To: ca-firearms@shell.portal.com Subject: REBUTTAL TO CPCA POSITION PAPER!! YOU'RE GONNA LOVE THIS!! Date: Wed, 05 Jul 1995 07:32:22 PDT From: John Walker ------- Forwarded Message Date: Mon, 03 Jul 1995 22:13:41 -0700 From: "Edgar A. Suter" To: John Walker Subject: Re: Rebuttal to CPCA position paper (fwd) Sorry for the delay. I just returned from a week of medical education classes. I hope this helps. I will also forward a copy of our latest article. Please feel free to distribute the piece. ************************************************************************* * Edgar A. Suter, MD suter@crl.com * * National Chair, DIPR Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research, Inc.* ************************************************************************* FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact for legal issues: Peter Kasler JD Chairman Public Trust Institute 800 West Napa Street Sonoma CA 95476 voice 707-939-0303 FAX 707-939-8684 e-mail tmi@crl.com Contact for research issues: Edgar A. Suter MD National Chair Doctors for Integrity in Research & Public Policy 5201 Norris Canyon Road #140 San Ramon CA 94583 voice 510-277-0333 FAX 510-277-1283 e-mail suter@crl.com Overview Public Trust Inc. and Doctors for Integrity in Research & Public Policy have united to bring honest and competent research to bear on an vital matter of public policy. Today we are exposing incompetent research and thwarting dangerous public policy. A recent heavily publicized release from California Police Chiefs Association Inc. demands our attention because their proposals threaten, rather than secure, public safety. As evident in their proposals, we find the California Police Chiefs' ignorance of existent California law, to be nothing less than shocking. Every year 2.5 million Americans use guns to protect themselves, their families, and their livelihoods. In America 65 lives are protected by guns for every life lost to a gun, 5 lives are protected by guns per minute. Lives are saved, injuries are prevented, medical costs are saved from deaths and injuries averted, and property is protected by guns. Good citizens use guns to repel crime and apprehend criminals 7 to 10 times as frequently as the police and they do it with a better safety record than the police. As long as law enforcement is demonstrably unable to protect good citizens, California Police Chiefs have no moral claim in their efforts to disarm us. When they cannot protect us, they have no moral right to impede us or deny us the safest and most effective means of protection - guns. Vicious predators already ignore law against murder, mayhem, and drug trafficking. These predators already ignore existent gun laws. It is only good citizens who obey existent gun laws, so it is only America's good and responsible people who are disarmed by gun laws. We remind California Police Chiefs Association Inc. that victim disarmament is not a policy that saves lives! California Police Chiefs Association Inc. proudly described their position paper, dated August 1994 and adopted February 2, 1995, as the "culmination of a year long study" "following long and thoughtful deliberation." There is no justification for such prideful posturing because the paper is merely a political manifesto devoid of any supporting scholarship. From a few flashy, but deceptive, factoids and insupportable assertions, California Police Chiefs Association Inc. attempted to divine some support for a panoply of "gun controls" and authoritarian public policies that have been demonstrable failures in many jurisdictions. We remind California Police Chiefs Association Inc. that the Second Amendment guarantees the security of a free state, not simply the security of the state. Like the 1994 California Research Bureau review, "Firearm-related violence in California: Incidence and economic costs," commissioned by Assemblyman Louis Caldera, the estimate of the costs of gun violence is artificially and grossly inflated and completely ignores the huge costs savings because guns save lives, prevent injuries, avert medical costs, and protect property. What is all the more embarrassing to California Police Chiefs Association Inc. is that several of the laws they propose are already existent in California. How can Chiefs of Police study an issue for a full year and be oblivious to existent law? It is perhaps understandable that police chiefs might be unfamiliar with - or untrained to analyze - the decades of available research on guns and violence, but it is shocking and unforgivable that command level law enforcement officers are not even familiar with California laws they are supposed to enforce. Could their unfamiliarity be part of California's problem? California Police Chiefs Association Inc. portrayed their position as representative of law enforcement in all areas, at all levels, and all demographic distributions. Among these misrepresentations, they suggested that their views are representative of the people at large. It is fair to say that perhaps their views are representative of some, but not all, they represent, police chiefs who are political appointees, not elected by the people. The gun control measures proposed by California Police Chiefs Association Inc. have been rejected by overwhelming majorities of command level law enforcement and line officers. Further, exit polls and campaign professionals have shown that the Republican sweep in the November elections was, for more than any other reason, due to the electorate's rejection of the Brady Law, the semiautomatic gun ban, and the