Accessories

Indeed, if words mean what they say, it is impossible to
interpret the Second Amendment as embodying only a "collective"
right. As one Second Amendment scholar observed, it would be odd
for the Congress that enacted the Bill of Rights to use "right of
the people" to mean an individual right in the First, Fourth, and
Ninth Amendments, but to mean a state's right in the Second
Amendment. After all, when Congress meant to protect the states,
Congress wrote "the States" in the Tenth Amendment.[109]
Moreover, several states included a similar right to bear arms
guarantee in their own constitutions. If the Second Amendment
protected only the state uniformed militias against federal
interference, a comparable article would be ridiculous in a
state constitution.[110]


Modern Interpretations of the Second Amendment

For the Constitution's first century, there was no question
that the Second Amendment prohibited federal interference with
the individual right to bear arms. During this period the
Supreme Court did not view any articles of the Bill of Rights,
the Second Amendment included, as applicable to the states.
Accordingly, the Second Amendment, like the First Amendment and
all the others, was construed by the Supreme Court to place no
limits on state interference with individual rights. (Some state
courts, however, treated the Second Amendment as binding on the
states.)[111]

In 1906 the Kansas Supreme Court announced in dicta that the
Second Amendment did not guarantee an individual right to bear
arms but only guarded official state militias against federal
interference. Over the following decades, the collectivist state
militia theory was accepted by many in the intellectual com-
munity but never by the American population as a whole. Today,
89 percent of Americans believe that as citizens they have a
right to own a gun, and 87 percent believe the Constitution
guarantees them a right to keep and bear arms.[112] Recently,
the collectivist theory has begun to lose its standing even in
the intellectual community. In the past two decades, scholarship
of the individual rights view has dominated the law reviews,
especially the major ones. Indeed, only one article published
in a top-50 law review argues that individual citizens are not
protected by the Second Amendment.[113] The Senate Subcommittee
on the Constitution investigated the historical evidence and
concluded that the individual rights interpretation was unques-
tionably the intent of the authors of the Second Amendment, and
was intended by the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment to be
applied against the states.[114] Stephen Halbrook's That Every
Man Be Armed, the first book to deal in depth with the historical
background of the Second Amendment, also endorses the individual
rights interpretation.

Sometimes writers in popular magazines claim that the
Supreme Court has endorsed the collective theory. They are
wrong. Twice in the l9th century, the Court heard cases involv-
ing state or private interference with gun use. Both times the
Court took the now-discredited view that the Bill of Rights did
not restrict state governments and therefore the Second Amend-
ment offered no protection from state firearms laws.[115] The
collective theory was not even invented until the early 20th
century; neither of the Court's l9th-century cases endorsed it.

The next (and last) time the Court ruled on the Second
Amendment was 1939. In United States v. Miller the Court held
that since there was no evidence before that Court that sawed-off
shotguns are militia-type, militarily useful weapons, the Court
could not conclude that sawed-off shotguns were protected by the
Second Amendment. As for the meaning of "a well-regulated
Militia," the Court noted that to the authors of the Second
Amendment, "The Militia comprised all males physically capable
of acting in concert for the common defense. . . . Ordinarily
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."[116]

Since the 1930s the Court has not had much to say about the
Second Amendment. It denied a petition to review the Morton
Grove case, in which a suburb's handgun ban was upheld. (The
lower court had gotten its result by stating that the intent of
the Framers of the Second Amendment was "irrelevant" to the
amendment's meaning.)[117] As the Supreme Court has stated,
though, a denial of review has no precedential effect.[118] Had
the Court wanted the Morton Grove case to apply nationally, the
Court could have issued a summary affirmance. More indicative of
the modern Court's view of the Second Amendment is Justice
Powell's opinion for the Court in Moore v. East Cleveland, where
he listed "the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right
to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and
seizures" as part of the "full scope of liberty" guaranteed by
the Constitution.[119]


Modern Utility

Some gun control advocates argue that the Second Amendment's
goal of an armed citizenry to resist foreign invasion and
domestic tyranny is no longer valid in light of advances in
military technology. Former attorney general Ramsey Clark
contended that "it is no longer realistic to think of an armed
citizenry as a meaningful protection."[120]

