Myth: One child is accidentally killed by a gun every day. Dr. Gary Kleck notes that to reach this figure, anti-gun authors must include "children" aged 18-24. As noted above, there were only 142 fatal gun accidents for children in 1997.
Myth: 135,000 children take guns to school every day. This factoid was based on a survey that did not even ask children if they carried a weapon to school. The "take guns to school" statement is completely imputed into the survey results. With regard to the 135,000 figure, Dr. Gary Kleck has shown that this number is wildly inflated.
Myth: Children gun deaths are at epidemic proportions.
Fact: Accidental gun deaths among children have declined by over 50 % in 25 years, even though the population (and the gun stock) has continued to increase.
Fact: Despite the low number of gun accidents among children (see above), most of these fatalities are not truly "accidents." According to Dr. Gary Kleck, many such accidents are misnamed -- those "accidents" actually resulting from either suicides or extreme cases of child abuse.
Dr. Kleck also notes that, "Accidental shooters were significantly more likely to have been arrested, arrested for a violent act, arrested in connection with alcohol, involved in highway crashes, given traffic citations, and to have had their driver's license suspended or revoked."
Fact: More children are killed playing football in school than they are by guns. That's right. Despite what media coverage might seem to indicate, more children die playing high school football, than they do by firearms at school. The most recent year on record shows that 18 football players died during the school year ending in June, 2000 (from hits to the head, heat stroke, etc.), as compared with 9 students by firearms.
Fact: More children will die in a car, drown in a pool, or choke on food than they will by firearms. As seen by the chart on the previous page, children are at a 2,000 percent greater risk from the car in their driveway, than they are by the gun in their parents' closet. Children are almost 7 times more likely to drown than to be shot, and they are 130 percent more likely to die from choking on their dinner.
Myth: There are more guns in schools today because of lax gun control laws. To the contrary, two facts put this myth to rest:
Fact: Currently, there are strict laws that, with few exceptions, prevent adults from possessing a firearm within 1,000 feet of a school. These and other gun control laws have failed to keep guns off school grounds.
Fact: In the past, "guns in schools" were never a problem during the era when children had the greatest access to firearms. For example, even though there were far fewer gun control laws on the books in the 1950's, there was not a problem with illegal guns in schools. Rather, the top problems in American classrooms during that era were such (non-violent) activities as chewing gum, talking in class and running in the halls.
More on guns in schools. So what has changed? Why do illegal guns make their way onto school grounds today, even though federal gun control laws have now grown to comprise more than 88,000 words of restrictions and requirements? There are several possible reasons, including:
a. Lax punishment of juvenile children. Several state studies have shown that juvenile offenders will make several journeys through the legal system before doing any time in a penal facility. This problem, of course, is not just limited to juveniles. A murderer of any age (in 1990) could expect to serve only 1.8 years in prison, after one considers the risk of apprehension and the length of the sentence.
b. Imitation of T.V. violence. Before completing the sixth grade, the average American child sees 8,000 homicides and 100,000 acts of violence on television.
Two surveys of young American males found that 22 to 34 percent had tried to perform crime techniques they had watched on television.
c. Morality shift. "The kids have changed," says Judge Gaylord Finch, speaking with the help of a dozen years of observation from his bench, where he sits as chief judge of Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court. "The values have just become so relative, and it sometimes seems we have no values in common anymore."
Women and Guns
* At least 17 million women own firearms in the United States.And according to the National Research Opinion Center, 44 percent of adult women either own or have access to firearms.
* As many as 561 times a day, women use guns to protect themselves against sexual assault.
* In 89.6% of violent crimes directed against women, the offender does not have a gun; and only 10% of rapists carry a firearm.Thus, armed women will usually have a decided advantage against their attackers.
* A man can kill a woman with whatever he has at hand, but she can usually only resist him successfully with a gun. Don Kates, a civil rights attorney who specializes in firearms issues, cites a Detroit study showing that three-quarters of wives who killed their spouses were not even charged, since prosecutors found their acts necessary to protect their lives or their children's lives.
Seven Common Gun Control Myths
Myth #1: If one has a gun in the home, one is three times more likely to be killed than if there is no gun present.
1. Dr. Edgar Suter has pointed out that studies which make such claims are flawed because they fail to consider the number of lives saved by guns. That is, such claims ignore the vast number of non-lethal defensive uses with firearms.
2. Criminologists have found that citizens use firearms as often as 2.5 million times every year in self-defense. In over 90% of these defensive uses, citizens merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off the attacker.
Myth #2: Most homicides are committed by otherwise law-abiding people who end up killing a friend or relative.
While most murders do involve the killing of an acquaintance, it is fallacious to assume these are otherwise law-abiding people killing one another. In fact, sixty-one percent of murder victims themselves -- and an even greater majority of murderers -- have prior criminal records. This indicates that most murders occur between criminals who have already demonstrated a pattern of violence.
The problem? The criminal justice system is a revolving door which continues to throw violent offenders back onto the street. Nationwide, 70% of murderers (under sentence of death) have prior felony convictions. This number does not include criminals who have plea-bargained their felonies down to lesser charges.
Myth #3: Gun Control has reduced the crime rates in other countries.
England and Canada's murder rates were ALREADY LOW BEFORE enacting gun control. Thus, their restrictive laws cannot be credited with lowering their crime rates.
The murder rates in England, Canada and Japan have risen tremendously since passing their gun control laws.
