Published: February 08, 2006 10:26 am      

Smoking-gun statistics

Fear mongering a chief weapon of industry, lobby

Does the right to carry a weapon make citizens feel safer? I don’t think so.

Several years ago, shortly after I took a job as an administrator at a university in Idaho, an employee, angry with me and others, stalked out of the building. I was too new and naive to understand what was going on, but my staff was awfully nervous for the next hour, until he cooled off and came back to work.

It wasn’t until later that I discovered the reason for their concern.

“We were all worried,” one confided, “because he has a permit to carry (a handgun) and has told us he won’t hesitate to use it.”

I was a lot more careful, and even a bit more nervous, at work from then on.

Not long after (it was the year of the Columbine murders), the university president’s cabinet proposed a ban on guns on campus. I went to some hearings and listened to both sides; the arguments against the ban, it turned out, came not from faculty, staff or students, but from members of the community – gun rights advocates – who listed statistics saying that states which had “right to carry” laws had lower crime rates.

Idaho was listed as a shining example.

I could’ve laughed.

I don’t pretend to be a statistician or a social scientist, but even the casual observer knows that the principle reason for a lower crime rate in Idaho is the fact that 30 percent of the population is Mormon and Mormons statistically commit few crimes.

The Tribune-Democrat’s Feb. 1 editorial, “Frisco may rue gun ban,” suggests that tough gun laws lead to higher crime rates. You cherry-pick a few distressed cities such as Washington, D.C., and Camden, N.J., – and oddly enough, New York – to supposedly buttress the argument.

The misuse of statistics by the gun industry, gun lobbyists and, sad to say at times, even the media, to demonstrate supposed cause and effect of violent crime is one reason why it is so hard to have a serious debate about gun control in our society.

The reasons for crime – especially violent crime – are many and complex and will not be solved (and may in fact get worse) by simply allowing everyone to carry weapons.

New York City is actually one of the safest large cities in the United States. Dallas, in recent years repeatedly near the top nationally in violent crime rates, is in a state which allows citizens to carry weapons.

If statistics demonstrate that tough gun-control laws produce higher rates of crime, then why don’t other industrialized nations with very restrictive gun laws have extremely high rates of crime?

Britain, France, Japan, Australia and New Zealand all have considerably lower rates of violent crime, especially homicides, than the United States, according to the most recently available statistics.

They also ban or severely restrict private gun ownership, much more so than the United States. Japan, with the most restrictive controls, has an overall homicide rate that is 90 percent lower than ours.

With more than 222 million guns, including 76 million handguns, the United States has the highest gun ownership rate, as well as the distinction of being the most heavily armed nation on the earth.

Why do we feel so unsafe?

Part of the reason is the fear mongering of the gun industry and lobby, which stand to lose lots of money if communities pass strict gun-control laws.

Surely another reason is the heavy dose of violence that we are fed by the media, especially television, movies and video games, which glorify guns and violence and make lots of money doing it.

The roots of our violence are in many things, but especially poverty, unemployment and wide income disparity.

Camden is a good case in point. There, more than one-third of the citizens live in poverty and are unemployed, and more than one-fourth live on public assistance.

Abandoned brownfields constitute half of the city’s industrial sites.

The roots of the problem are also in the atmosphere of a society which believes that the primary way of solving problems is through violent means, whether it is on the streets of our cities or somewhere else in the world.

Allowing citizens to openly carry weapons may, in fact, in isolated cases, deter a personal attack. More importantly, though, it also sends the signal that we are a people who live in mistrust and fear.

How much better would it be to be known as a society that works tirelessly to alleviate significant factors in violent crime such as poverty and unemployment, and to create a nation in which we demonstrate our strength through our moral and spiritual character rather than our weapons?



Russ Eanes is a Mennonite pastor in Johnstown. A former administrator at Boise State University, Idaho, he holds a master’s degree in public policy and administration and has been a writer, editor and publisher.