But during World War II, which was fought with essentially
the same types of ground combat weapons that exist today, armed
citizens were considered quite important. After Pearl Harbor the
unorganized militia was called into action. Nazi submarines were
constantly in action off the East Coast. On the West Coast, the
Japanese seized several Alaskan islands, and strategists wondered
if the Japanese might follow up on their dramatic victories in
the Pacific with an invasion of the Alaskan mainland, Hawaii, or
California. Hawaii's governor summoned armed citizens to man
checkpoints and patrol remote beach areas.[121] Maryland's
governor called on "the Maryland Minute Men," consisting mainly
of "members of Rod and Gun Clubs, of Trap Shooting Clubs and
similar organizations," for "repelling invasion forays, parachute
raids, and sabotage uprisings," as well as for patrolling
beaches, water supplies, and railroads. Over 15,000 volunteers
brought their own weapons to duty.[122] Gun owners in Virginia
were also summoned into home service.[123] Americans everywhere
armed themselves in case of invasion.[124] After the National
Guard was federalized for overseas duty, "the unorganized militia
proved a successful substitute for the National Guard," according
to a Defense Department study. Militiamen, providing their own
guns, were trained in patrolling, roadblock techniques, and
guerilla warfare.[125] The War Department distributed a manual
recommending that citizens keep "weapons which a guerilla in
civilian clothes can carry without attracting attention. They
must be easily portable and easily concealed. First among these
is the pistol."[126] In Europe, lightly armed civilian guer-
rillas were even more important; the U.S. government supplied
anti-Nazi partisans with a $1.75 analogue to the zip gun (a very
low quality handgun).[127]

Of course, ordinary citizens are not going to grab their
Saturday night specials and charge into oncoming columns of
tanks. Resistance to tyranny or invasion would be a guerrilla
war. In the early years of such a war, before guerrillas would
be strong enough to attack the occupying army head on, heavy
weapons would be a detriment, impeding the guerrillas' mobility.
As a war progresses, Mao Zedong explained, the guerrillas would
use ordinary firearms to capture better small arms and eventually
heavy equipment.[128]

The Afghan mujahedeen have been greatly helped by the new
Stinger antiaircraft missiles, but they had already fought the
Soviets to a draw using a locally made version of the outdated
Lee-Enfield rifle.[129] One clear lesson of this century is that
a determined guerrilla army can wear down an occupying force
until the occupiers lose spirit and depart--just what happened in
Ireland in 1920 and Palestine in 1948. As one author put it:
"Anyone who claims that popular struggles are inevitably doomed
to defeat by the military technologies of our century must find
it literally incredible that France and the United States
suffered defeat in Vietnam . . . that Portugal was expelled from
Angola; and France from Algeria."[130]

If guns are truly useless in a revolution, it is hard to
explain why dictators as diverse as Ferdinand Marcos, Fidel
Castro, Idi Amin, and the Bulgarian communists have ordered
firearms confiscations upon taking power.[131]

Certainly the militia could not defend against intercon-
tinental ballistic missiles, but it could keep order at home
after a limited attack. In case of conventional war, the militia
could guard against foreign invasion after the army and the
National Guard were sent into overseas combat. Especially given
the absence of widespread military service, individual Americans
familiar with using their private weapons provide an important
defense resource. Canada already has an Eskimo militia to
protect its northern territories.[132]

The United States is virtually immune from foreign invasion,
but as the late vice president Hubert Humphrey explained,
domestic dictatorship will always be a threat: "The right of
citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against ar-
bitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which
now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved
to be always possible."[133]

The most advanced technology in the world could not keep
track of guerrilla bands in the Rockies, the Appalachians, the
great swamps of the South, or Alaska. The difficulty of fighting
a protracted war against a determined popular guerrilla force is
enough to make even the most determined potential dictator think
twice.[134]

The Second Amendment debate goes to the very heart of the
role of citizens and their government. By retaining arms,
citizens retain the power claimed in the Declaration of Indepen-
dence to "alter or abolish" a despotic government. And citizens
retain the power to protect themselves from private assault.
Ramsey Clark asked the question, "What kind of society depends on
private action to defend life and property?"[135] The answer is
a society that trusts its citizenry more than the police and the
army and knows that ultimate authority must remain in the hands
of the people.