Most crime rates in England have now surpassed the rates in the U.S.:
* In 1998, a study conducted by a British professor and a U.S. statistician found that most crime is now worse in England than in the United States. "You are more likely to be mugged in England than in the United States," stated the Reuters news agency in summarizing the study that was published by the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ). "The rate of robbery is now 1.4 times higher in England and Wales than in the United States, and the British burglary rate is nearly double America's."
* The murder rate in the United States is higher than in England, but according to the DOJ study, "the difference between the
two countries has narrowed over the past 16 years."
United States: Take away the guns, and there is still more murder. United States' NON-GUN murder rate is higher than the TOTAL murder rates in England, Canada or Japan. In other words, Americans kill each other more often with weapons other than guns -- such as with knives, fists and feet.
It is absurd to claim that the U.S. has more murders because it has more guns. If one were to "magically" make every gun disappear in the U.S., the hard fact is that Americans would still kill each other -- without guns -- more often than the citizens of England, Canada or Japan kill each other will ALL types of weapons.
The problem is not the type of weapons used, but rather, the failure in America to keep violent criminals off the street. (See point 2 under Myth #2 above.)
Violence by any other name is still violent -- Many countries with strict gun control laws have higher violence rates than the United States does. Do the reasearch!
Myth #4: Recent gun control laws have reduced the U.S. murder rate.
* Murder rate was already decreasing before Brady and semi-auto gun ban passed. Those who claim that the two gun control laws enacted in 1994 have reduced the murder rate ignore the fact that the U.S. murder rate has been decreasing from the high it reached in 1991.Thus, the murder rate had already begun decreasing two to three years before the Brady law and the semi-auto gun ban became law.
* Murder rate decrease results from fewer violent youths. The Democratic Judiciary Committee noted in 1991 that, "An analysis of the murder tolls since 1960 offers compelling evidence of the link -- the significant rise of murder in the late 1960's, and the slight decrease in murder in the early 1980's follows from an unusually large number of 18-24 year-olds in the general population. This age group is the most violent one, as well as the group most likely to be victimized -- and the murder figures ebb and flow with their ranks."(Emphasis added.)
* According to the Clinton Justice Department, crime has decreased even while the number of guns increased. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, the research arm of the Justice Department, reported in 2000 that while the number of firearms in circulation rose nearly 10% during a recent five-year period, gun-related deaths and woundings dropped 33%.
* Concealed carry laws have dropped murder and crime rates in the states that have enacted them. According to a comprehensive study which studied crime statistics in all of the counties in the United States from 1977 to 1992, states which passed concealed carry laws reduced their murder rate by 8.5%, rapes by 5%, aggravated assaults by 7% and robbery by 3%.
E. Myth #5: The Courts have never overturned a gun control law, and thus, there is no individual right guaranteed by the Amendment.
U.S. Senate Subcommittee Report (1982)
* Courts have used the Second Amendment to strike down gun control: Nunn v. State and in re Brickey are just two examples where the Courts have struck down gun control laws using the Second Amendment.
* An individual right protected: "The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner."
U.S. Supreme Court
* U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez (1990). "'The people' seems to have been a term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution.... it suggests that 'the people' protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second Amendments, and to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community."
* U.S. v. Lopez (1995). The Court struck down a federal law which prevented the possessing of firearms within 1,000 feet of a school. The Court argued that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution in no way grants Congress the authority to enact such gun control legislation.
* Printz v. U.S. (1997). The Supreme Court ruled the federal government could not force state authorities to conduct so-called Brady background checks on gun buyers.
U.S. Congress:
Fourteenth Amendment (1868):
* The framers of the 14th Amendment intended to protect an individual's Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms by striking down state laws that denied this right. As stated by a Senate subcommittee in 1982, " the debates over the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress frequently referred to the Second Amendment as one of the rights which it intended to guarantee against state action."
Firearm Owners' Protection Act (1986):
* The 1986 Law affirms individual right to keep and bear arms: "The Congress finds that the right of citizens to keep and bear arms under the second amendment to the United States Constitution... requires additional legislation to correct existing firearms statutes and enforcement policies."
Nothing in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to pass gun control legislation (see U.S. v. Lopez, 1995). Since the adoption of the Constitution, courts have ruled on both sides of the issue, indicating that judges are just as political as the common man.
Myth #6: The Second Amendment militia is the National Guard.
The Founding Fathers made it clear that the Militia was composed of the populace at large. Both the Congress and Supreme Court have affirmed this definition of the Militia.
Founding Fathers
* George Mason: "I ask, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers."
* Virginia Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 13 (1776): "That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free State; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided, as dangerous to liberty...."
* Richard Henry Lee: "To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them .... The mind that aims at a select militia , must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle."
U.S. Congress
* The Militia Act of 1792. One year after the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution, Congress passed a law defining the militia. The Militia Act of 1792 declared that all free male citizens between the ages of 18 and 44 were to be members of the militia. Furthermore, every citizen was to be armed. The Act stated:
"Every citizen... provide himself with a good musket, or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints...."
The Militia Act of 1792 made no provision for any type of select militia such as the National Guard.
* U.S. Senate Subcommittee Report (1982).
"In the Militia Act of 1792, the second Congress defined 'militia of the United States' to include almost every free adult male in the United States. These persons were obligated by law to possess a firearm and a minimum supply of ammunition and military equipment.... There can be little doubt from this that when the Congress and the people spoke of the a 'militia,' they had reference to the traditional concept of the entire populace capable of bearing arms, and not to any formal group such as what is today called the National Guard."
* Current Federal Law: 10 U.S.C. Sec. 311.
"The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and... under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States...."
Supreme Court: U.S. v. Miller (1939).
In this case, the Court stated that, "The Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense... when called for service, these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time."
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