steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) (01/26/85)
*** The following article appeared in Jan. 10 Wall Street Journal. It is by a *liberal* civil rights lawyer and a former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. It has several interesting statistics. For instance, legal gun use by citizens in self-defense EXCEEDS use by criminals. There would be 50,000 more violent crimes per year if not for armed citizens. -------- Gun Control and the Subway Class By Carol Ruth Silver And Don B. Kates Jr. The legality of the actions of the "subway vigilante" cannot be determined until all the facts are in. What is already clear is that the New York officials denouncing him misconceive the law of self-defense. The term "vigilantism" is bandied about as if there were some basic disctinction between use of force by police and by citizens--or something wrong about citizens defending themselves. Of course it is wrong for either a citizens or police to take the law into their own hands, to injure as a form of summary and private punishment, rather than only as necessary to repel crime. Such is the essence of vigilantism, and, in this century at least, it is a phenomenon associated more with our police than our citizenry. After all, the armed citizen knows that if he shoots, his claim of self-defense will be rigorously and scrupulously investigated, whereas police excess of force is regulary whitewashed. A Cruel Irony - ----- ----- A subway rider attacked by armed criminals has every right to shoot in self-defense. But New York City effectively prohibits him from carrying a gun to shoot with. Indeed, a first-offense mugger generally will recieve less actual jail time than New York make "mandatory" for the subway rider who carries a gun--unless the rider has a gun permit. The cruel irony is that (notwithstanding the city's failure to protect him) the kind of citizen who rides the subway does not have the extraordianary influence necessary to get a gun permit in New York City. Wthe secrecy in which the Police Department has long held the permit list became understandable when in 1981 the courts ordered the list's disclosure to the media. The New York Daily News summarized those listed as "entertainers, publishers, media stars, politicians of all stripes. . . ." Privileged to receive carry permits were the late Arthur Godfrey, Laurence Rockefeller, Lyman Bloomingdale, William F. Buckley Jr. and a host of lesser known luminaries, some of them public supporters of the anti-gun movement. Probably the most striking example of such a contradiction was Arthur Ochs Suizberger, publisher of the New York Times--which editorialized that "most civilians, whatever their income level, are likely to lack the training and alertness (to use) a gun to stop an armed criminal." (The Times has resolved th contradictins by deciding the story about privileged and prominent anti-gun permit holders is not fit to print). The point is not simply that New York City's harsh gun laws (it is somewhat less arduous to obtain a permit for a gun in one's home) leave loopholes for the influential, powerful or wealthy; such people find loopholes in any law. The point is that such loopholes have particularly corrosive effects on gun laws. How can citizens condemmed to live in dangerous areas and ride subways be persuaded to give up handguns they believe essential to their families' security when people who travel in limousines and live in high-security buildings can keep theirs? How can that belief be eradicated when opinion leaders who publicly disparage it turn out to hold it themselves? In any event, citizens are right to believe that handguns have essentially te same defensive value for them as for police. A nationwide comparative study conducted by Mr. Kates at St. Louis University School of Law found that police succeeded in shooting, wounding or driving off criminals 68% of the time, while 83% of the armed citizens succeeded; 21% of the officers and 17.8% of the citizens were wounded or killed. Incidentally, 11% of the police shooting but only 2% of those armed by citizens involved innocent people misidentified as criminals. Criminological studies also demonstrate that citizens are more likely than police to need a handgun for self-defense. Particularly in urban areas, armed citizens annually encounter, and kill, as many as three times more violent felons than do police. Using survey data (collected, incidentally, not by the gun lobby, but by anti-gun organizations), criminologists concluded that instances of lawful defensive gun use by citizens actually exceeded gun misuse by felons. Surverys of prison inmates confirm the frequency of criminals being routed by armed citizeens--so much so tat many felons eschew violent crimes like robbery in favor of non-confrontational ones like auto theft. From a recent nationwide survey of state prisons, Massachusetts University's Social and Demographic Research Institute estimates that there would have been about 50,000 more violent felonies each year but for criminals's fear of armed citizens. As to whether handgun availability causes domestic and acquaintance violence, the most exhaustive and comprehensive study is the one recently done for the Justice Department. Painstaking analysis of the entire corpus of scholarly literature through 1978 caused th panelists to repudiate the anti-gun feelings they admittedly started with: "There is no persuasive evidence that . . . criminal violence, especially homocide, occurs simply because firearms are readily at hand [or] . . . that much homocide would not occur were firearms less readily available." Supporters of handgun prohibition forfeit the argument by claiming that it will reduce the acquaintance and domestic homicide they blame on the ordinary citizen, while conceding it will not disarm criminals. It is not the ordinary citizens, but rather the most aberrant and unstable amont the criminals who kill relatives and acquaintances just as they occasionally kill the stranger they rob or rape. Two-thirds of all murderers had prior major felony records; and research about the other third shows them to be just criminals against whom charges were never brought. For instance, a Kansas City study found that in two years previous 90% of domestic homicides, police had to be called to the individual perpetrators' homes to stop beatings; in 50% of the cases, there had been five or more prior police visits in two years. Criminal violence is something ordinary citizens use handguns to defend against, not to commit. Of course all guns (not just handguns) should be stringently prohibited to felons, juveniles and the mentally unstable. Mandatory minimum jail terms for theft or fencing of guns also deserve experimentation. Moreover, even for responsible citizens, strict, nondiscriminatory regulation of who may carry a gun is necessary. Detailed, Written Test -------- ------- ---- The citizen who carries a gun on the street faces a much different situation than is his hom, where he may be reasonably presume that a felon breaking in is dangerous. Carry permits should be issued only to those (regardless of their wealth, prominence or influence) can pass a detailed, written test on how our law restricts the use of eadly force in various situations. *Rational* gun control is a necessity. But New York City's long history prohibiting ordinary, responsible adults the only realistic means of self-defense in *not* rational. The crimonoligical evidence suggests that issuing carry permits to qualified, responsible, citizens could substantially reduce subway violence. Before rejecting this in horror, New York officials should reflect on the proven failure of approaches that have so far appealed to them. -- scc!steiny Don Steiny - Personetics @ (408) 425-0382 109 Torrey Pine Terr. Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060 ihnp4!pesnta -\ fortune!idsvax -> scc!steiny ucbvax!twg -/