Dunblane Massacre Resource Page

Correspondence with the London Evening Standard, Feb 2007

As per usual in my dealings with British journalists, I received no acknowledgement of my reply to his request.

From johnny@dvc.org.uk Mon Feb 19 16:12:14 2007
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2007 16:11:39 +0000 (GMT)
From: John Pate <johnny@dvc.org.uk>
To: joshua.neicho@standard.co.uk
Subject: Re: Evening Standard Letters - gun trade

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, joshua.neicho@standard.co.uk wrote:

This is Josh Neicho emailing from Letters at the London Evening Standard. Having come across your website, I was keen to get in touch with regards to the gun killings over the past fortnight in London and the Prime Minister's reaction. I would be very interested to hear your comments about the lack of effectiveness of the Government's legislation on firearms over the past decade on the illegal gun trade, and its impact on the legal trade, and the best policy that could be pursued now against gun violence. I copy today's news stories and Friday's leader on the subject below.

Kind regards,

Josh Neicho
Evening Standard Letters
020 7938 7596

I trust you have read and thoroughly digested my own writings on my website, including my letters to my MP written a decade ago. Most especially that you have closely studied my "readme" file,
http://dvc.org.uk/dunblane/readme.html
…including the footnoted references, and my "Gun Law for the 21st Century" proposals,
http://dvc.org.uk/dunblane/gunlaw.html.

The legal gun trade is easy to dismiss: since the McKay Report of 1972 (and most likely going as far back as the Blackwell Report of 1918) the policy of the government has quite evidently been to minimise the numbers of firearms in the hands of law-abiding citizens as best they can. The various gun atrocities and shootings that grabbed public attention have been used as an excuse to carry this policy forward. There are numerous criminological studies that demonstrate that in very best case disarming the law-abiding does not have any effect on the use of firearms by criminals. There is excellent evidence that disarming the law-abiding and denying them the right to self defence positively causes violent crime to proliferate. In this modern, globalised world the market will provide. If the demand is there it will be supplied. The sorry history of the prohibition of (some) drugs demonstrates that you're on a hiding to nothing if you think making guns illegal is going to retrieve the situation.

This latest wave of violence and crime has been triggered by the battle to gain control of this [drug] trade.

See also the history of the Glasgow drugs trade, where just such a turf battle resulting from a power vacuum caused Glasgow's homicide rate in 2005 to exceed that of New York, according to the TV documentary "MacIntyre's Underworld". Of course it being Glasgow there was a preponderance of axe and machete murders rather than death by firearm.

But what the state can do it focus far more singlemindedly on education - because it is good, rigorously demanding, tightly disciplined schools that can offer black youths a brighter future than drug dealing and violence. If that means boys-only schools, because they work better, fine. If it means paying a premium for good black male teachers because there are so few of them, that has to be considered. If it means academic selection, to prevent bright, vulnerable boys becoming bored at school, that should be on the cards too. The phenomenon of a generation of alienated, disaffected black boys is too troubling to exclude any options.

This is one of the most sensible things I've seen written about the issue. However, it is only a start. And everybody is fooling themselves if they think the problems will remain confined to the black community if current Government policies continue. Your reference to male teachers is particularly pertinent: there is serious under-representation of male teachers in the current school system.

The problem is deep and multi-dimensional and the solutions will have to be bold and farsighted to counter the on-going rise in violence against the person. Yes, young boys and teenagers need discipline and, perhaps more importantly, a sense of personal responsibility. Firearms ownership and use is the very thing to teach personal responsibility and requires discipline in a manner more apparent than few other life skills. (Though arguably driving instruction for young men needs much closer scrutiny given the what happens on the roads.) But firearms (and weapons in general) use and ownership must be thoroughly integrated into the structure of the civil society. This is why I'm beginning to believe the situation has deteriorated to the extent that we may have to emulate the Swiss model and make gun ownership compulsory. This will force the government and society to make the necessary adjustments to ensure that peoples' conduct is more continent and circumspect. This won't come from more laws, it will come from individuals and communities accepting responsibility for violence in the community and their personal responsibility for it - to not engage in it and to actively resist it. America provides instructive example here: in the parts of America where gun bans have been tried violent crime is the worst, whereas in the states and counties where legal gun ownership rates are high violent crime is significantly lower.

Britain is quite probably the most heavily-policed country in the world. It has the highest incarceration rate in the EU. It has the most restrictive laws on firearms ownership and use in the western world. More of the same is not going to solve this problem. It's time for fresh thinking based on the rational analysis of the problems and workable solutions and not on political and legal dogma.