Particular Forms of Gun Control

The foregoing discussion has focused on gun control in
general. Many people who are skeptical about a complete ban on
all guns nevertheless favor some sort of intermediate controls,
which would regulate but not ban guns or ban only certain types
of guns. While some of these proposals seem plausible in the
abstract, closer examination raises serious doubts about their
utility.


Registration

Gun registration is essentially useless in crime detection.
Tracing the history of a recovered firearm generally leads to the
discovery that it was stolen from a legal owner and that its
subsequent pattern of ownership is unknown.[136]

Analogies are sometimes drawn between gun registration and
automobile registration. Indeed, a majority of the public seems
to favor gun registration not because a reduction in crime is
expected but because automobiles and guns are both intrinsically
dangerous objects that the government should keep track of.[137]
The analogy, though, is flawed. Gun owners, unlike drivers, do
not need to leave private property and enter a public roadway.
No one has ever demanded that prospective drivers prove a unique
need for a car and offer compelling reasons why they cannot rely
solely on public transportation. No Department of Motor Vehicles
has ever adopted the policy of reducing to a minimum the number
of cars in private hands. Automobile registration is not
advocated or feared as a first step toward confiscation of all
automobiles. However, registration lists did facilitate gun
confiscation in Greece, Ireland, Jamaica, and Bermuda.[138] The
Washington, D.C., city council considered (but did not enact) a
proposal to use registration lists to confiscate all shotguns and
handguns in the city. When reminded that the registration plan
had been enacted with the explicit promise to gun owners that it
would not be used for confiscation, the confiscation's sponsor
retorted, "Well, I never promised them anything!"[139] The
Evanston, Illinois, police department also attempted to use state
registration lists to enforce a gun ban.[140]

Unlike automobiles, guns are specifically protected by the
Constitution, and it is improper to require that people possess-
ing constitutionally protected objects register themselves with
the government, especially when the benefits of registration are
so trivial. The Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment
prohibits the government from registering purchasers of news-
papers and magazines, even of foreign Communist propaganda.[141]
The same principle should apply to the Second Amendment: the
tools of political dissent should be privately owned and un-
registered.

Gun Licensinq

Although opinion polls indicate that most Americans favor
some form of gun licensing (for the same reasons they approve of
auto licensing), 69 percent of Americans oppose laws giving the
police power to decide who may or may not own a firearm.[142]
That is exactly what licensing is. Permits tend to be granted
not to those who are most at risk but to those with whom the
police get along. In St. Louis, for example, permits have
routinely been denied to homosexuals, nonvoters, and wives who
lack their husbands' permission.[143] Other police departments
have denied permits on the basis of race, sex, and political
affiliation, or by determining that hunting or target shooting
is not an adequate reason for owning a handgun.

Class discrimination pervades the process. New York City
taxi drivers, who are more at risk of robbery than anyone else in
the city, are denied gun permits, since they carry less than
$2,000 in cash. (Of course, most taxi drivers carry weapons
anyway, and only rookie police officers arrest them for doing
so.) As the courts have ruled, ordinary citizens and storeowners
in the city may not receive so-called carry permits because they
have no greater need for protection than anyone else in the
city.[144] Carry permits are apparently reserved for New Yorkers
such as the Rockefellers, John Lindsay, the publisher of the New
York Times, (all of them gun control advocates), and the husband
of Dr. Joyce Brothers.[145] Other licensees include an aide to a
city councilman widely regarded as corrupt, several major
slumlords, a Teamsters Union boss who is a defendant in a major
racketeering suit, and a restaurateur identified with organized
crime and alleged to control important segments of the hauling
industry--hardly proof that licensing restricts gun ownership to
upstanding citizens.[146]

The licensing process can be more than a minor imposition on
the purchaser of a gun. In Illinois the automated licensing
system takes 60 days to authorize a clearance.[147] Although New
Jersey law requires that the authorities act on gun license
applications within 30 days, delays of 90 days are routine; some
applications are delayed for years, for no valid reason.[148]
Licensing fees may be raised so high as to keep guns out of the
hands of the poor. Until recently Dade County, Florida, which
includes Miami, charged $500 for a license; nearby Monroe County
charged $2,000.[149] These excessive fees on a means of self-
defense are the equivalent of a poll tax. Or licensing may
simply turn into prohibition. Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary,
Indiana, ordered his police department never to give anyone
license application forms.[150] The police department in New
York City has refused to issue legally required licenses, even
when commanded by courts to do so. The department has also
refused to even hand out blank application forms.[151]

