Sarah Thompson, a retired physician, describes herself thus on her homepage on the Internet: “Dr. Thompson is dedicated to the restoration of full civil liberties and limited constitutional government. She writes [an online] column, “The Righter, “ which focuses on civil liberties and individual responsibility and action.” We reprint here an article that was published in American Gun Review in October 1997.

The right of law-abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms for purposes of self-defense has become a hot and controversial topic. Claims have been made citing everything from “the presence of a firearm in the home increases the risk of homicide by 43 times” to “there are up to 2.5 million defensive uses of private firearms per year, with up to 400,000 lives saved as a result.” There are people who feel endangered by the presence of a gun nearby and other people who feel vulnerable when not carrying a gun on their person. Some law enforcement agents welcome the increasing numbers of lawfully armed citizens while others view them as a deadly threat. What and where is the truth in all of this disagreement, and what are the implications for public policy?

Prior to Prohibition, there was virtually no federal gun control, and no concept of guns being “evil.” Guns were seen as a threat to society only when they were possessed by blacks, and the history of gun control closely parallels the history of racism in this country. Guns were simply tools, useful for protecting one’s livelihood and property, obtaining food for one’s family, recreation, and when necessary, self-defense. The gun culture was an accepted and respected part of American life.

However, in a situation similar to the one we face today, Prohibition gave birth to a criminal subculture which depended on violence and guns, terrorizing law-abiding citizens. After Prohibition was repealed, these criminal organizations remained. Rather than attacking crime and criminals, the government passed the National Firearms Act in 1934, which put a $200 “transfer tax” (about $4,000 in 1996 dollars) on certain guns, particularly machine guns and short-barreled shotguns. (For comparison, a short-barreled shotgun cost only about $5 !) The Federal Firearms Act followed in 1938, which required firearms dealers to obtain licenses, and started a new federal bureaucracy to “control guns.”

The war on guns again escalated after the assassinations of President Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, and the Reverend Martin Luther King in the 1 960s. This resulted in the Federal Firearms Act of 1968 which, when compared word for word to the Nazi weapons laws of

1938, is almost identical. In the late 1980s to early 1990s, the attempted assassination of President Reagan and the wounding of his Press Secretary James Brady, and the escalation of violent, firearms-related crimes due to the failed “War on Drugs,” have led to an intensification of the “War on Guns.” We now have innumerable state and local laws restricting gun ownership, carrying, use, and even appearance, along with federal laws such as the Brady Act and the impending “Brady II.”

To enforce these laws, the government needed to get “the people” to support them, to willingly give up their Second Amendment rights and their right to self-defense. To do this, it recruited powerful spokespeople, primarily doctors and the media, to convince people that guns were bad and needed to be banned. Doctors, at least until recently, were highly respected professionals, scientists whose words were above questioning. The same was true of the elite medical journals. Most prestigious of all were the revered doctors and scientists who worked at the huge federal institutes of research. To their enduring shame, some of these doctors were co-opted into helping the government in its “War on Guns.”

Doctors, of course, are not superhuman and they have weaknesses like everyone. Many well-meaning doctors just didn’t analyze correctly what they were seeing and didn’t bother to ask the right questions, since they had been trained to obey medical authorities. For example, doctors who work in emergency rooms see the horrors that misuse of guns can create. They dedicate their lives to saving lives, and watching people, especially young people, die of gunshot wounds is extremely painful. This makes it easy for them to be swayed by emotion and blame the gun instead of the person who misused it. Of course they never see the people who use gins safely and responsibly, and they never see the people whose lives were saved by defensive gun use. It’s a very one-sided view.

At the same time, there were other doctors who saw the huge amounts of money being poured into biased gun research and saw the opportunit3to get grant money, have their work published, or become famous. Alithis required was designing research that aided the government’s preconceived policy of “proving” that guns were bad in order to disarm the populace. In my opinion there is only one term that applies to people ~ho sell their integrity and their credentials for fame and profit.

