Letters.

Crime, Texas, and the NRA

The interview with economist John Lott ("Cold Comfort," January 2000) revealed a surprisingly cogent point of view considering how politically incorrect it is. Anyone who has survived the childhood playground bully will accept that the bad guys seek victims they don't expect to fight back. The statistics on how rare it is for guns to cause the accidental deaths of children were also an eye-opener for me.

After 20 years of dinner-table lectures on this subject from my criminology professor father, I have a number of questions: Most important, do guns play a significant statistical role in deaths due to domestic violence or disputes among people who know each other? My father always stressed that most murders were not random but responses to psychological stresses in relationships. It's a lot easier to pull a trigger on your wife while in a rage than to beat her to death with a bat.

Next, did the changes in permit laws studied by Lott cause an increase in these types of deaths, even while decreasing rates of crimes against strangers? The other thing my father always stressed was that most criminals respond to impulse and do not meticulously plan out, their crimes as is portrayed in detective novels. He considers crime to be a failure of self-control by the criminal. In light of that, it is amazing that the change in gun laws described by Lott could have such a powerful influence on crime rates. This could mean that deterrent strategies such as the death penalty may have some value after all.

Steven Toby

Arlington, VA

s.toby@worldnet.att.net

The views of John Lott are so contrived and convoluted that they cannot go unchallenged. If his assertion that thousands of murders and assaults can be prevented if all citizens are permitted to carry concealed guns is correct, Texas should be the safest place in the world.

Texas has a population of more than 17 million people who, between them, legally own 68 million guns. There are no gun registration laws. Not surprisingly, in 1991, 3,692 people were shot to death in Texas.

If these statistics seem impersonal, consider this family event: After a family row, 14-year-old Juan Ramon of Halthom City did what many Texans do when they get angry: He started shooting. He shot a dog and injured three neighbors before killing a cop who had answered the emergency call. He was later killed by police.

Ramon's spree never would have happened if there weren't guns in the house. Several other shooting deaths followed, all within weeks of the February 1993 shootout at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco. The confusion over what to do about the proliferation of guns is not confined to Texas. In Washington, the Brady Bill remains threatened with repeal by the Republican-dominated House.

Lott fails to realize that criminals are not the only people who misuse guns. Good men can, and do, especially when they are jealous, paranoid, depressed, or drunk. The gun lobby's familiar refrain that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is transparent sophistry. In fact, people with guns kill people.

Mahmood Elahi

Ottawa, Canada

omega51@netcom.ca

I was pleased to see that a magazine was willing to conduct an honest interview with John Lott. I must comment, however, on the remarks about the National Rifle Association...

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