electorate's fear that more draconian gun controls were in the offing. The fallacies and emotionalism put forth by California Police Chiefs Association Inc. are the deceptions of the anti-self-defense lobby repackaged in blue and a badge. Each and every one of California Police Chiefs Association Inc.'s false assertions are rebutted in the referenced research monographs. Unlike California Police Chiefs Association Inc.'s "study," our monographs are referenced extensively to competent research. Guns are not amulets that impel evil, neither are they magically protective talismans. Guns are only powerful tools. Fortunately, most citizens of our distressed society are moral and responsible people in whose hands guns are the safest and most effective means of protection against criminals, crazies, and tyrants. The future will shine more brightly if compassionate and thoughtful individuals, rather than being seduced by the "quick fix" promises of gun control, join to promote individual responsibility, personal freedom, and to develop effective, long-term solutions to reduce violence in America. Immediately following is a brief summary of the California Police Chiefs Association Inc. fallacies. Misinformation and emotionalism are not a basis for sound public policy. Detailed and referenced rebuttals are contained in the cited references. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or need help of any kind. "Ready Availability Of Firearms" Having been abandoned by the Los Angeles Police Department during recent riots, many Los Angeles residents attempted to arm themselves for protection, but discovered that California already has in place some of the most stringent gun laws in the nation - a 15-day waiting period, background checks, training requirements for handgun purchases, de facto registration, a ban on certain semiautomatic guns, etc. It is ironic that California Police Chiefs Association Inc. decries a "record level" in gun sales, when those sales are largely a reaction to the fact that police do not and cannot protect innocent lives. But the real irony is that law enforcement bureaucrats, as distinguished from beat cops, are trying to disarm the innocent victims, seeking to "mak[e] firearms ownership a rarity." California Police Chiefs so outrageously abuse their statutory discretion in processing applications (some even illegally refuse to accept applications) for Licenses to Carry Concealed Weapons that for the most part only affluent, politically-connected, white males are licensed, even though women, minorities, and the poor generally live and work in the areas of highest risk. We also find it ironic that the California Police Chiefs Association decries "otherwise law abiding citizens who are untrained or emotionally ill-equipped to safely use a gun." Despite mandated training and psychological screening, police have higher rates of suicide, higher rates of gun accidents, higher rates of shooting and killing innocent people than those good citizens whom the California Police Chiefs Association claims are "untrained and emotionally ill-equipped to safely use a gun." It is a surprise to some that only one in four shots fired "on the street" by police actually hit their mark and that the police, to an astounding degree, engage in inappropriate, drunken, and/or criminal use of firearms. "Widespread Possession Of Firearms" That more than 200 million guns are distributed through half of American households testifies to the safety and overwhelming acceptance of guns in America. It does not defame the (relatively few) truly innocent - and highly sensationalized - homicide victims to note that overwhelmingly the "victims" of homicide are typically as vicious and socially aberrant as the perpetrators of homicide. About two-thirds of "victims" are drug dealers and their customers. To suggest that gun violence is a problem that is pervasive throughout our society is defamatory, equivalent to the fear-mongering that lead to the disarmament of the Jews of Weimar Germany. "The Widespread And Ready Availability Of Firearms Threatens To Undermine The Foundation Of Our Social Order" Since first studied several decades ago, rates of firearms ownership have remained stable. Of course, as the population has increased, the numbers of guns have increased, but rates of gun ownership have been stable at about half of American households. The imagery of a "proliferation of guns" is false. Since the 1930's regulations on the sale, possession, and use have become more stringent, yet crime rates have waxed and waned independent of efforts to control the access of good citizens to guns. Interestingly, homicide rates show a stable to slightly declining trend for every segment of American society except inner city teens and young adults involved with the drug trade. In the face of stable rates of ownership and ever more stringent gun regulation, we find no truth at all in the claim. We look elsewhere to find what it is that "threatens to undermine the foundation of our social order" - poverty, broken families, a drug trade made profitable by drug prohibition, and declining responsibility and morality. Registration The California Police Chiefs Association should be thoroughly embarrassed to propose legislation that "every time the firearm is subsequently sold or ownership transferred would require re-registration." Evidently, the Association is unfamiliar with current California law. Since 1990, California statutes have required that every single gun transaction, retail and private, be reported to the California Department of