Thus since 1987 we have been bombarded with medical “experts” proclaiming that guns were the cause of nearly everything wrong in society. The media gave tremendous coverage to these studies, and reinforced them with emotional and melodramatic stories of lives ruined by guns—by iunimate guns, not by criminals, carelessness, or their own stupidity. People, especially people raised in urban areas who had no experience with guns, believed these stories. No doubt you’ve heard these claims, and maybe even worried that invoking your Second Amendment rights was that idea.

Many of these studies were funded by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), a division of the Centers for Disease Control (CIC)—funded, of course, with OUR tax dollars. That’s right. Our government officials, sworn to uphold the Constitution, used our money to trv to deprive us of one of our most important Constitutional rights. And the NCIPC didn’t even pretend to be objective. Dr. Mark Rosenberg, former director of NCIPC, has been quoted avowing his and the CDC’s desire to create a public perception of firearms as “dirty, deadly— an banned.”

One common excuse for gun control, designed to sound scientific, is 10 that guns re a public health problem, that guns are “pathogens”

( germs) which must be eliminated to eliminate the “disease” of gun violence. This simply is not true. To be true, the presence of a gun would cause the disease (violence) in all those exposed to it, and in its absence, violence should not be found. (Every physician is taught the criteria for determining what is or isn’t a pathogen early in medical school, so this is inexcusable) If all those exposed to firearms attempted homicide, our streets truly would be running with blood. Approximately half of all American households own guns, yet few people are involved with homicide or other gun misuse. There are approximately 230 million guns in

the United States, more than enough for each adult and teen, yet only a minuscule number of people commit homicide. And if degree of exposure to guns correlated with homicide rates, our police would be the worst offenders.

One often quoted study is the Sloan-Kellerman comparison of Seattle and Vancouver, published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Their methodology was simplistic and merely compared the homicide rates in the two cities, then assumed the lower rate in Vancouver was due to gun control. Obviously there are nearly infinite differences in any two cities, yet the study did not control for any differences. The difference in homicide rates could just as easily have been due to economic, cultural, or ethnic variables, differences in laws, age differences, substance abuse, or anything else. Based on their data, one could just as well conclude that the difference was due to the number of movie theaters or eating Twinkies. As a final insult to scientific research, the homicide rates before gun control were not evaluated. Homicide actually increased 25 percent after the institution of the 1977 gun law. . .

Perhaps the most often quoted myth about the risks of gun owner-ship is that having a gun in one’s home increases one’s risk of homicide by a factor of 43. This study, by Kellerman, is full of errors and deceit, and has been widely discredited. Yet the 43 times figure continues to be repeated until it has now achieved the status of “common knowledge.” Among the errors, Kellerman did not show that even ONE victim was killed with the gun kept in the home. In fact, at least 49 percent of the victims were killed by someone who did not live in the home and probably had no access to guns kept there. He assumed that the victim of the crime was the one killed, ignoring the possibility that it was the criminal, not the victim, who was killed. Finally, the study showed that sub-stance abuse, family violence, living alone, and living in a rented home were all greater predictors of homicide than was gun ownership. Curiously, the authors have refused to make their data available to other researchers who wish to evaluate the study. Yet, as I mentioned before, this study was funded with our tax dollars.1

Fortunately, these fraudulent researchers at the NCIPC were finally exposed in 1 996 by a coalition of physicians and criminologists who testified before the House appropriations committee. As a result, the NCIPC’s funding for so-called “gun research” was cut from the budget. Of course there were people doing well-designed, accurate research on guns and violence during this period as well. . . . But they weren’t doctors, they weren’t supported by the government, and the media totally ignored them. They were criminologists, sociologists, lawyers, and their studies weren’t considered important, especially by the medical establishment.

Gary Kleck’s book, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, was published in 199 1 and received a prestigious criminology award. Al-though it was generally ignored by both the media and the medical researchers, it was a turning point. At last there was a comprehensive, unbiased assessment of the issues surrounding guns and violence that was available to lay people and researchers alike. In 1 995 there was an-other breakthrough when Kleck and Gertz’s study “Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun” was pub-lished. This study is the first one devoted specifically to the subject of armed self-defense. Of the nearly 5,000 respondents, 222 reported a defensive gun use within the past 12 months and 3 1 3 within the past 5 years. By extrapolating to the total population, he estimated there are about 2.2 to 2.5 million defensive gun uses by civilians each year, with 1 .5 to 1 .9 million involving handguns! Four hundred thousand of these people felt the defensive use of a gun “almost certainly” prevented a murder. This is ten times the total number of firearms deaths from all causes in a year! Clearly the risk of allowing civilians to arm themselves for self-defense pales in comparison to the huge numbers of lives saved.

