Subject: Letter to TV station

From: [email-masked] (Jeff Chan)
Date: Thu, 23 May 91 21:37:45 PDT

Here is a letter I'm faxing to a local TV station.  It's pretty much 
self-explanitory.  It's not particularly fantastic, but I still
think it's a useful example in general.  Thus the post.

Jeff C.                                      
Internet: [email-masked]     
Usenet:   {apple,pyramid,claris,mips,atari,hoptoad}!portal!chan
I am a guest at Portal.  Any opinions expressed are mine.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
|        "No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms."         |
|    -- Thomas Jefferson, proposed Virginia Constitution, June 1776   |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
(e-mailing list maintainer of [email-masked])
-----

                                 Jeffrey W. Chan
				[address & phone]

                PLEASE INCLUDE THIS LETTER IN YOUR PUBLIC FILE.

          May 23, 1991

          Newscenter 4
          KRON-TV - Channel 4
	  Box 3412
	  San Francisco, CA 94119

          (via FAX: 415-561-8759)

          Sirs,

          The Newscenter 4's coverage at 11pm on May 22, 1991 of the 
          self-defense shooting of an intruder by a black Sacramento 
          grandmother is a good example of a relatively balanced,
          unbiased report concerning the gun issue.  

          As you may be aware, research by Dr. Gary Kleck of Florida 
          State University suggests that firearms are used upwards of 
          a million times each year by ordinary citizens to stop 
          crimes.  In the overwhelming majority of cases shots are not
          even fired.  So it's good to see some evenhanded, objective 
          coverage of effective self-defense with a firearm, which is 
          the reason most Americans own firearms.  The reality is that
          defensive uses of firearms probably occur far more often 
          than is reported to police or news media.

          The case of the Sacramento grandmother was clearly self-
          defense.  Having been attacked earlier, she justifiably 
          feared for her life, and inside her own property, she 
          defended herself and her grandchildren against intruders 
          who had forced their way into her home.  Though she lacked 
          firearms training, as reported by Anthony Moore, she 
          successfully prevailed with no injury to herself or to her 
          loved ones.

          My one complaint with the report is the citation of data 
          from a faulty study appearing in the New England Journal of 
          Medicine.  The study contained a number of methodological, 
          statistical and factual errors in attempting to look at crime 
	  in Vancouver BC and Seattle.  It seems that firearm studies 
	  are not subject to usually high standards in the Journal.

          In the interest of reporting only scientifically valid 
          research, I would urge Newscenter 4 to refrain from citing 
          the recent NEJM firearm studies.  I have included some 
	  specific objections so that you will be aware of them in 
	  future.  Keep up the otherwise good work!

          Sincerely,

          Jeff Chan

          cc: FCC Complaints Branch via fax: 202-653-8773, NRA media watch

          PS  I am President of Bay Area Professionals for Firearms
          Safety and Education (BAYPROFS) and am always available at 
          xxx-xxx-xxxx for comment on any firearms-related issue.
          BAYPROFS is currently offering low-cost, voluntary, 
          nationally-certified firearms safety instruction in the
          South Bay Area.
-----
 This is from "The Message" Feb. 1989.  The message serves as the official
news publication for several New England sportsmen's organizations, including
GOAL, which shares its address in Southboro, Mass.

                        CUT & POST

             The truth about ... the Vancouver Study

WHAT IS THE VANCOUVER STUDY?

  Recently, the New England Journal of Medicine released a "study" claiming
that people living in cities with strict firearm regulations have a sharply
reduced risk of being murdered.  This so-called study claimed Seattle, Wash-
ington's homicide rate, higher than that of Vancouver, Canada, is a direct 
result of the less stringent gun laws in Seattle.  We are indebted to Prof-
essor Paul H. Blackman, Ph.D., NRA Research Coordinator, for shedding light 
on the questionable methods of the study.

WHY IS THE STUDY'S VALIDITY QUESTIONABLE?