Justice. Their lapse should be all the more embarrassing since the law also requires that the local Police Chiefs receive a copy of the California Department of Justice's Dealer Record of Sale form. California already has de facto registration, yet this has had no measurable impact in reducing violence in the Golden State. Why not? Contrary to the Chiefs' claim that "a mandatory registration system will assist law enforcement criminal apprehension efforts," the registration only points to the last lawful owner from whom the gun was stolen. As National Institute of Justice studies have repeatedly shown, a minuscule fraction of crime guns are obtained in recorded retail transactions. We challenge the California Police Chiefs Association to show a statistically significant sample that shows otherwise, i.e., research that shows firearms registration has helped solve crimes that were otherwise unsolvable. Ownership and Possession The California Chiefs propose making possession of firearms "limited to only those individuals 18 years or older who have been licensed by the state." Obviously, California Police Chiefs are unaware that federal and California laws already largely limit gun possession to those 18 years and older. As to licensing, the Chiefs suggest that gun owners should be required to have a "background free from any significant criminal history, mental illness or emotional instability, and show successful completion of a state-approved training course." Clearly the California Chiefs are ignorant of federal and California laws, both of which already require a background check (for which the purchasers must pay). Moreover California law currently requires successful completion of a state-approved training course for handgun purchases and transfers (again, paid for by the purchasers) and for hunting. If we separate existent law from the California Police Chiefs Association proposals, we find the only "new" ownership and possession suggestions are: 1) an additional layer of meaningless paperwork, 2) yet another fee, and 3) a training mandate for non-hunters who use long arms ["long arms," rifles and shotguns, are a small fraction of crime guns anyway]. It is difficult to imagine how these superfluous increments will reduce crime or violence, or how Police Chiefs who purport to know about such things would think that they would. It begs the question: "is crime control the Chiefs' real agenda? Magazine Capacity Highly sensationalized instances of mass gun murders utilizing high capacity magazines are thankfully rare. Few jurisdictions keep retrievable and reliable data on the number of rounds fired in a shooting incident. The data available, such as that from New York City, show that the typical shooting incident averages fewer than 3 rounds fired. California Police Chiefs Association Inc. attempted to justify their recommendation based on hunting regulations in a context that is more properly related to protection, not sport. The Association suggests that law enforcement should be exempt from the magazine capacity restriction while saying that such devices "only serve the purpose of enhancing the killing and injuring potential of a firearm." They can't have it both ways; either high capacity magazines serve a useful protection function or they are "only" used wrongfully for killing and maiming. If the former, why deny such utility to good citizens who can rely only on themselves for protection? If the latter, why should the police have them; indeed, why would they want them? The Chiefs, further advancing the insulting and destructive "them and us" mentality that has driven a wedge between law enforcement and good citizens, allege that high-capacity magazines are necessary to protect themselves from the same criminals who threaten us, innocent citizens, but only they deserve to have them. Do these useful protective devices, high-capacity magazines, suddenly become evil tools of murder and mayhem simply because they are in the hands of someone who is not a peace officer? We think not. High capacity firepower is necessary for the police and good citizens alike, to protect themselves against riots, mob/gang violence, and random criminals, all regular features of the California inner-city scene. Storage & Safety Standards Ostensibly as a safety measure, the California Police Chiefs propose that all firearms not under the immediate control of a responsible adult be required to be locked, stored, and unloaded. Since California law already stipulates harsh penalties for injuries caused by firearms not kept from children and teens, we wonder why the Chiefs wish to require that guns be kept completely inaccessible and viable for defense, even in homes where only trained and responsible adults reside. Do they really wish to deny good citizens their Constitutionally-protected inalienable right to self-protection? The California Chiefs apparently are ignorant of the fact that firearms accident fatality rates have been falling since the turn of the century, and now hover at an all-time low. The National Safety Council notes that about 140 innocent children die in home handgun accidents annually, thankfully few in comparison with the millions of protective uses of guns. California Police Chiefs Association Inc. wrongfully equates loaded, unlocked guns with risk of accident, suicide, and homicide. Loaded guns left accessible to young children or unstable adults may represent an irresponsible risk that must be decried, however, there are many circumstances in which loaded accessible guns represent no safety risk. In