Saturday, March 10, 2012
Kleck on the gun control controversy
The nation's leading expert on gun control and gun crime, Florida State Criminology Prof. Gary Kleck notes that neither gun control or increased carrying by ordinary citizens will have any significant impact on gun crime. From the article: Researchers generally "don't find any effect one way or the other. You don't get a Wild West with people shooting each other over fender-benders on the highway, nor the deterrent effect that" gun advocates foretell."People on both sides don't care what the evidence is," Kleck said. "It doesn't have anything to do with why they arrived at their position, and they're not going to be talked out of it." Couldn't have said it better myself. Guns don't make much difference in the big picture. However, they could make a psychological and real-world difference for some law-abiding folks. Further, the Second Amendment right doesn't depend on the overall empirical efficiency of defensive gun use. It's a matter of freedom of choice for law-abiding citizens.
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Could the psychological effect of having a gun mirror community policing efforts in that it is not so much one factor that can reduce crime but a series of efforts or strategies. For example, added foot patrols did not drop the crime rate in Newark (see: http://www.policefoundation.org/docs/newark.html) but it did help citizens feel safer and thus added to the potential viability of safe city living. Only with multiple elements can crime rates really be addressed, and I would think concealed/open carry can add a lot of weight to affecting the behavior patterns of both law abiding citzens and criminals (or potential criminals for you rational choice theorists).
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I are regular viewers of the Investigative Discovery "ID" television series. Who needs fiction? As senselessly tragic as these stories are, we do learn about criminal behaviors. For example, the tools used in aggravated assaults. With two recent and separate episodes, a knife was used to murder unarmed victims. If these victims had possessed a gun, I'm sure the outcome would have been far more favorable for them. This example shows real evidence supporting the beneficial role of guns used in self-defense rather than crime.
ReplyDeleteThere is no doubt that guns deter crime. I know Kleck has said they prevent 2.5 million crimes per year. Why that does not translate into uniformly reduced crime rates in each state, according to existing surveys of research, seems contradictory. Perhaps guns are displacing or reducing violent crime as opposed to eliminating criminal activity in general. Increased prison sentences, more lenient state gun laws, etc., would appear to be among the main reasons violent crime levels remain lower than 20 years ago.
ReplyDeletePerhaps a gun can deter crime . . . that's little solace for the individual who is horrified at the thought of owning and using one to do so. A culture that demands it is a sick society. I don't mind it, but I'm troubled by my obvious connection to primitive instincts and my country's preference for incarceration over alcohol/chemical addiction intervention. Ask a cop how much of his work is handling the inebriated and you start to see the picture. Check the stats of imprisoned nonviolent offenders (DUI's and drug offenses) and look at the cost. Gun proliferation is like taking aspirin for a broken bone . . . if you don't get it set, the future is bleak.
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