  The city of Vancouver, Canada passed a strict law regarding the possession
of handguns in 1978.  The study failed to examine the situation in Vancouver
prior to the law taking effect.  As it happens, in the three years prior to
the law taking effect (1975-1977), Vancouver averaged 23 homicides per year,
one-eighth involving handguns.  During the seven years of the study, there
were 29 homicides per year, one eighth involving handguns.  How then can
one conclude that the law made any difference?

ARE THE TWO CITIES REALLY COMPARABLE?

  No, the demographics of each city are very different.  The
non-hispanic white homicide rates are _the same_ in Vancouver and
Seattle, which demonstrates that other variables must be considered. 
  Further, a sample of only two cities can not be considered
statistically significant.  Seattle appears to have been selected for
the sake of convenience.  In fact, had other similar size American
cities been chosen, the study's conclusions would have been very
different.  Vancouver's homicide rate exceeds that of El Paso, Texas,
Austin, Texas, and Colorado Springs, Colorado. 

ARE HANDGUNS REALLY NOT AVAILABLE IN VANCOUVER, AND EASY TO GET IN SEATTLE?

  The study misrepresents the actual situation.  The state of
Washington has a waiting period and background check prior to the
purchase of a handgun.  Provisions do exist in Canadian law for owning
and carrying a handgun for personal protection. 

WHAT OTHER VARIABLES WERE NOT CONSIDERED IN THE STUDY?

  There was no measure in the differences in the number of law
enforcement officers, their aggressiveness in making arrests for gun
law violations, arrest rate for other offenses, conviction rates,
actual sentences imposed for gun-related crimes, violent crimes
without guns, or gun law violations, or incarceration rates, in the
two jurisdictions. 

  To conclude, as professor Blackman states, the "study" is the
"equivalent of testing an experimental drug to control hypertension by
finding two ordinary looking middle-class white males, one aged 25,
and the other 40...  Without first taking their vital signs,
administering the experimental drug to the 25-year-old, while giving
the 40-year-old a placebo, then taking their blood pressure, and on
finding the younger man to have lower blood pressure, announcing in a
special article a `new medical breakthrough'."

-----

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Open letter by Dr. Paul H. Blackman, Research Coordinator for
NRA-ILA. NRA Official Journal 1/89.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear sir:

By now, we are used to the New England Journal of Medicine's publication
of small-scale studies related to firearms from which conclusions are
drawn which are quantum leaps from the data, followed by announcements of 
momentous "scientific" findings. These are regularly released to the press
without the caveats which riddle the conclusory paragraphs, and are
often accompanied by an editorial calling attention to the findings.
Generally, while they at least present a few interesting data, however
meaningless, the studies misinterpret statistics, and ignore or belittle
serious studies by criminologists.

The latest effort -- "Handgun Regulations, Crime, Assaults, and Homicide:
A Tale of Two Cities," by J.H. Sloan, et al., with the accompanying 
editorial, "Firearms Injuries: A Call for Science," by two employees
of the Centers for Disease Control (November 10), however, is an insult
to the intelligence of any serious scholar in any field and have so few
data and so many flaws that I feel compelled to write at some length
to call attention to various major and minor failings, in no particular
order.

    1. The authors misleadingly cite Wright, et al. (Ref. 1) to 
    support the statement that "some have argued that restricting
    access to handguns could substantially reduce our annual rate
    of homicide." Wright, et al., in fact studied and rejected that
    contention.

    2. The authors pretended that Vancouver and Seattle are very
    similar cities with similar economic circumstances, histories,
    demographic characteristics, and the like. In fact, the cities
    are very different with very different demographic characteristics
    which appear to explain completely the higher homicide rate in
    Seattle. Both cities are over three-forths non-Hispanic white
    and *the non-Hispanic white homicide rates are reported to be
    the same in Seattle and Vancouver*. It is the different back-
    grounds, problems, circumstances, and behaviors of the various
    ethnic minorities which explain the difference in homicide.