I've been a voice crying in the wilderness for the past ten years and I don't expect that will change any time soon. I do know that people will pay the price for not listening and understanding.

-- 
John Pate <johnny@dvc.org.uk>
Edinburgh, Scotland (home PC)

From johnny@dvc.org.uk Mon Feb 19 22:20:17 2007
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2007 22:19:45 +0000 (GMT)
From: John Pate <johnny@dvc.org.uk>
To: joshua.neicho@standard.co.uk
Subject: Re: Evening Standard Letters - gun trade

With reference to my contention about positive effects from legal rather than illegal guns, refer to this article paying particular attention to the Rochester Study…

http://www.saf.org/JFPP14ch4.htm
Trigger-Happy: Re-thinking the "Weapons Effect"
Paul Gallant & Joanne D. Eisen

I extract the Rochester Study portion below…

B. The Rochester Study

Of particular relevance to the weapons effect hypothesis is some of the data from the Rochester Youth Development Study.[43] This ongoing study tracked approximately 1,000 7th and 8th grade adolescents for a period of 4-1/2 years - until they reached 11th and 12th grade, respectively.[44]

The subjects were students from the Rochester, New York, public school system who, at the commencement of the study, were in attendance during the 1987-88 academic year. The researchers noted that the sample population represented the entire range of 7th and 8th grade students. They intentionally, however, selected more students from high-crime areas, and fewer from low-crime areas, because their goals were to identify factors that led to delinquency and drug use, and to develop policy initiatives for reducing such activity.

One aspect of the study's analysis was to determine how the pattern of firearm acquisition and possession by juveniles affected their behavior. For this part, the subjects were limited to males,[45] and three groups of adolescents were identified: those who owned legal guns initially comprised 3% of the sample (approximately 20 boys); those who owned illegal guns comprised 7% of the sample (approximately 47 boys). The remainder, about 605 boys, reported that they did not own a gun. This information on gun ownership was obtained at the time the youngsters were in 9th and 10th grades when most were 14 and 15 years of age.[46]

It is of special interest that the least violent of these three juvenile groups were young gun-owners who had been "socialized" into gun ownership through a family member - usually the father. As the researchers noted: "Parents who own legal guns socialize their children into the legitimate gun culture. Those parents who do not own guns are unlikely to socialize their children in that manner."

Among the study's specific findings were that children who acquired guns in a lawful manner (from relatives) never committed firearm-related crimes (0%), whereas children who acquired guns illegally often did so (24%; compare this to 1% in the non-gun-owning sample who did so). Children who acquired guns in a lawful manner were less likely to commit any kind of street crime (14%) than children who did not own guns (24%), or than children who acquired a gun illegally (74%).

The presence of firearms in their lives apparently reduced socially undesirable aggressive behavior among the group of legal gun-owning children. This phenomenon should be explored more fully in order to determine how placing a lethal weapon in the hands of an adolescent can restrain aggressive impulses.

Although the Rochester study was not intended to be an investigation of the weapons effect hypothesis, the study provides another means of assessing validity of the hypothesis. If there is a weapons effect, adolescents should have exhibited it, since the emotional stability of this age group tends to be more turbulent than in adulthood.[47] As any parent of an adolescent knows, heated, passionate arguments and other lesser conflicts are inevitable during this period. While firearm-related crime committed by some of the gun-owning boys did take place, delinquent behavior facilitated with the use of a gun is premeditated, not an "act of passion." Premeditated violent crime does not fall under the purview of the impulsive behavior predicted by the weapons effect.

Every one of the study's youngsters had a gun within easy reach or knew where to find one quickly.[48] Lizotte and Krohn[49] noted that "those desiring a handgun have no trouble obtaining them from an underground economy." Yet not one of the subjects grabbed for a gun in the heat of the moment and shot his mother, his father, his sister, or his brother. Doors may have slammed shut with explosive force, expletives may have been lobbed around - but bullets didn't whiz by. How can this finding be reconciled with the predictions of the weapons effect hypothesis?

III. Implications of the Rochester Study

The lesson to be learned, however, is more than just the lack of weapons effect validity: the Rochester study shows how attempts to extinguish America's traditional gun culture may result in unintended societal problems. The differences in behavior between the group of young gun-owners who have been socialized into the gun culture through the family, and those who have not, are significant and their ramifications profound.

