Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang
Movie buffs will know that I borrowed the above title from a book by Pauline Kael, the late and wonderful movie reviewer about whom even John Simon, America’s most caustic critic, has only praise. I am not, however, concerned with movies but with guns. After 20 years, during which I did exhaustive and exhausting research, I concluded that guns belong in every American household. I went through the massive, learned literature with a fine tooth-comb and came away with the belief that Gary Kleck and his colleagues had won the gun control debate. Today, as I write this, I am not so sure. Some background.
Who is Gary Kleck? Gary is a Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University. He was the winner of the Michael J. Hindelang Award of the American Society of Criminology, for the book which made “the most outstanding contribution to criminology” in the preceding three years (for Point Blank). Gary is a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, Independent Action, Democrats 2000, and Common Cause, among other politically liberal organizations He is a lifelong registered Democrat, as well as a contributor to liberal Democratic candidates. He is not now, nor has he ever been, a member of, or contributor to, the National Rifle Association, Handgun Control, Inc. nor any other advocacy organization, nor has he received funding for research from any such organization.
Gary writes, “When I began my research on guns in 1976, like most academics, I was a believer in the “anti-gun” thesis, i.e. the idea that gun availability has a net positive effect on the frequency and/or seriousness of violent acts. It seemed then like self-evident common sense which hardly needed to be empirically tested. However, as a modest body of reliable evidence (and an enormous body of not-so-reliable evidence) accumulated, many of the most able specialists in this area shifted from the “anti-gun” position to a more skeptical stance, in which it was negatively argued that the best available evidence does not convincingly or consistently support the anti-gun position.” A bit later, he adds, “[Subsequent research] has caused me to move beyond even the skeptic position. I now believe that the best currently available evidence, imperfect though it is (and must always be), indicates that general gun availability has no measurable net positive effect on rates of homicide, suicide, robbery, assault, rape, or burglary in the U[nited] S[tates]. This is not the same as saying gun availability has no effects on violence–it has many effects on the likelihood of attack, injury, death, and crime completion, but these effects work in both violence-increasing and violence-decreasing directions, with the effects largely canceling out.” All that being said, Gary eventually plumps for the view that it is a good thing for ordinary citizens to have guns in their homes. Believe me, he is well aware – more than you are – of the anecdotes concerning horrible accidents and risks to children. Gary’s studies led him to conclude gun ownership does not affect total rates of violence (total homicide rate, total suicide rate, total robbery rate, etc.). Defensive gun use greatly exceeds the use of guns by criminals and is a major deterrent to violent crime.
About two years ago, I became acquainted with the work of David Hemenway. David is Gary’s most severe critic. David is a formidable foe. He is Professor of Health Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. He has a B.A. (1966) and Ph.D.(1974) from Harvard University in economics. He is the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center. He is also currently a James Marsh Visiting Professor-at-Large at the University of Vermont. David has written over 130 articles and five books in the fields of economics and public health.
I wrote to David Hemenway and engaged him in a discussion of the gun issues. A genial chap, he was prepared to continue for as long as I wanted but I decided it would be best if I simply asked him for a good selection of his writings. He argues that Kleck has badly mangled the data and badly did statistical analysis. Maybe so. I am not qualified to express an opinion about research methodology and statistical analysis. You can write to David: David Hemenway, Ph.D. Department of Health Policy and Management,Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115 and he will gladly send you several articles explaining his view and what is wrong with Kleck’s. I imagine he will be happy to e-mail back and forth with you, too. Alternatively, you can try the internet and look for something like “Hemenway on Kleck” or something like that.
In turn, you should read lots of Kleck but, at the very least, his slam bang reply to Hemenway. I hope this stuff fascinates you as it does me. Once you have read a good piece of the exchange, you will be at least as well-informed as I am, and I will welcome any communications from you. But, until then, I don’t want to hear from you. I hate things like, “Well, there was this kid down the block from where I live…” or “I read in the Ann Arbor News all about…”
About all anecdotes, I have this to say. “There is a simple way to state a negative with a double affirmative: Yeah, yeah.” And I happily take refuge in that.
In place of keeping a gun in the home, I recommend:
(1) having dogs that are inclined to bark at strangers,
(2) having sturdy, double-locked doors and a good home-alarm system, and/or (3) keeping a low profile.
Though I do not dispute Kleck’s statistics on defensive gun use, I would suggest that people read Dan Baum’s “Happiness is a Worn Gun: My Concealed Weapon and Me” (Harper’s, Aug. 2010) before packing. Baum makes a case for its being an onerous task for an ordinary citizen to undergo the preparation, and maintain the state of vigilence, necessary to be an effective deterrent to crime.
Spoilsport! How dare you insist that people not post anecdotes when the world—or at least the United States—runs on them. No one ever lost an election in America by being too hard on crime, or by blaming health care costs on malpractice litigation. If, in any situation, it looks like there’s a cause and effect relationship, then by God there is.
I’m not all that interested in the subject of gun control simply because America long ago decided that it is a gun country, and I doubt that anything will ever change this. What is interesting about your post to me is the almost novel thought that virtually every idea needs to be empirically examined; and that if one examines ideas and situations through the prism of one’s ideology, he or she does so at his or her (can’t be politically incorrect here and just say “his”—there needs to be one word for “his or her” that, unlike “their,” is singular) own intellectual peril.
Let me help you out, Steve:
“If people examine their ideas through the prism of ideology, they do so at their own peril.” What we need is a moratorium on the words “everyone, ” “everybody,”, “someone,”, “anyone,” and “one.”
We need to rediscover the good, old-fashioned “people.”
Sid, your point is well-taken, up to a point. I merely used “one” as shorthand for a person. But I grant you that “one” is colder and less personal than “a person” or “people,” and that language should build bridges, not create distance. You generally won’t hear me generalizing about “everyone” or “everybody.” Nor, for that matter, will you hear me saying “always” or “never” in describing human behavior or the behavior of a person. I avoid these constructions because they are irritating and they sell the person short about whom they are said.
I am more interested in your reaction to the point I was trying to make, which is consistent with Jefferson’s adage that “consistency is the hobgobbelin of small minds.” Often, slavish (and no, that’s not a sly reference to ol’ Tom’s sex life) adherence to a point of view leads people to ignore the truth and the facts, nu?