    3. The authors pretend they are evaluating Canada's gun law,
    compared to Washington State's. But they do not examine at all
    the situation in Vancouver prior to the gun law taking effect
    in 1978. As it happens, in the three years prior to that (1975-
    1977), Vancouver averaged 23 homicides per year, one-eighth
    involving handguns, (Ref. 2) and in the seven years of the NEJM
    article there were 29 homicides per year, one-eighth involving
    handguns. Surely even the medical profession recognizes that
    one must look to see the prior situation was before concluding
    that a change made a difference? Would a physician conclude that
    a patient was benefiting from eating oat bran muffin each day
    for seven years because his cholesterol level was 200 without
    at least seeing if it was 180 before he started the regimen?

    4. The authors pick two medium-sized cities to evaluate a national
    gun law. Nothing can be learned from such a tiny and arbitrarily
    selected sample. Seattle appears to have been selected because
    it was convenient for the authors rather than for any scientific
    reason. Would physicians call something a scientific study which
    involved one experimental subject and one dissimilar "control"?
    Had different arbitrarily selected cities been chosen, opposite
    "scientific" conclusions would follow: Vancouver's homicide
    rate *exceeds* that of such "wild west" cities in Texas as
    El Paso, Corpus Christi, Austin, and, in Colorado, Colorado
    Springs. (Ref. 3)

    5. The authors fail to clearly demonstrate that firearms or
    handguns "are far more commonly owned in Seattle than in
    Vancouver." They use two surrogate approaches in pretending
    to study the availability of firearms/handguns. The first is
    an apples-and-oranges effort to compare the number of carry
    permits in Seattle to the number of registered handguns in
    Vancouver. But the number clearly understates the number of
    handguns in Seattle, and counts primarily *protective* handgun
    owners. The second, however, tells nothing about the number
    of handguns in Vancouver, and counts *non-protective* handguns
    for the most part. Where is it difficult to obtain handguns
    legally for protection, registration figures are
    meaningless. There are 66,000 registered handguns in New York
    City (New York Daily News, Sept. 27, 1987). Comparing the two,
    that method suggests about 930 handguns per 100,000 population
    in New York City compared to 960 in Vancouver, meaning Vancouver
    has a greater "prevalence of weapons" than New York City.

    The second method of measuring gun density is "Cook's gun
    prevalence index, a previously validated measure of intercity
    differences." But the validation was by Cook of his own
    theory. (Ref. 4) Normally, second opinions are sought from a
    different doctor. More significantly, the Cook index is
    based on the average of the percentage of firearms involvement
    in suicide and homicide. So the authors are basically taking
    a measure of misuse. Unsurprisingly, gun misuse in homicide
    (42% in Seattle, 14% in Vancouver) is related to gun misuse in
    homicide plus suicide, divided by two (41% in Seattle, 12% in
    Vancouver). The authors are not measuring the relative avail-
    ability of firearms, or of handguns, in Seattle and
    Vancouver.

    6. The authors misstate the laws of both Washington and
    Canada. They neglect to mention the significant fact that
    Washington has a waiting period and background check prior to
    the purchase of a handgun, and that provisions exist in Canadian
    law for owning and carrying handguns for personal
    protection. The authors also make it appear that it is more
    difficult to get a handgun legally in Canada than is actually
    the case.

    7. The authors ignore all other factors which might explain
    the differences in crime rate, beyond some vague mention of the
    penalties provided by law and the roughest of estimates of 
    clearance for one particular offense -- homicide involving a
    firearm. There is no measure of: the differences in the number
    of law enforcement officers; their aggressiveness in making
    arrests for gun law violations in the two jurisdictions; arrest
    rates for other offenses; conviction rates; actual sentences
    imposed for gun-related crimes, violent crimes without guns,
    or gun law violations; or incarceration rates. Whereas social
    scientists would attempt to measure and hold for such differences,
    the authors of the NEJM "tale of two cities" fail even to mention
    most factors related to crime control.

