Deltoid

My comments on this article by Don Kates.

Mr Kates does readers of the History News Network a grave disservice with his article. He pretends to provide them a criminologist’s perspective on the guns-crime question, but only quotes from pro-gun criminologists. He carefully selects the evidence he presents to prevent his readers from learning about facts that contradict Mr Kates’ thesis. The analysis that he does present is simplistic where it is not flatly wrong.

Kates claims to present extant social science evidence but nowhere does he address or even the mention the work of Zimring and Hawkins [1] or Cook and Ludwig [2]. Now, it is possible that these criminologists are wrong, but it is misleading to pretend, as Kates does, that there work does not even exist.

Now look at the words from the criminologist that he does quote, Gary Kleck: “when aggressors have guns, they are … (3) more likely to kill the victim, given an injury. Further, when victims have guns, it is less likely aggressors will attack or injure them” [3]. Kates fails to mention that Kleck was forced to correct his claims in the passage quoted above. The first claim: “Kleck and McElrath misstated their results bearing on this issue, due to a misinterpretation of one of their statistics. … the presence of a handgun is associated with an absolute increase in the probability of the victim’s death of 1.4 percentage points. Since the overall death rate in all incidents was 0.36%, this represents a relative increase in the probability of death of about 3.9.” [4, p242] The second claim: “while defensive gun use is generally safe, it does not appear to be as uniquely safe among self-protection methods as data from earlier NCVS data suggested.” [5, p291]

It is puzzling as to why Kates appears to be unaware of these corrections by Kleck. One appears in a chapter that Kates cited in his article. The other appears in a book that Kates co-authored with Kleck.

Next we turn to Kates’ creative use of statistics: “over the 25-year period 1973-97 the number of handguns owned by Americans increased 163%, and the number of all firearms increased 103% — yet homicide declined 27.7%” Notice that Kates is comparing the total number of guns with the homicide rate, the total number of homicides divided by the population. Needless to say, this biases the comparison in the direction Kates prefers. In any case, criminologists, whther they be the pro-gun ones that Kates quotes, or the pro-control ones that Kates does not mention seem to agree that the total number of guns sold is a poor measure of gun availability. It does not seem reasonable that guns are twice as available to someone with two guns as someone with one gun. Consequently criminologists usually consider whether or not a person or household has a gun as the important independant variable.

Lastly, we look at the international comparisons. Kates does not tell us what the few European nations that are endlessly compared with the US but presumably England is one of them. England has a much lower homicide rate the the US, and a much much lower gun homicide rate. Criminologists on both sides seem to agree that this fact, by itself, doesn’t mean very much since there are many other difference between the US and England other than gun availability. He argues that

1. These nations far exceed the US in political homicides

2. They don’t even count political homicides in their statistics

3. Russia has a higher homicide rate than the US.

I note that

1. The US far exceed England in political homicides. Has Kates been in a cave for the past year?

2. Scotland, at least, does include political homicides in its statistics. If you look at the homicide figures for Scotland [6] it is obvious that the deaths at Lockerbie caused by a terrorist bomb were included. As for other countries, the burden of proof lies with Mr Kates.

3. Russia is more different from the US than England is.

[1] Zimring and Hawkins “Crime is not the problem” (1999).
[2] Cook and Ludwig “Gun Violence: The real costs” (2000).
[3] Gary Kleck, Address to the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council Panel on the Understanding and Prevention of Violence (1990).
[4] Gary Kleck, “Targeting Guns: Firearms and their Control” (1997).
[5] Gary Kleck and Don B. Kates “Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control” (2001).
[6] World Health Organization Statistical Yearbook (1985-1995)

Paul Blackman writes:

I’m not sure Kates actually prevents anyone from learning anything. He presents something with a clear bias, but he no more prevents anything than does Tim’s commentary.

Kates claims that he is trying “to place Malcolm’s contribution in the context of extant social scientific and historical evidence on that question.” He does no such thing. He doesn’t even mention the existence of any pro-control scholars and he quotes selectively from the pro-gun scholars. Note also that he attempts to pass himself as being on the middle ground by describing himself as “A member of both Handgun Control Inc. and the National Rifle Association, he has been bitterly criticized by both.”

While arguably Cook and Ludwig are competent scholars whose works might well be addressed,

Then my point stands.

Regarding the foreign comparisons, it’s my understanding that Kates was citing a bunch of European countries, and Tim to some extent attempts to refute the statement with regard to one of them.

In footnote 197 of the TLR paper Kates specifically claims that the homicide figures for Scotland, England and Israel do not count political homicides. He does not offer the slightest scrap of evidence in support of his claim. For Scotland at least I have proven the claim false.

For the one, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the issue could become how one defines political killing/assassination, and whether one counts incidents or bodies.

The homicide rate is defined by counting bodies. It doesn’t matter how one defines political killing/assassination since they are included in the homicide figures that Kates cites.

Eugene Volokh writes:

Martin Killias’s “International Correlations Between Gun Ownership and Rates of Homicide and Suicide,” 148 Can. Med. Assoc. J. 1721, 1723-24 (1993), purported to show that “the proportions and the rates of homicide and suicide committed with a gun as well as the overall rates committed by any means were related to the rate of household gun ownership.”

Don Kates has just pointed out that a recent Killias work, Martin Killias, John van Kesteren & Martin Rindlisbacher, “Guns, Violent Crime, and Suicide in 21 Countries,” 43 Canadian J. of Criminology 429 (2001), concludes that there is no statistically significant international correlation between gun ownership levels and total homicide, total suicide, total robbery, or total assault. The study found some correlations between gun ownership and gun homicide, suicide, and crime rates, but even those were present only as to some categories of gun deaths and gun crimes. The abstract is here, but I read the entire piece and that’s precisely what the article shows. A very singificant development, it seems to me.

It would be an error to interpret this result as good evidence that people substitute other means for homicide and suicide when firearms are unavailable. As the authors note, firearms homicide and suicide are a relativley small fraction of homicides and suicides in most of the countries studied. This means that a study like this is not likely to find good evidence either for or against the sustitution hypothesis. Good evidence for sustitution would be significant negative correlations between gun ownership and non-gun suicide/homicide. Good evidence against substitution would be significant positive correlations between gun ownership and total suicide/homicide.