For example, let us review the issue of firearm safety. That gunowners in the U.S. are overwhelmingly safety conscious can be inferred from the ever-downward spiral of firearm-related accidental deaths which continues to this day.[50] It is reasonable to assume that when an adult presents a gun to a child, the safety of the child - and those around him - become of paramount concern to that adult. The adults have a high stake in teaching the child to safely and responsibly handle that gun, respect for what the gun can do, and a detailed knowledge of how the gun works.

Contrast the teenager who is taught about guns by an adult family member with the youngster who acquires a gun illegally - from the black market, or from a friend (who may have acquired the gun illegally, too). All knowledge about the use and workings of that firearm is learned in a clandestine manner necessitated by the legal consequences of discovery of possession of that firearm.

Because of today's almost unintelligible, often contradictory and complex maze of firearm laws - especially those that pertain to possession and use in an urban setting - adults are increasingly unable to take children to the local range for target practice, or to seek out the help of professionals for safety and marksmanship training. Under such circumstances, knowledge of how a gun works, and what it is capable of, is determined by what is learned on the street and what is seen in the movies and other media - not necessarily accurate sources for the responsible handling of firearms.

In America, firearm ownership continues, for the most part, to be kept in the family, handed down from one generation to the next. But near-prohibitory firearm controls will ensure that the primary modality for youngsters to learn about guns changes. Summarizing the Rochester evidence, Lizotte and Tesoriero concluded: "Boys who own legal guns are socialized by their parents and pose no threat to society….general policies should not be targeted at youth (and their fathers) who own guns for legitimate purposes." (emphasis in original). Removing adults from the cycle of firearm ownership may threaten the present declining trend of firearm-related accidents and may also perversely change the nature of America's traditional peaceable sporting gun culture.

Weapons effect fear is being used to incrementally destroy the most socially beneficial means of introducing children to a wholesome gun culture. During the last decade, the number of schools that have rifle teams dramatically declined.[51] Only in certain locations, it appears, are gun-owning parents willing to make a determined commitment and resist social pressures within the school system.[52]

 

[43]. Alan J. Lizotte and James Tesoriero, "Gun Ownership and Delinquency", Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse: Technical Report, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (November 1993, revised): Ch. 15. See also "Urban Delinquency and substance Abuse: Initial Findings Report," U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, July 1993.

[44]. Eighty-four percent of the original study sample was tracked to about 22 years of age, demonstrating a high retention rate. Alan J. Lizotte and Marvin D. Krohn, "Sources of Gun Acquisition among Young Urban Males," delivered at the November 1999 meeting of the American Society of Criminology.

[45]. The researchers noted that girls rarely own guns and they therefore excluded them from this part of the study's analysis.

[46]. By the time the study group reached 11th and 12th grade, the number of boys who owned legal guns had risen to about 40, and the number of boys who owned illegal guns had risen to about 60. By this time, therefore, there were approximately 100 gun-owning boys in the study population out of about 660 boys, from a total retained sample of about 900 (males and females, combined). It would be worthwhile to repeat such a study on a larger sample size, especially in an area where restrictions on juvenile possession of firearms are less severe than in New York.

[47]. According to Westen:
Psychologists have offered two conflicting views of adolescent social and personality development. One approach emphasizes that as adolescents grow less dependent upon their parents and try out new values and roles, they often become rebellious and moody, shifting from compliance one moment to defiance the next. According to this conflict model, put forth at the turn of the century, and later elaborated by psychodynamic theorists, conflict and crisis are normal in adolescence. Conflict theorists argue that adolescents need to go through a period of crisis to separate themselves psychologically from their parents and carve out their own identity. Beeper studies (which page or `beep' participants at random intervals over the course of a day to measure what they are thinking or feeling at the moment; Chapter 9) show that adolescents do, in fact, experience a wider range of moods over a shorter period of time than adults. Longitudinal studies find decreases in hostility and negative emotionality and increases in diligence, self-control, and congeniality as teenagers move into early adulthood. Other theorists argue, however, that the stormy, moody, conflict-ridden adolescent is the exception rather than the rule. According to the continuity model, adolescence is not a turbulent period but is essentially continuous with childhood and adulthood (all emphases in original).
Drew Westen, Psychology: Brain, Behavior, and Culture, (N.Y.: John Wile & Sons, Inc., 2002), 509-10.
Santrock noted that "Early adolescence is a time when conflict with parents escalates beyond childhood levels," John W. Santrock, Life-Span Development, 6th ed. (Madison, WI: Brown & Benchmark Publishers, 1997), 387-88.
Wright and Rossi noted that, "In the best of circumstances, adolescence can be a much-troubled period in a young man's life. . . ," James D. Wright and Peter Rossi, Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and their Firearms (N.Y.: Aldine de Gruyter, 1986), 122.