Now, in the words of David Kopel, “All of the research about 15 concealed-carry laws has been eclipsed by a comprehensive study by University of Chicago law professor John Lott, with graduate student David Mustard.”

This study goes far beyond any previous study both in its design and in the comprehensive data collected. Most studies of handgun effects on crime or violence use either time series or cross-sectional data. Time series data means that you look at a particular area (for example Salt Lake County) over time, either continuously or at specified times. Such studies are open to error due to the time periods chosen. If someone compared the crime rates in Salt Lake County from 1 992 to 1 995 (the year the “shall issue” law became effective), there would likely be little difference since few people had had the time to obtain the permits to carry concealed.

Cross-sectional data refers to comparing two or more different areas at the same time. The accuracy of these studies depends on how well the areas are matched, and how well the differences between them are controlled for in the study. As we saw with the Seattle-Vancouver study, if the cities are not well matched, it is easy to draw, or even create, the wrong conclusions. In addition, the area one chooses to study is important. Cross-sectional data from states are commonly used, since concealed carry laws are generally passed at the state level. But states are not uniform at all; they have large cities, small cities, suburban areas, rural areas, etc. Mixing data from extremely different areas, such as large population centers and rural communities together obscures im­portant information. For example, combining statistics from Salt Lake County (urban) and Kane County (rural) and saying it represents “Utah” actually makes any statistics representing “Utah” quite misleading.

The Lott study solves these problems by using cross-sectional and time series data. They studied every county in the United States continu­ously from 1 977 to 1 992, a period of 16 years. Studying counties allowed them to separate urban from rural areas, and a sixteen-year study period is long enough to allow for any temporary, but meaningless, shift in sta­tistics. In addition, the Lott study includes such variables as the type of crime committed, probability of arrest, of conviction, and the length of prison sentences, as well as mandatory sentencing guidelines. It also includes variables such as age, sex, race, income, population and popula­tion density. This provides a more detailed, “three-dimensional” picture of the effect of concealed carry permits on crime.

The numbers of arrests and types of crimes were provided by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, while the information on population was collected from the Census Bureau. Additional information was obtained from state and county officials whenever possible. Other factors which could affect the results such as changes in the laws involving the use of firearms, or sentencing enhancement laws were either eliminated as possibilities or controlled for statistically.

The results of this study show that violent crimes (murder, rape, aggravated assault) decrease dramatically when “shall issue” laws are

passed. At the same time, property crimes (auto theft and larceny) in-crease slightly. This can be explained by habitual criminals changing their preferred method of crime. It makes sense that criminals would switch from crimes where they must confront the victim and thus may get shot, to crimes of stealth where they are much less likely to confront an armed victim. Certainly a small increase in property crimes is a small price to pay for a large savings in human life and health.

The statistics are dramatic. Whenever concealed carry laws went into effect in a county during this 1 6-year period, murders fell by 8.5 percent, rapes by 5 percent, and aggravated assaults by 7 percent. If, in 1992, all states had enacted “shall issue” laws, murders in the United States would have decreased by 1,570. There would have been 4,177 fewer rapes and over 60,000 fewer aggravated assaults. This unequivo­cally supports the wisdom of our Founding Fathers who guaranteed that our right to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed.”

It means that the bleeding heart gun control advocates, the Sarah Brady types weeping about dead children, and our legislators and presi­dents who support them, are directly responsible for the deaths of over

1 ,500 Americans and the rapes of over 4,000 innocent women every single year!

The anti-gunners are unable to find any scientific flaws or errors of analysis in this study. Instead they have attacked the researchers person-ally, just as they did to the doctors who dared speak the “politically incorrect” truth. There is no place for name-calling in either scientific research or in setting policy that affects millions of lives.