In addition to police abuse of licensing discretion, there
is also the problem of the massive data collection that would
result from a comprehensive licensing scheme. For example, New
York City asks a pistol permit applicant:

Have you ever . . . Been discharged from
any employment?

Been subpoenaed to, or attended [!] a
hearing or inquiry conducted by any
executive, legislative, or judicial body?

Been denied appointment in a civil service
system, Federal, State, Local?

Had any license or permit issued to you by
any City, State, or Federal Agency?

Applicants for a business premises gun permit in New York
City must also supply personal income-tax returns, daily bank
deposit slips, and bank statements. Photocopies are not accep-
table. A grocer in the South Bronx may wonder what the size ofhis bank
deposits has to do with his right to protection.

The same arguments that lead one to reject a national
identity card apply to federal gun licensing. A national
licensing system would require the collection of dossiers on half
the households in the United States (or a quarter, for handgun-
only record-keeping).
Implementing national gun licensing would make introduction
of a national identity card more likely. Assuming that a large
proportion of American families would become accustomed to the
government collecting extensive data about them, they would
probably not oppose making everyone else go through the same
procedures for a national identity card.

Finally, licensing is not going to stop determined
criminals. The most thorough study of the weapons behavior of
felony prisoners (the Wright-Rossi project funded by the National
Institute of Justice) found that five-sixths of the felons did
not buy their handguns from a retail outlet anyway. (Many of the
rest used a legal, surrogate buyer, such as a girlfriend.)[152]
As noted above, felons have little trouble buying stolen guns on
the streets. In sum, it remains to be proven that gun licensing
would significantly reduce crime. Given the very clear civil
liberties problems with licensing, it cannot be said that the
benefits outweigh the costs.


Waiting Periods

In the 1960s and 1970s bills to implement federal gun
registration and licensing were soundly defeated in Congress,
never to resurface as politically viable proposals. The broadest
federal gun legislation currently under consideration is a
national waiting period for gun purchases. Senator Howard
Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) has introduced legislation to require a
national seven-day waiting period for handgun transfers, which
would be permitted only after police officials had an opportunity
to check an applicant's background. Because the bill applies to
all gun transfers, it would even compel a wife to get police
permission before receiving a handgun as a gift from her
husband.[153]

However, statistical evidence shows no correlation between
waiting periods and homicide rates.[154] The image of a mur-
derously enraged person leaving home, driving to a gun store,
finding one open after 10 p.m. (when most crimes of passion
occur), buying a weapon, and driving home to kill is a little
silly.[155] Of course, a licensing system is bound to deny some
purchasers an opportunity to buy, but only the most naive
rejected purchaser would fail to eventually find a way to acquire
an illegal weapon.

In addition, waiting periods can be subterfuges for more
restrictive measures. Former Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson
proposed a six-month waiting period--a long time to wait for a
woman who is in immediate danger of attack from her ex-boyfriend.
Senator Metzenbaum's bill would give the police de facto licens-
ing powers, even in states that have explicitly considered and
rejected a police-run licensing system.


Mandatory Sentencing

Those who want to make simple gun possession a crime
frequently call for a mandatory prison sentence for unlawful
possession of a gun. The National Handgun Information Center
demands a one-year mandatory minimum sentence for possession of a
handgun during "any crime" (apparently including drunk driving
or possession of a controlled substance). Detroit recently
enacted a 30-day mandatory sentence for carrying an unlicensed
gun.[156] None of those proposals is a step toward crime
control.