    8. The authors dismiss claims that handguns are an effective
    means for protection unless the criminal is killed. Such is not
    the case. Criminologists (Ref. 5-8) have found that almost
    650,000 Americans annually use handguns for protection from
    criminals, and that using a gun for protection reduces the
    likelihood that a crime -- rape, robbery, assault -- will be
    completed by the criminal and reduces the likelihood of injury
    to the victim. It is interesting, nonetheless, that the authors
    reported the same number (four) of civilian justifiable homicides
    without firearms in each city but that less restrictive Seattle
    accounted for 100% of the reported civilian justifiable homicides
    involving firearms.

    9. The Centers for Disease Control, which funded the "study,"
    editorially praised the paper, (Ref. 9) saying it "applied
    scientific methods to examine a focus of contention between
    advocates of stricter regulation of firearms, particularly
    handguns." There is nothing in the paper which could possibly
    be mistaken for "scientific methods" by a sociologists or
    criminologists. The Vancouver-Seattle "study" is the equivalent
    of testing an experimental drug to control hypertension by finding
    two ordinary-looking middle-class white males, one aged 25
    and the other 40, and without first taking their vital signs,
    administering the experimental drug to the 25-year-old while
    giving the 40-year-old a placebo, then taking their blood pressure
    and, on finding the younger man had a lower blood pressure, 
    announcing in a "special article" a new medical breakthrough.
    It would be nice to think that such a "study" would neither be
    funded by the CDC or printed by the NEJM.

    Since the longstanding anti-gun biases of the NEJM and the CDC
    make them willing to present shoddy research as "scientific
    breakthroughs" in "special articles" and editorials relating
    to firearms, we are obligated to correct the record by notifying
    the news media and those with congressional and executive oversight
    over the activities of the Centers for Disease Control about
    the distortions contained in "Handgun Regulations, Crime, Assaults,
    and Homicides: A Tale of Two Cities" and "Firearm Injuries: A Call
    for Science." Clearly, all scientific standards go by the wayside
    whenever the CDC and the New England Journal of Medicine seize
    an opportunity to attack firearms ownership in America.

                              REFERENCES

1. Wright JD, et al, *Weapons, crime and violence in America*: a literature
review and research agenda, Washington, D.C.: Department of Justice,
1981.

2. Scarff E. *Evaluation of the Canadian gun control legislation*: final
report. Ottawa: Ministry of the Solicitor General of Canada, 1983,
p. 87.

3. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, *Crime in
the United States*, 1987 (Uniform Crime Reports). Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1988

4. Cook PJ. *The role of firearms in violent crime*. In: Wolfgang M.
Weiner NA, eds. *Criminal violence*, Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1982:
236-90, pp. 270-271.

5. Kleck G. *Crime control through the private use of armed force*.
Social Problems 1988: 35:1-21.

6. Ziegenhagen EA, Brosnan D. *Victim responses to robbery and crime
control policy*. Criminology. 1985: 23:675-695.

7. Lizotte AJ. *Determinants of completing rape and assault*. Journal
of Quantitative Criminology. 1986: 2:203-217.

8. Sayles SL, Kleck G. *Rape and resistance*. Paper at the American Society
of Criminology convention, Chicago, 1988.

9. Mercy JA, Houk VN. *Firearm injuries: a call for science*. 
NEJM: 319:1283-1285.

-----

                             GUNS AND SPUTTER
                            by James D. Wright
          (from July 1989 issue of REASON, Free Minds & Free Markets)