Anti-gunners might ask if allowing concealed carry would cause an increase in accidental deaths. However, the entire number of accidental deaths in the United States in 1992 was 1 ,409, and only 546 of these occurred in states with concealed carry laws. The total number of accidental handgun deaths per year is less than 200. At most, there would be nine more accidental deaths per year if all states passed concealed carry laws, in contrast to 1 ,500 lives saved.

Anti-gunners use the argument that if concealed carry were enacted, 25 every minor fender-bender or disagreement would turn into a shoot-out.

Over 300,000 permits have been issued in Florida since 1986, but only five violent crimes involving permitted pistols were committed as of December 1995, and none of them resulted in a fatality. There is only one recorded instance of a permitted pistol being used in a shooting following a traffic accident, and in that case a grand jury found that the shooting was justified.

In 1993, private citizens accidentally killed 30 innocent people who they thought were committing a crime, while police killed 330 innocent people. Given the nature of police work, this is not an entirely fair comparison. However, it clearly shows the public can be trusted with concealed pistols.

Another finding is that people who carry concealed handguns protect not only themselves and their families, but the public in general, even that part of the public that protests most loudly against guns. Since by definition a concealed weapon is hidden, a criminal has no way of knowing if a prospective victim is armed, and is therefore less likely to commit a violent crime against any given person.

This is particularly important for women. Women are the victims of a disproportionate number of violent crimes. A woman who carries a gun has a much greater deterrent effect on crime than does a man. Women are usually smaller and weaker than their attackers, and the presence of a firearm equalizes this imbalance. Because the imbalance between a woman and her attacker is much greater, the benefits of carrying are also much greater. A woman carrying a gun decreases the murder rate for women by three to four times the amount a man carrying a gun decreases the murder rate for men.

While numerous studies have attempted to quantify the cost of firearms-related deaths and injuries, this is the first paper to study the

economic benefits of allowing concealed carry. For the sake of consistency, the authors based their figures on estimates for the cost of various crimes used by a National Institute of Justice study published in 1996. Costs included loss of life, lost productivity, medical bills, property losses, as well as losses related to fear, pain, suffering, and decreased quality of life.

These figures are based on jury trial awards, which may not be the 30 best way to estimate economic loss. However they are the figures used in

anti-gun studies and so the authors chose to use them to more clearly illustrate the economic benefits of gun ownership. The reduction in violent crime caused by concealed weapons permits provides an economic gain of $6.6 billion, compared to a much smaller economic loss of $417 million due to the increase in property crimes. The net gain is still $6.2 billion!

These results may seem like ordinary common sense. Other results seem to go against “common wisdom.” For example, it has been traditional to have the most restrictive gun laws in high population, high crime, urban areas such as Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington, D.C. It is common to hear people say that “It’s fine for those people who live out in the country to have guns, but people in the city shouldn’t have them.”

But this study shows that the effect of allowing concealed carry is much greater in high population counties and in high crime counties. For example, the murder rate in very large cities drops by 1 2 percent when CCW is passed, while it drops by only about 1 .6 percent in an average-sized city. Data for rural areas is unreliable since the murder rates in most rural areas are so low that accurate statistical studies can-not be done. An increase from one murder per year to two would show up as a 1 00 percent increase in the murder rate, which is misleading when compared to cities with daily murders. However, consistent with the earlier comments on criminals switching to “safer” methods of crime, the increase in property crimes in urban areas is also greater than the increase in rural areas.

Contrary to frequently espoused theories about causes of crime, real per capita income showed only a small, though statistically significant, correlation with both violent crimes and property crimes. It would appear that living in a high population density area may contribute more to crime than does poverty, although this requires more study.

Another finding which deserves comment is that the presence of young, black males increases the rate of property crime by 22 percent and violent crime by 5 percent. However, these numbers cannot be accepted completely at face value, nor should they be used to justify racism. The history of gun control in this country reflects the history of racism. The first state and local firearms laws were designed primarily to disarm blacks, and enough damage has already been done. It is necessary to take into account studies showing that young black males are disproportionately arrested and incarcerated for crimes, and that they are disproportionately victims of crimes. In addition, they tend to live in high population areas and have low incomes, both of which are independent factors for increased crime. Finally, in view of recent allegations that the CIA deliberately introduced drugs, guns, and thus crime, into inner city black neighborhoods, more study is necessary before any definite conclusions can be reached. Neither Professor Lott nor I believe that race is a cause of crime. . .

