Les Jones

Guns > Technology vs. Culture

Clayton Cramer links to this St. Louis Today editorial. It ostensibly argues that the proposed Missouri concealed carry law is unnecessary: "In St. Louis, the people most likely to want concealed weapons really don't need them. Just look at the numbers." The statistics the editorialist uses to back up that assertion are fascinating:

Here are some amazing true facts, courtesy of the St. Louis Police Department:

Between Jan. 1, 2001 and last July 11, the city recorded 300
homicides - a little more than 10 per month. Of the 300 victims, 234 (or 78
percent) had a felony criminal history. Of the suspects arrested in these
killings, 88 percent had felony criminal histories. That percentage would be
even higher if people suspected of multiple killings had been counted more than
once.

Seventy-three percent of the 300 victims had a history of using illegal drugs
or a criminal history involving illegal drugs. Sixty-five percent of the
suspects had a drug history. Sixty-eight percent of the victims had illegal
drugs or alcohol in their systems at the time of autopsy.

Of the 300 victims, 265 were black and 258 were male. Fifty-six percent were
between the ages of 17 and 30.

Thus, if you are a middle-age white male - those considered most likely to
apply for a concealed-carry license - and you don't drink or do drugs or hang
around with people who do, your chances of being a victim of homicide in St.
Louis are almost zero.

Like a lot of people in big cities, he extrapolates the urban situation he's familiar with to the entire state. Missouri is a big place. I imagine there are hamlets with one or even zero full-time law-enforcement officers, and no inner-city to speak of. Yet they still have crime.

The statistics he uses are fascinating for other reasons. For one, he effectively argues the point that there's no reason not to have a concealed carry ban law. Most of the people who take advantage of it (like me) are statistically unlikely to use a gun for illegal purposes. He's also effectively shown that the presence of a gun doesn't spontaneously cause crime. So where's the harm in having legal guns or carry permits?

He also reveals the truth about shooting statistics. (I'll go out on a limb and say that the majority of the murderers used firearms for their weapons, as opposed to less-efficient clubs and knives. I'll go further out on that limb and say that the criminials used internal combusion engines for their transportation, as opposed to less-efficient horses.) Most of the violence is criminal-on-criminal, or drug-related. It makes sense to let law-abiding types keep their guns and legally carry them.

Most of the violence is also black-on-black. Steven den Beste wrote about reasons why young, inner-city black males might be more prone to violent crime. You can argue the "root causes" of that fact (most likely that it's whitey's fault), but the fact remains that a lot of the crime in the U.S. is by and against young, inner-city black males, is cultural, and has nothing to do with legal gun ownership. Banning "Saturday night specials," "sniper rifles," and "assault weapons" won't change the cultural problems that lead to the use of guns for illegal purposes. I don't claim to know what the solution is, but gun control ain't it.