      Someone once wrote: "Statistics are like a bikini.  What they reveal is
   suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."  The problem is demonstrated
   by the most recent entry in a long line of scientific research purporting
   to show a causal link between gun availability and homicide.  Funded by
   the federal government and published last year in the New England Journal
   of Medicine, the study compared homicide rates in Seattle and Vancouver and
   suggested that a handgun ban "may reduce the rate of homicide in a 
   community."
      The nine medical doctors who published "Handgun Regulations, Crime,
   Assaults, and Homicide" essentially reasoned in three steps: (1) Despite
   many historical, social, and demographic similarities, (2) Vancouver
   has a markedly lower homicide rate (3) because its stricter gun regulations
   make guns less available.  The second step in their reasoning seems
   indisputable.  The overall homicide rate in Seattle (for the period
   1980-86) was 11.3 per 100,000 population, compared with 6.9 in Vancouver.
   Homicide is definitely more common in Seattle.  The question then becomes,
   Why?
      The authors present a believable although not entirely accurate case
   to support the notion, as claimed in the third step of their reasoning,
   that Vancouver's handgun regulations are much more stringent.  But their
   evidence on the difference in gun *availabilty* is indirect and 
   unpersuasive; indeed, they acknowledge that direct evidence on the point
   does not exist.  They offer two fragments of inferential data in support
   of the claim that guns are more available in Seattle; but for all anybody
   knows as a matter of empirical fact, the opposite could be true.  We
   are therefore being asked, at the conclusion of the study, to believe that
   a difference in gun availability explains the difference in homicide rates
   when a difference in gun availability has not itself been established.
      Indeed, the situation is even more troublesome.  The first of the two
   indirect bits of evidence is a difference between the number of concealed-
   weapons permits issued in Seattle and the number of restricted-weapons
   permits issued in Vancouver.  Differences between the two cities in the
   permit regulations render these two numbers strictly noncomparable.
*     The second bit of evidence is "Cook's gun prevalence index," which stands
*  at 41 percent for Seattle but only 12 percent for Vancouver.  Cook's index
*  however, does not measure the relative prevalence of gun ownership in 
*  various cities.  It measures gun misuse--it is an average of the percentage
*  of homicides and suicides involving firearms.
*     In the present case, the index shows only that in homicides and suicides,
*  firearms are more likely to be used in Seatte than in Vancouver.  To take
*  Cook's index as a measure of general firearms availability, it must be
*  assumed that the proportional involvement of guns in homicides and suicides
*  is directly related to their relative availability in the general 
*  population.  But this is exactly what the authors are seeking to prove. To
*  assume what one is seeking to prove, then to "prove" it on the basis of
*  that assumption does not constitute scientific evidence for anything.
      Even if we were to grant, on the basis of no compelling evidence, that
   guns are less common in Vancouver, we might still question what causes what.
   The authors attribute Seattle's higher crime rate to a higher rate of gun
   ownership.  But it might well be argued that low crime or homicide rates
   reduce the motivation for average citizens to obtain guns--in other words,
   that crime rates explain the variation in gun ownership, not vice versa.
      In fact, it was once commonly argued that Great Britain's low rate of
   violent crime was a function of that nation's strict gun laws and the 
   consequent low rate of gun ownership--until British researcher Colin 
   Greenwood found that Great Britain had enjoyed low rates of violent crime
   for many decades before strict firearms controls were enacted.  To invoke
   an ancient methodological saw, correlation is not cause.
      Nor do the problems with this study end with its lack of direct data
   on gun ownership.  The authors say Seattle and Vancouver are "similar in
   many ways," implying that they differ mainly in gun availability, gun-law
   stringency, and crime rates.  This is an evident attempt to establish
   the ceteris paribus condition of a sound scientific analysis--that "all
   else is equal" among things being compared.
*     Clearly the two cities are similar in some ways, but a closer look 
*  reveals differences in ways that are relevant to their respective crime
*  or homicide rates.  The cities are closely matched in what percentage
*  of their population is white (79 percent and 76 percent).  But Seattle
*  is about 10 percent black, while Vancouver is less than 0.5 percent.
*  Vancouver's minority population is overwhelmingly Asian.  So although the
*  authors show that the two cities are approximately comparable on a half-
*  dozen readily available demographic indicators, they have not shown
*  that all potentially relevant sources of variation have been ruled out.
*     In fact, the differences in racial compositions of the two cities is