While it is generally a bad idea to base policy on the results of a 35 single study, the Lott and Mustard study is so well designed and well

controlled that it is difficult, if not impossible, to argue with their findings. In addition, their results agree with those of previous researchers, most notably Kleck and Gertz.

Two findings stand out above all. Concealed carrying of firearms by citizens with no prior felony record or history of severe mental illness decreases violent crime, providing a large benefit both to the individuals who carry and the public as a whole. Second, arrests by law enforcement officers have a large deterrent effect on crime, while conviction has a lesser, but still important, effect.

The obvious conclusion is that concealed carry provides a very large benefit to society in terms of lives saved, violent assaults and rapes prevented, and economic savings. At the same time misuse of legally concealed weapons and accidental handgun deaths from concealed weapons are almost non-existent. Thus every effort should be made to facilitate concealed carry by law-abiding citizens. “Shall issue” permit laws should be adopted by all those states that have not yet done so. In particular, large, urban areas should actively encourage arming their good citizens and definitely should not prevent or discourage them from carrying concealed weapons.

Regulations such as gun-free zones which serve only to disarm and/or harass gun owners are counterproductive and should be eliminated at local, state and federal levels. The Supreme Court has already found gun-free school zones unconstitutional and the justices should uphold this finding in light of the current administration’s repeated at-tempts to enact this misguided legislation. Concealed carry permits should be accepted on a reciprocal basis by all states, just as driver’s licenses are, under the full faith and credit act of the Constitution.

In view of the negligible incidence of negative events resulting from concealed carry, further studies are indicated to determine whether the extensive background checks and training requirements which most states demand are even necessary. It may be that “Vermont-style” —i.e., universal

concealed carry without need for a permit—is more appropriate and would remove both the financial disincentives to lawful carry as well as decrease the demand on the often overworked staff of state permitting agencies and the FBI. Further, the Constitution guarantees the right to keep and bear arms, and many people (including the author) consider the requirement for a permit, which gives them “permission” to exercise what is already an enumerated right to be both unconstitutional and offensive.

Because the beneficial effect of women carrying concealed weapons 40 far outweighs that of men carrying, women should be encouraged to

carry, and special classes designed to teach women how to safely use, maintain and carry weapons, along with other self-defense techniques, need to be developed and made widely available. Learning to protect oneself from crime and violence is as important to a woman’s health as is learning to detect breast cancer or prevent heart disease. The psychological benefits to women of feeling safe are very significant, but have yet to be studied scientifically.

In many areas, including the Salt Lake metropolitan area, there is currently much bad feeling between some law enforcement officers who feel citizens who carry pose a “deadly threat” to them and citizens who feel harassed by police. Lott’s study shows that this is not only unnecessary, but counterproductive. Armed citizens can protect themselves, their families and others from violent crimes. Police cannot be every-where simultaneously, and have no duty to protect individuals. Their role is primarily to investigate crimes after the fact and bring perpetrators to justice. By decreasing the number of violent crimes committed, armed citizens actually decrease the police workload and enable them to be more productive and apprehend a greater percentage of criminals which in turn further decreases crime.

Armed citizens and police who are able to cooperate have a synergistic effect on decreasing crime. Both groups need to acknowledge this, accommodate to the changes in the laws, stop competing, and learn to respect and trust each other. Law enforcement agencies, working with citizens’ groups, must develop clear written policies for police and armed citizen interactions and disseminate these policies widely. The self-sufficient, self-protecting gun culture must be restored to its rightful place of respect in society, not demonized as a hotbed of terrorists. The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms must be unequivocally upheld.

Those who wish to disarm the populace of this country must be exposed for the frauds they are and held responsible morally, if not legally, for the deaths and suffering created by their misguided policies. In the four years since 1992, those who preach gun control have contributed to the deaths of at least six thousand innocent people whose lives they have sworn to protect and whose freedoms they have sworn to uphold.