Zhiliang Xie (Terry)
Professor Auli Ek
Writing 2
08/24/2015
More or Less: The Debate on Gun Control
How can we reduce the crime rate? A good solution might be to have more guns! This is suggested by John Lott, who is an economist as well as political commentator. However, Garen Wintemute, the director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, emphasized the negative effect of guns. On one hand, Wintemute believed that less guns lead to less violent crimes. On the other hand, Lott denied the direct relationship between crime rate and guns’ number and proposed that more concealed-handguns can actually deter crime. A common criticism of guns is that they stimulate more violent crime and this is what Wintemute (2004) tried to prove in his article, “Gun Control Laws Can Reduce Violent Crime” (p. 75). He (2004) explained that “firearms modify the consequences of crime” (p. 75). In other words, criminals find it easier to commit and complete crimes when they have guns. Wintemute (2004) took the example of robbery which is facilitated by guns and constituted of 44 percent of all violent crimes (p 75). With the guns, robbers will more likely venture “against [the] ‘harder’ targets” (Wintemute, 2004, p. 75). To emphasize how important guns are in crimes, Wintemute (2004) listed the data of Uniform Crime Reports, according to which the possibility that assaults lead to fatality by guns is 4.6 times of the possibility that assaults stimulate death by other weapons (p. 75). However, John Lott (2010), the author of the book, More Guns, Less Crime, contended that, with concealed gun laws that require official permits to have guns, crimes are actually more difficult to be completed when more people legally own guns. According to Lott (2010) who compared the death rates of states before and after they adopted the concealed-handgun laws from 1977 to 1992, the rate of death and injury from mass public shooting in ten states raised 10 percent shortly after the laws were adopted, but dropped rapidly from 75 percent to about 1 percent five years later (p. 105). Lott (2010) reasoned that due to the larger number of legal gun owners who use guns to “put themselves on a more even basis with their potential prey” (p. 100), murderers may find it more risky to commit crimes. To prove the relationship of conceal-gun numbers and murder rates, Lott (2010) listed the number of concealed-handguns and the crime rates of Oregon and Pennsylvania (p. 66). For each one percent concealed-handguns increased, murder dropped by 37 percent, rape dropped by 6.7 percent in Oregon and 26.7 percent less murder and 5.7 percent less rape occurred in Pennsylvania (Lott, 2010, p. 66). Therefore, Lott (2010) concluded that the larger number of legal gun holders have deterrent effects to most crimes including rape, murder and aggravated assault in both high-crime and low-crime counties (p. 66). In contrast, Wintemute (2004) opposed guns for the reason that the rates of violence and crime go down as less guns are available, just as he noted that the annual production of semiautomatic pistols drop in 58 percent between 1993 and 1998 and the decline led substantially to less violent crimes. The 54 percent drop of homicide arrest among juveniles is the pervasive evidence (p. 76).
Furthermore, Wintemute (2004) attributed the decreased number of guns to the several measures taken by police and government (p. 78). For example, the New York Police Department had a specific group of policemen that “targeted gun-crime hot spots,” leading to the cases of nonfatal shooting decreased by 62 percent (Wintemute, 2004, p.78). In addition, the Project Exile in Richmond, Virginia screened “potential prosecutions and [referred] to the federal system those in which the potential penalties were tougher”, stimulating 36 percent less homicide from 1997 to 1998 (Wintemute, 2004, p.78). Moreover, The Federal Firearms Licensee Reform Act set a higher fee for application and renewal of gun licenses and require more identity information. From 1993, the year the act was passed, to 1999, the number of firearms license holders dropped by 70 percent. Coincidently, at this period, homicides decreased from 2,500 thousand to 1700 thousand (Wintemute, 2004, p. 79).
Nevertheless, Lott (2010) asserted that the deduction of crime based simply on availability of guns and crime rate is not persuasive because of the exclusion of other uncontrolled yet influential factors (p.63). For example, different states might have their unique “time trends” (Lott, 2010, p. 63). In other words, if the general tendency of the crime rate in a state is to decrease, regardless of the number of guns, the rate would drop after all. After Lott (2010) took the “individual state time trends” into account of his statistics, it came out that the concealed-handgun laws actually lowered crime (p.63).
There are actually some cases in which guns have no direct relation to crimes. Lott (2010) discussed the case of Washing DC, which banned handguns, in his book (p. 306). With the murder rate that was “fifteenth among the America’s fifty most populous cities” in 1976, Washington DC banned handguns in 1977 (Lott, 2010, p. 307). Yet, after 29 years, its murder rate occupied the first or second place (Lott, 2010, p. 307). Moreover, Lott (2010) pointed out that some countries such as Finland, Israel and New Zealand have high gun ownership yet low crime rate (p. 116).
The reason the topic of guns is hot might simply be because it is debatable. Advocating less guns can reduce violent crimes, Wintemute claimed that guns facilitated gun crimes. To strengthen his point, he discussed the positive effect of several measures that restrict guns. Whereas, also with strong evidence, Lott asserted that more people owning guns legally helped to prevent crimes. In addition, he suggested that so many uncontrolled and effective variables were unconsidered that we cannot simply use gun availability and crime rate to deduce that more guns generate more crimes. No matter which side is correct, at least the two opinions arouse us to rethink the gun control. Have we been misled by movies, video games and news and therefore, hastily linked guns to evil without searching for evidences?

References

Lott, J. (2010). More guns, less crime: Understanding crime and gun-control laws (3rd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Wintemute, G. (2004). Gun Control Laws Can Reduce Violent Crime. In Torr, J. (Ed.),
Crime and Criminals. Opposing Viewpoints Series (pp. 74-84). Detroit and New
York: Greenhaven Press.