Massachusetts's Bartley-Fox law, with a mandatory one-year
sentence for carrying an unlicensed gun, has apparently reduced
the casual carrying of firearms but has not significantly
affected the gun use patterns of determined criminals.[157] Of
the Massachusetts law, a Department of Justice study concluded
that "the effect may be to penalize some less serious offenders,
while the punishment for more serious offenses is postponed,
reduced, or avoided altogether."[158] New York enacted a similar
law and saw handgun homicides rise by 25 percent and handgun
robberies 56 percent during the law's first full year.[159]

The effects of laws that impose mandatory sentences are
sometimes brutally unfair. In New Mexico, for example, one judge
resigned after being forced to send to prison a man with a clean
record who had brandished a gun during a traffic dispute.[160]
One of the early test cases under the Massachusetts Bartley-Fox
law was the successful prosecution of a young man who had
inadvertently allowed his gun license to expire. To raise money
to buy his high school class ring, he was driving to a pawn shop
to sell his gun. Stopping the man for a traffic violation, a
policeman noticed the gun. The teenager spent the mandatory
year in jail with no parole.[161] Another Massachusetts case
involved a man who had started carrying a gun after a co-worker
began threatening to murder him.[162] The Civil Liberties Union
of Massachusetts had opposed Bartley-Fox precisely because of the
risk that innocent people would be sent to jail.[163]

The call for mandatory jail terms for unlicensed carrying is
in part an admission by the gun control advocates that judges
reject their values and instead base sentences on community
norms. A Department of Justice survey of how citizens regard
various crimes found that carrying an illegal gun ranked in
between indecent exposure and cheating on taxes--hardly the stuff
of a mandatory year in jail.[164] The current judicial/community
attitude is appropriate. In a world where first-time muggers
often receive probation, it is morally outrageous to imprison for
one year everyone who carries a firearm for self-defense.

As a general matter of criminal justice, mandatory sentences
are inappropriate. One of the most serious problems with any
kind of mandatory sentencing program is that its proponents are
rarely willing to fund the concomitant increase in prison space.
It is very easy for legislators to appear tough on crime by
passing draconian sentencing laws. It is much more difficult for
them to raise taxes and build the prison space necessary to give
those laws effect. Instead of more paper laws, a more effective
crime-reduction strategy would be to build enough prisons to keep
hard-core violent criminals off the streets for longer periods.
If there are to be mandatory sentences for gun crimes, the
mandatory term should apply only to use of a firearm in a violent
crime


Handgun Bans

A total ban on the private possession of handguns is the
ultimate goal of a Washington lobby called the National Coalition
to Ban Handguns. Unlike some other gun control measures, a ban
lacks popular support; only one-sixth to one-third of the
citizenry favors such a measure.[165]

Handgun-ban proponents sometimes maintain that handguns have
no utility except to kill people. The statement is patently
wrong and typical of how little the prohibitionists understand
the activities they condemn. Although self-defense is the
leading reason for handgun purchases, about one-sixth of handgun
owners bought their gun primarily for target shooting, and one-
seventh bought the gun primarily as part of a gun collection. In
addition, hunters frequently carry handguns as a sidearms to use
against snakes or to hunt game.[166]

Cost-benefit analysis hardly offers a persuasive case for a
ban. One recent study indicates that handguns are used in
roughly 645,000 self-defense actions each year--a rate of once
every 48 seconds. (As noted above, most defensive uses simply
involving brandishing the gun.) The number of self-defense uses
is at least equal to, and probably more than, the number of times
handguns are used in a crime.[167] Most homicides (between 50
and 84 percent) occur in circumstances where a long gun could
easily be substituted.[168] Besides, sawing off a shotgun and
secreting it under a coat is simple. Many modern submachine guns
are only 11 to 13 inches long, and an M-1 carbine can be modified
to become completely concealable.[169] Since long guns are so
much deadlier than handguns, an effective handgun ban would
result in at least some criminals switching to sawed-off shotguns
and rifles, perhaps increasing fatalities from gun crimes. In
the Wright and Rossi prisoner survey, 75 percent of "handgun
predators" said they would switch to sawed-off shoulder weapons
if handguns were unavailable.[170]

If families had to give up handguns and replaced them with
long guns, fatalities from gun accidents certainly would in-
crease. Since handguns have replaced long guns as a home
defense weapon over the last 50 years, the firearm accident
fatality rate has declined.[171] The overwhelming majority of
accidental gun deaths are from long guns.[172]

Handguns are also much better suited for self-defense,
especially in the home, than are long guns, which are more
difficult to use in a confined setting. Rifle bullets are apt to
penetrate their intended target and keep on going through a
wall, injuring someone in an adjacent apartment. Further, the
powerful recoil of long guns makes them difficult for women,
frail people, or the elderly to shoot accurately. Lastly, a
robber or assailant has a much better chance of eventual recovery
if he is shot with a handgun rather than a long gun.