[48]. Sheley and Wright interviewed male students in 10 inner-city public schools. In asking them how they would go about obtaining a gun if they wanted one, "Most felt there were numerous ways but that family, friends, and street sources were the main sources;" 53 percent of the students would " `borrow' a gun from a family member or friend," and 37 percent of the students would "get one off street." Joseph F. Sheley and James D. Wright, "Gun Acquisition and Possession in Selected Juvenile Samples," Research in Brief, National Institute of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (December 1993).

[49]. Alan J. Lizotte and Marvin D. Krohn, "Sources of Gun Acquisition among Young Urban Males," delivered at the November 1999 meeting of the American Society of Criminology.

[50]. See "Gun Accidents Down," news release from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (Newtown, CT), 6 Feb. 2000. "The National Safety Council's most recent report on accident injuries indicates that in 1998 firearms-related fatalities reached an all-time low of 900 - the fewest accidents since record keeping began in 1903."

[51]. Lott noted that "nowhere were guns more common than at schools. Until 1969, virtually every public high school in New York City had a shooting club. High-school students carried their guns to school on the subways in the morning, turned them over to their homeroom teacher or the gym coach and retrieved them after school for target practice. The federal government even gave students rifles and paid for their ammunition. Students regularly competed in city-wide shooting contests, with the winners being awarded university scholarships." John R. Lott, "More Gun Controls? They Haven't Worked in the Past," Wall Street Journal, 17 June 1999.
Acceleration of this decline was likely facilitated by passage of the 1990 federal legislation banning guns within 1,000 feet of a school, signed into law by then-President George Bush. Although ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on April 25, 1995, the legislation was reworked, resurrected by Congress, and then signed back into law by President Clinton that same year. The legislation had the practical effect of posting signs on school property containing the message, "Only criminals are allowed to carry guns here; all others are potential victims." As Lott and Landes noted: "While the recent rash of public school shootings during the 1997-98 school year took place after the period of our study, these incidents raise questions about the unintentional consequences of laws. The five public school shootings took place after a 1995 federal law banned guns (including permitted concealed handguns) within a thousand feet of a school. The possibility exists that attempts to outlaw guns from schools, no matter how well meaning, may have produced perverse effects. It is interesting to note that during the 1977 to 1995 period, 15 shootings took place in schools in states without right-to-carry laws and only one took place in a state with this type of law. There were 19 deaths and 97 injuries in states without the law, while there was one death and two injuries in states with the law." John R. Lott, Jr. and William M. Landes, Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement, University of Chicago Law School, John M. Olin Law & Economics Working Paper No. 73 (2nd Series, Apr 1999), 5.

[52]. See Linda F. Burghardt, "Chess, Sure. But Rifles? In Great Neck? Great Neck Skirmish: Scholastic Rifle Team," New York Times, 28 November 1999. Great Neck, New York, is an upscale politically-liberal suburban community just outside New York City on Long Island. It was solely through the efforts of Howard Last (a civil engineer and a certified firearms instructor) and his 14-year-old daughter Lisa that the Great Neck South High School rifle team came into being. However, Last and his daughter faced stiff opposition from people like Susan Posen who headed a campaign to eliminate riflery in the Great Neck schools. According to Posen, "A rifle is an instrument for killing. Shooting is not a sport. When I read that my community was supporting a rifle team, I was incensed. In light of the horrifying gun violence in so many schools, how can we possibly justify helping our children become adept at using guns. . . .It is my goal to totally ban riflery participation in this town." Last disagreed: "The kids who shoot are nearly always honor students. It's a very, very safe sport. Every year 50,000 people are killed in car accidents, yet we have driver education in the school. Why not firearms training and a varsity riflery team." In a private E-Mail communication (27 May 2002), Last stated, "Besides Lisa, my other reason for forming the team was for the kids. The kids are the future. Almost all the kids were honor students and/or AP scholars." In the end, however, Posen got her wish and the team was disbanded.

-- 
John Pate <johnny@dvc.org.uk>
Edinburgh, Scotland (home PC)