*  particularly relevant in light of the study's breakdown of homicide rates
*  according to the race of the victim.  For the white majority, the homicide
*  rates are nearly identical--6.2 per 100,000 in Seattle, 6.4 in Vancouver.
*  The differing overall homicide rates in the two cities are therefore due
*  entirely to vastly different rates among racial minorities.  For blacks,
*  the observed difference in homicide rate is 36.6 to 9.5 and for Hispanics
*  26.9 to 7.9.  (Methodological complexities render the Asian comparison
*  problematic, but it too is higher in Seattle than in Vancouver.)  Racial
*  minorities are much more likely to be the victims of homicide in Seattle
*  than in Vancouver; the white majority is equally likely to be slain
*  in either city.
      Since the nearly 2:1 initial difference in homicide rates between the
   cities is due exclusively to 3:1 or 4:1 differences between minority 
   groups, it is fair to ask why postulated difference in "gun availability"
   (or gun-law stringency) would matter so dramatically to minorities but not
   matter at all to whites.  Can differential gun availability explain why
   blacks and Hispanics--but not whites--are so much more likely to be killed
   in Seattle than in Vancouver?  (Studies in the United States, incidentally,
   do not show large or consistent racial differences in gun ownership.)
      Or are other explanations more plausible?  Could the disparity between
   Canadian and American rates of poverty among racial minorities have 
   anything to do with it?  What are the relative rates of drug or alcohol 
   abuse?  Of homelessness among each city's minority population?  (The city
   of Seattle runs the largest shelter for homeless men west of the 
   Mississippi.)  Unemployment among young, central-city, nonwhite men in the
   United States usually exceeds 40 percent.  What is the comparable Canadian
   percentage?
      The crucial point is that Canada and the United States differ in many
   ways, as do cities and population subgroups with the two countries.  Absent
   more detailed analysis, nearly any of these "many ways" might explain part
   or all of the difference in homicide rates.  In gross comparisons such
   as those between Seattle and Vancouver, all else is *not* equal.
*     The authors of this study acknowledge that racial patterns in homicide
*  result in a "complex picture."  They do not acknowledge that the ensuing
*  complexities seriously undercut the main thrust of their argument.  They
*  also acknowledge that "socio-economic status is probably an important
*  confounding factor in our comparison," remarking further that "blacks   
*  in Vancouver had a slightly higher mean income in 1981 than the rest of
*  Vancouver's population."  Given the evidence presented in the article,
*  it is possible that all of the difference in homicide rates between Seattle
*  and Vancouver results from greater poverty among Seattle's racial
*  minorities.  But the authors pay no further attention to this possibility,
*  since "detailed information about household incomes according to race
*  is not available for Vancouver."
      The largely insurmountable methodological difficulties confronted in 
   gross comparative studies of this sort can be illustrated with as simple
   example.  If one were to take all U.S. counties and compare them in terms
   of (1) prevalence of gun ownership and (2) crime or homicide rates, one 
   would find an astonishing pattern: Counties with more guns have less crime.
   Would one conclude from this evidence alone that guns actually reduce 
   crime?  Or would one insist that other variables also be taken into
   account?  In this example, the "hidden variable" is city size: Guns are
   more common in small towns and rural areas, whereas crime is a big-city
   problem.  If researchers failed to anticipate this variable, or lacked the
   appropriate data to examine its possible consequences, they could be very
   seriously misled.  In the study at hand, the authors matched two cities
   for size but not for minority poverty rates or other hidden variables,
   and their results are impossible to interpret.
      In the editorial "Firearm Injuries: A Call for Science" accompanying
   the study, two officials from the Centers for Disease Control lauded the
   authors for applying "scientific methods" to a problem of grave public
   heath significance.  But in attempting to draw causal conclusions from
   nonexperimental research, the essence of scientific method is to anticipate
   plausible alternative explanations for the results and try to rule them
   out.  Absent such effort, the results may well seem scientific but are
   little more than polemics masquerading as serious research.  That this
   study is but one of a number of recent efforts--all employing practically
   identical research designs and published in leading scientific journals--
   is cause for further concern.

   [James D. Wright is professor of sociology at Tulane University.  He has
   researched extensively on the relationship of firearms and crime.]

Reason published monthly except combined August-September issue by the Reason
Foundation, a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization.  Subscription rate: $24.00 
per year.

Reason Foundation
2716 Ocean Park Blvd.
Suite 1062
Santa Monica, CA  90405