State professor, which concludes that areas with low gun ownership rates do not have lower crime and murder rates. In fact, Krug finds the opposite. He writes, "States with a higher proportion of the population possessing firearms have lower serious crime rates than states with a lower proportion possessing firearms." He also ran individual regression analyses on the crimes of murder, assault, and robbery and found the same results. James Q. Wilson, Shattuck Professor of Government and a national crime expert, said last week there is no evidence that reducing the availabilty of guns will reduce the overall serious crime rate.

For a handgun ban to have its desired effects, it must first reduce the availability of handguns, particularly to those who are likely to use them to commit crime, murder, and violence. But Cassidy argues that a ban is unlikely to reduce their availability to the criminal element most likely to misuse them.

Guns are manufactured easily by anyone with a simple mechanical sense and the crudest tools and materials, he argues. Even in prisons guns are obtained through smuggling and primitive manufacture. Anop adds that marijuana is illegal in the U.S. but that this hasn't stopped even high school kids from smoking it. And the border patrol is unable to prevent the easy flow of machine guns and mortars, let alone handguns, across the Canadian and Mexican borders.

Banning handguns will only take them away from the peaceful, law-abiding citizen, Cassidy says: those who are committing the crimes will keep their guns.

Massachusetts is a good example of this problem, he claims, noting that "only .1 per cent of licensed gun owners in the state committed a crime with their guns in 1973." He cites Boston Police Department records showing that of the seventy handgun murders in Boston in 1973, not one was committed by a licensed gun owner. "It is clear," Cassidy argues, "that banning handguns will only affect the licensed gun owners since the others already hold their guns in violation of the law."

This difficulty looms even larger for gun registration proposals. In a 1968 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a felon cannot be required to register his gun, reasoning that such a requirement would be forcing the felon to testify against himself, in violation of the fith amendment. This ruling seems to have made gun registration almost a dead issue.

Whether because the availability of guns does not cause crime or because gun laws have not prevented criminals from getting guns, or both, the record of such laws has not been good, Cassidy says. He says that "in 1965, prior to a city registration law and a strict state licensing law, Chicago saw 395 murders. After 8 years of strict gun control, 1973 saw 874 murders." Philadelphia also passed a strict gun licensing law in 1965 and according to FBI crime reports, the murder rate per 100,000 went from 5.4 to 11.5 in 1973. The FBI reports also show, he continues, that after Toledo enacted a tough gun law in 1968, murder rose from 28 to 62 in 1973.

Crout explains that after enactment of the tough Sullivan law in New York in 1911, murders increased by 18 per cent the following year and burglaries increased so fast that insurance companies petitioned the legislature to repeal the law. Today, he says, New York City prohibits handguns almost entirely and has the second highest murder rate of cities over a million, along with 21 per cent of all robberies committed in the United States.

Many advocates of handgun prohibition have conceded it won't stop crime in general. Senator Backman says his bill to ban handguns was really aimed at preventing murders committed by previously law-abiding citizens in a rage of passion during a fight with friends or relatives. If a gun was really not accessible, Backman argues, the murder may not have taken place because a less deadly weapon would have been used. Buckley says, "FBI crime reports show that 72 per cent of all murders are crimes of passon."

What the reports show is that 72 per cent of all murders are committed by acquaintances. Cassidy argues that since only about half of all murders are committed with handguns, the measure is really aimed at 72 per cent of half of all murders. And murders between acquaintances are not all crimes of passion stemming from a fight between friends, he says; people often plot to kill acquaintances, and if they can plot to kill they can get a gun regardless of the law. Backman's bill was unlikely to have a signficant effect on the murder rate, he says.

The chief effect of a handgun ban will be to prevent people from protecting themselves, Anop argues, drawing attention to FBI crime reports which show for example, that after police trained some 6000 Orlando, Florida women in firearms the incidence of rape was cut in half. Similar events occured in Phoenix and Atlanta, according to the FBI.

As an example Crout cites the case of Joyce Boyd in 1974. "After taking an early walk near Putnam Reservoir in Danvers, Massachusetts, she was attacked by two men when she returned to her car. Their obscene language made their intentions clear; but fortunately she had a handgun, the sight of which caused them to change thuir tune from 'White Mama' to 'OK Lady,' after which they ran to their car and drove off."

"No one has statistics on how many crimes are prevented in this manner, but there are certainly quite a few." Cassidy says. Private handgun ownership can prevent crime when attackers are scared away or when the crime never occurs because the potential criminal fears his victim will be armed, he argues. Cassidy feels that without this deterrent effect crime rates might rise rather than fall after a handgun ban.

Less than .03 per cent of all handguns were used in murder in 1973 and less than 1 per cent were used in crime. GOAL members feel that its unfair that the vast majority of law-abiding citizens be deprived of their guns for self defense and recreation when they have done nothing wrong and only a tiny portion of gun owners have misused their guns.

GOAL members believe a fairer and more effective way of reducing crime and murder would be to deal with that tiny portion, citing the work of Wilson, who is not way affiliated with GOAL. Wilson said last week that on the basis of his current work and previous work by others, he believes most crime is done by a small group of repeaters. Cassidy says they account for 70-80 per cent of all crime.

Furthermore, Wilson said, only a tiny fraction of reported crimes, 2 or 3 per cent, lead to jail or prison terms for the offender, the major reason being that few are apprehended. But another reason is that of those convicted so few are sent to jail. GOAL reports that only 21 persons go to prison for every 100 murders, only 7.1 persons for every 100 rapes, and only 5 persons for every 100 robberies. "If much or most serious crime is committed by repeaters," Wilson writes in his latest book Thinking About Crime, "separating repeaters from the rest of society may produce major reductions in crime rates... The gains to society from crimes not committed while they are in prison will be real and substantial."

Wilson argues that more certain and slightly more severe prison sentences will prevent crime mainly because repeaters will be in prison rather than committing crimes, but also because the sentences will have a deterrent effect on future crimes. GOAL members believe this would be the fairest and most effective way to protect lives and property.