Banning Saturday Niqht Specials

If a Saturday night special is defined as any handgun with a
barrel length less than 3 inches, a caliber of .32 or less, and a
retail cost of under $100, there are roughly six million such
guns in the United States. Each year, between 1 and 6 percent of
them are employed in violent gun crimes, a far higher percentage
of criminal misuse than for other guns.[173] Although opinion
polls find the majority of Americans in favor of banning Saturday
night specials, the practical case for banning these weapons is
not compelling.[174]

Criminals do prefer easily concealable weapons; roughly 75
percent of all crime handguns seized or held by the police have
barrel lengths of 3 inches or less.[175] At least for serious
felons, though, low price is a very secondary factor in choice of
firearm. Experienced felons prefer powerful guns to cheap ones.
The Wright and Rossi survey, which focused on hardened criminals,
found that only 15 percent had used a Saturday night special as
their last gun used in a crime.[176] It should not be surpris-
ing that serious criminals prefer guns as powerful as those
carried by their most important adversaries, the police.

It is often said that a Saturday night special is "the kind
of gun that has only one purpose: to kill people."[177] Again,
this is untrue. Such guns are commonly used as hunting sidearms,
referred to as "trail guns" or "pack guns." One does not need
long-range accuracy to kill a snake, and lightness and compact-
ness are important. Nor can all hunters afford $200 for a
quality sidearm.[178] More importantly, inexpensive handguns are
used for self-defense by the poor.

There is no question that laws against Saturday night
specials are leveled at blacks. The first such law came in 1870
when Tennessee attempted to disarm freedmen by prohibiting the
sale of all but "Army and Navy" handguns. Ex-confederate
soldiers already had their military handguns, but ex-slaves could
not afford high-quality weapons.[179]

The situation today is not very different. As the federal
district court in Washington, D.C., has noted, laws aimed at
Saturday night specials have the effect of selectively disarming
minorities, who, because of their poverty, must live in crime-
ridden areas.[180] Little wonder that the Congress on Racial
Equality filed an amicus curiae brief in a 1985 suit challenging
the Maryland Court of Appeals' virtual ban on low-caliber
handguns. As the Wright and Rossi National Institute of Justice
study concluded:

The people most likely to be deterred from
acquiring a handgun by exceptionally high
prices or by the nonavailability of certain
kinds of handguns are not felons intent on
arming themselves for criminal purposes
(who can, if all else fails, steal the hand-
gun they want), but rather poor people who
have decided they need a gun to protect them-
selves against the felons but who find that
the cheapest gun in the market costs more
than they can afford to pay.[1811

Indeed, one wonders what a ban on these low-caliber guns
would accomplish. Criminals who use them could easily take up
higher-powered guns. Some criminals might switch to knives, but
severe knife wounds are just as deadly (and almost as easy to
inflict at close range, where most robberies occur).[182]

If a ban on Saturday night specials failed to reduce crime,
is it likely that its proponents would admit defeat and repeal
the law? Or would they conclude that a ban on all handguns was
what was really needed? Once criminals started substituting
sawed-off shotguns, would the new argument be that long guns too
must be banned?[183] That is the point that gun control in
Great Britain is approaching, after beginning with a seemingly
innocuous registration system for handguns.


Conclusion

In 1911 state senator Timothy Sullivan of New York promised
that if New York City outlawed handgun carrying, homicides would
decline drastically. The year the Sullivan law took effect,
however, homicides increased and the New York Times pronounced
criminals "as well armed as ever."[184] Gun control does not
reduce crime; gun ownership does. Gun control insists that
citizens rely on the authorities. Gun owners know better than to
put their lives and liberty in the hands of 911 and the police.
Gun control and the Bill of Rights cannot coexist. The advocates
of gun control believe that government agents are more trust-
worthy than ordinary citizens. The authors of the Second
Amendment believed just the opposite.

