WHEN MURDER EQUALS SHOPLIFTING

Whittling Away the Second Amendment by  Putting More and More People in a
"prohibited Class"

by Dr. Joanne Eisen & Dr. Paul Gallant

 There is strong support for policies to prohibit persons convicted of
misdemeanors, even nonviolent misdemeanors, from purchasing handguns...
--Sarah Brady, editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association,
December 23,  1998

  The newest scheme of Sarah Brady and her fellow firearm prohibitionists for
 separating American gun owners from their guns involves Ivies expanding the
 pool of f "prohibited persons" to include those convicted of misdemeanor
 offenses. Using junk-science "research," they have set about redefining
 "high-risk" populations, inventing problems with gun-owners where none
 exist.

THE FIX IS IN "Support for New Policies to Regulate Firearms," published in
the September 17, 1998 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM),
was "a good first step." According to authors Stephen Teret, Dr. Garen
Wintemute and a host of other well-known firearm prohibitionists, "new policy
options are emerging regarding the regulation of firearms in the United
States. These options include...[the] denial of gun ownership to those
convicted of [all kinds of] misdemeanors. . . " The authors concluded that
"strong public support--even among gun owners-for innovative strategies to
regulate firearms suggests that these proposals warrant serious
consideration..." (emphasis ours) In claiming "strong support" by gun owners
rs for denying firearms to misdemeanants, Teret and Wintemute relied
exclusively on survey data obtained through telephone Interviews, each
interview lasting "approximately 20 minutes." In their study, they listed
nine specific misdemeanor crimes. The support alleged for banning firearm
purchases for each of the various misdemeanor categories ranged between 60
percent and 95 percent for all respondents, and between 48 percent and 91
percent for gun-owner respondents. Among the misdemeanor crimes singled out
by Teret and Wintemute were "shoplifting," and "drunk and disorderly conduct"
(regardless of whether or not a firearm was involved). For the offense of
shoplifting, 68 percent of all respondents and 56 percent of gun owners were
said to "favor" banning firearm purchases. In the case of disorderly conduct,
the figures were 84 percent and 73 percent, respectively. However, we also
conducted a survey among gun owners in early 1997 ("The 1997 Anonymous
Gun-Owner Survey'). The 23 questions we asked were given in multiple-choice
format, worded simply and in a straight-forward manner. Answers ranged from
"strongly agree" to "strongly disagree," with an option of"no opinion." What
we found was very different from what Teret and Wintemute claimed. Of the
1,121 respondents in our study, 91 percent "disagreed" or "strongly
disagreed" with the statement that "persons convicted of a misdemeanor crime
should be prohibited from purchasing and possessing a firearm." Just 4.9
percent "agreed" or "strongly agreed" with that statement (See Fig. 1).
Admittedly, the sample of respondents who participated in our survey may not
have been representative of all American gun owners, although responses were
returned from 48 states. But while the NEJM study sample might have been more
representative, there is a sufficient basis for placing greater confidence in
the accuracy of answers given by our respondents. For unlike the random
telephone interviews of Teret and Wintemute, our survey was administered in a
totally anonymous fashion, affording complete confidentiality to respondents,
thereby fostering complete candor. One fact is undeniable: a dramatic
discrepancy exists between the claims of Teret and Wintemute and our findings

WHAT MAKES A  "CRIMINAL"?

 On the heels of the NEJM article came another "study," this time in the
December 23, 1998 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association
UAMA), with Garen Wintemute the lead author. The title chosen left little
doubt as to the message the authors had hoped to plant in the mind of the
reader: Prior Misdemeanor Convictions as a Risk Factor for Later Violent and
Firearm-Related Criminal Activity Among Authorized Purchasers of handguns.
Here, Wintemute & Company compared two groups which had legally purchased
handguns in 1977. One group had no prior criminal record. The other was
comprised of persons who had "at least one prior misdemeanor conviction." The
authors then looked at those in each group who had been charged with a new
offense during the study's follow-up period, ending in 1991. With the phrase
"at least one prior misdemeanor conviction" (or some variation thereon
appearing more than 30 times in the course of a five-page article, a gullible
reader could easily come away with the "right" message, but the wrong facts.
For, contrary to what the authors would have the unwary reader believe, the
study's "misdemeanor" group did not consist of simply persons who had
committed just minor infractions of the law, but included violent criminals
who had also accumulated "at least one misdemeanor conviction" along the way.
In this manner, Wintemute was able to prove what most of us would assume to
be a self-evident premise: violent behavior is a good predictor of future
violent behavior. However, the impression most likely formed from any casual
reading of the study was that misdemeanants behave like career criminals, and
it would therefore not be unreasonable to expand the pool of "prohibited
persons" to include misdemeanants. In addition to indulging in word games,
the authors played games with the numbers, further stacking the deck in the
direction they wanted. For example, they excluded from their study persons
whose misdemeanor records had been "purged" by the California Department of
Justice for lack of any subsequent criminal activity-those who "saw the
light" and chose to walk the straight-and-narrow instead of lapsing back into
a life of crime. And so, through the use of pseudo- scientific language and
statistical sleight- of-hand, Wintemute was cleverly able to conjure up what
he and Sarah Brady wanted all along: "another high-risk population... [which)
could be legally denied access to firearms." That target population would
encompass every American convicted of a simple misdemeanor offense. In a
communication to Dr.Wintemute, we requested clarification of the study's data
analysis and other aspects of the paper. That request was met with stony
silence, suggesting to us that Wintemute really didn't intend--or want--the
reader to understand the study's statistical contortions. Perhaps it had
something to do with the authors' published admission that, because of their
manipulation of the data, "a level of uncertainty [exists in] our final
findings that cannot be completely quantified." Protesting this latest piece
of junk- science in a letter to JAMA's editor dated January 7, 1999, Dr.
Edgar Suter, National Chairman of Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research
(DIPR), wrote: "We see no 'science' when gun ban activists, posing as
objective researchers, funded by some of the deepest pockets in the gun ban
lobby, publish an article purporting to support further gun control in a
magazine that proselytizes gun control, all-too-fittingly accompanied by
Sarah Brady's editorial." (December 23, 1998; see opening quote)

TESTING THE WATERS

 On September 30, 1996, the Lautenberg Amendment to the Omnibus Consolidated
Appropriations Act was signed into law--coincidentally, just around the same
time that Teret & Wintemute began collecting their survey data. Lautenberg
marked the first time a federal law mandated the lifetime loss of a
Constitutionally guaranteed right--in this case, the right to keep and bear
arms--for the commission of a misdemeanor offense. In addition, Lautenberg's
punishment was applied retroactively.

 Historically, ex post facto laws are contrary to our system of law. And
while most gun owners understood the blatant injustice of Lautenberg's
retroactivity clause, few recognized the sinister ramifications of the rest
of its provisions. Because even if retroactivity was stricken from it, the
remainder of Lautenberg would stand to set a horrific precedent: the slippery
slope of allowing the federal government to punish misdemeanor crimes with
the permanent loss of one's rights.

 At the time of enactment, the only misdemeanor crimes falling within the
scope of Lautenberg were violations of so-called "domestic violence"
statutes, which could include something as benign as pounding the wall or a
piece of furniture in the heat of an argument between intimate partners. But
Lautenberg was the test case that showed the firearm prohibitionists how much
they could get away with. And these two articles, Published so conveniently
in prestigious (but

biased) journals, showed our politicians that Americans wanted-- and
needed--more of the same. While the response of American gun owners was
immediate and vocal, for the most part, it was directed only at the
retroactive provision. The lesson for American gun owners is clear: if we
accept the lies told about us and our firearms and don't stand up to be
counted in the face of "political correctness," we invite the further erosion
of the Second Amendment and the compromised safety of our families.

WHERE'S THE BEEF?

 Since the definition of "criminal" includes both felons and misdemeanants,
the charge by Wintemute that "many thousands of persons with a history of
criminal activity legally purchase firearms every year" is technically
correct. But, aside from the politics of civilian disarmament, why the need
to look into the pool of lawful, peaceable gun owners! These are simply not
the people guilty of committing mayhem in our society.

 Dr. Sarah Thompson, a retired physician, took an active part in getting
Utah's concealed-carry law enacted. According to Dr. Thompson, since her
state's law went into effect in 1995, approximately 23,000 "permits" have
been issued. Statistically, some of those holding a Utah concealed-carry
permit would be expected to be misdemeanants, since the conviction of a
non-violent misdemeanor crime is not necessarily a barrier to taking
advantage of Utah's concealed-carry law. But no matter how cleverly the
figures are cooked, the facts clearly show that these "criminals" are not the
problem alleged by Sarah Brady, Garen Wintemute and the rest of their ilk.
According to Dr. Thompson, not a single permit holder has committed a violent
crime involving a firearm. Similar claims can be made for other "shall-issue"
concealed-carry states. Before Americans get completely suckered into
supporting this latest seam of Sarah Brady & Company, we would point out
observations made by England's Colin Greenwood. Greenwood is a researcher and
forensic firearm examiner, with a background in both military and police
work. In Firearms Control, which chronicles gun-control in Great Britain up
to 1971, Greenwood wrote: "Half a century of strict controls on pistols has
ended, perversely, with a far greater use of this class of weapon in crime
than ever before...one is forced to the rather startling conclusion that the
use of firearms in crime was very much less when there were no controls of
any sort and when anyone, convicted criminal or lunatic, could buy any type
of firearm without restriction." (emphasis ours) Closer to home, and 28 years
later, Lex Jenkins, free-lance journalist and former newspaper reporter,
summed up the firearm-prohibitionists' latest scheme in a nutshell: "This
beats trying to ban firearms. Just make the consequence of every action a
misdemeanor and the whole thing is moot. Smoke a cigarette in Minnesota,
forget to renew your vehicle inspection sticker, put glass in the plastics
recycling bin or newspaper in the glass bin and, binge! Problem solved." We
would end simply by pointing out that the research of Wintemute & Company was
paid for, in part, by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), a fact which
should surprise no one, in view of the CDC's long track record of funding
researchers who provide "scientific" fodder for advancing firearm
prohibition. Just one more fine example of your tax dollars at work!

Guns & Ammo / September 1999