FOOTNOTES

[1] "Urban Murders on the Rise," Newsweek, February 9, 1987, p.
30. The officer's formula does not consider the possibility
that gun ownership might be a response and a deterrent to rising
crime rates. For gun ownership as a response to crime rate
increases, see B. Benson, "Private Sector Responses to Rising
Crime," in Firearms and Violence: Issues of Public Policy,
ed. Donald B. Kates (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1984), pp. 329-
56.

[2] D. Lunde, Murder and Madness (San Francisco: San Francisco
Book Co., 1976), p. 1.

[3] Donald B. Kates, Why Handqun Bans Can't Work (Bellevue,
Wash.: Second Amendment Foundation, 1982), p. 23. One study of
various Illinois counties found no relation between gun ownership
and crime, except that female gun ownership appeared to rise in
response to a rising crime rate. See David Bordua, "Firearms
Ownership and Violent Crime: A Comparison of Illinois Counties,"
in The Social Ecoloqy of Crime (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1986).

[4] James Wright, Peter Rossi, and Kathleen Daly, Under the Gun:
Weapons, Crime and Violence in America (Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine,
1983).

[5] James Wright and Peter Rossi, Armed and Considered Dangerous:
A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms (New York: Aldine, 1986),
pp. 141, 145, 151.

[6] Alan Krug, "The Relationship between Firearms Ownership and
Crime: A Statistical Analysis," reprinted in Congressional
Record, 99th Cong., 2d sess., January 30, 1968, p. 1496, n. 7;
Gary Kleck, "Policy Lessons from Recent Gun Control Research,"
Journal of Law and Contemporary Problems 49 (Winter 1986): 35-47.

[7] Carol Ruth Silver and Donald B. Kates, "Self-Defense, Handgun
Ownership, and the Independence of Women in a Violent, Sexist
Society," in Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak
Out, ed. Donald B. Kates (Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.: North River
Press, 1979), p. 152.

[8] "Town to Celebrate Mandatory Arms," New York Times, April 11,
1987, p. 6.

[9] Gary Kleck and David Bordua, "The Factual Foundation for
Certain Key Assumptions of Gun Control," Law and Policy Ouarterly
5 (1983): 271-98; Krug, p. 1496, n. 7.

[10] George Rengert and John Wasilchick, Suburban Burglary- A
Time and a Place for Everything (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C.
Thomas, 1985), p. 30; J. Conklin, Robbery and the Criminal
Justice System (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1972), p. 85.

[11] Wright, Rossi, and Daly, pp. 139-40.

[12] John Kaplan, "Controlling Firearms," Cleveland State Law
Review 28 (1979), p. 8.

[13] Donald B. Kates, "Handgun Control: Prohibition Revisited,"
Inquiry, December 5, 1977, p. 20, n. 1.

[14] David Bordua, Alan Lizotte, and Gary Kleck, Patterns of
Firearms Ownership, Use and Registration in Illinois, (Spring-
field, Ill.: Illinois Law Enforcement Commission, 1979), p. 253.

[15] Kates, Why Handqun Bans Can't Work, p. 43.

[16] David Hardy, "Critiquing the Case for Handgun Prohibition,"
in Restrictinq Handguns, pp. 87-88. Hardy's article was published
in 1979, so it is fair to assume that the actual costs would be
considerably higher than the figures quoted here. See also
Raymond Kessler, "Enforcement Problems of Gun Control: A Victim-
less Crimes Analysis," Criminal Law Bulletin 16 (March/April
1980): 131-44.

[17] Wright, Rossi, and Daly, pp. 25-44.

[18] The armed crime ratio is based on an assumption that there
are about 100,000 handgun criminals in the United States. About
300,000 handgun crimes are reported annually to the FBI. Since
many robbers and burglars carry out several dozen crimes or more
a year, it seems safe to divide the total of 300,000 by at least
three, allotting three crimes per criminal.

The homicide ratio is based on an assumption of 10,000
handgun homicides annually (and no gun being used in more than
one homicide). In 1984 there were 9,819 gun homicides in the
United States, of which 7,277 were committed with a handgun. See
Department of Commerce (Bureau