homes where only trained, responsible, mentally-stable adults and adolescents reside, loaded guns may be accessible and represent no threat because safety is served by observing the "Commandments of Gun Safety": *** Treat every gun as a loaded gun; *** Never point a gun's muzzle at anyone or anything unless you intend to shoot; *** Keep your finger off the trigger until on target and ready to shoot. Guns, even loaded and accessible ones, are not sentient beings... they do not leap up of their own volition to pursue and harm people, nor do they emanate a force that causes those in their proximity to seize them and fire upon innocents. These common-sense mandates - not fallible mechanical "safety" devices or storage that makes guns inaccessible for needed protection - are the essence of gun safety. While unloading and locking guns may add an increment to gun safety (and may be the only safe storage option in certain homes with young children or unstable persons), such inaccessibility would unnecessarily impede or completely prevent the use of guns in protecting the lives of millions of good Americans. The California Police Chiefs Association suggests applying Consumer Products Safety standards to maximize gun safety. Unfortunately, unfamiliarity with guns has caused such safety advocates to advance potentially dangerous "solutions." For example, it has been proposed that gun manufacturers make "childproof" triggers - heavy trigger pulls - to enhance safety. Such a proposal enhances safety neither for adults nor for children. For adults, a heavy trigger pull is not conducive to good marksmanship and increases the chance that an innocent bystander, rather than an assailant, would be injured. A child frustrated by a stiff trigger pull will attempt to obtain greater mechanical advantage than available from the natural shooting grip by inserting a thumb into the trigger guard and gripping the gun's handle with four fingers. This grip points the pistol at the child, increasing the risk of death or injury. It is education in a few infallible safe gun handling habits, not a myriad of fallible devices, that enhance gun safety. The Chiefs, from police safety training, should know, better than to suggest what they have. Concealed Weapons Nationally good citizens use guns about seven to ten times as frequently as the police to repel crime and apprehend criminals and they do it with a better safety record than the police. About 11% of police shootings kill an innocent person - about 2% of shootings by citizens kill an innocent person. The odds of a defensive gun user killing an innocent person are loss than 1 in 26,000. Citizens intervening in crime are less likely to be wounded than the police. We can explain why the civilian record is better than the police, We can explain why the citizen record is better than the police (the police usually come upon a scene in progress where it may not be clear who is attacker and who is defender; also, the police, unlike defenders, must close to cuff the arrestee), but the simple truth remains: citizens have an excellent record of protecting themselves and their communities. Where state laws have been reformed to license and train good citizens to carry concealed handguns for protection, violence and homicide have fallen. Even those unarmed citizens who abhor guns benefit from such policies because predators cannot distinguish in advance between intended victims who carry and victims who eschew concealed weapons. In Florida, as in other states where they have opposed reform, the anti-self-defense lobby claimed that blood would run in the streets of "Dodge City East," the "Gunshine State," that inconsequential family arguments and traffic disputes would lead to murder and mayhem, that the economic base of communities would collapse, and that many innocent people would be killed --- but we do not have to rely on irrational propaganda, imaginative imagery, or political histrionics. We can examine the data. Nearly half the nation's states, in which more than one-third of Americans live, have reformed laws to allow good citizens to readily protect themselves outside their homes, openly or concealed. In those states crime rates are lower for every category of crime indexed by the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Homicide, assault, and overall violent crime are each 40% lower, armed robbery is 50% lower, rape is 30% lower, and property crimes are 10% lower. The reasonable reform of concealed weapon laws resulted in none of the mayhem prophesied by the anti-self-defense lobby. In fact, the data suggest that, providing they are in the hands of good citizens, more guns "on the street" offer a considerable net benefit to society - saving lives, a deterrent to crime, and an adjunct to the concept of community policing. Since Florida's reformed concealed-carry law went into effect in October 1, 1987, through January 31, 1995, 266,710 licenses were issued. During that same time period, only 19 licenses were revoked for misuse of a firearm; that is less than 1/100th of 1 percent (0.007%). Not one of those revocations were associated with any injury whatsoever. The most comprehensive data are from Florida, but experiences in all other progressive states are similar. In opposing reform, fear is often expressed that "everyone would be packing guns," but, after reform, most states have licensed fewer than 2% (and in no state more than 4%) of qualified citizens. A recent flurry of pre-publication publicity highlighted an upcoming paper by critics of reform, David MacDowall, Colin Loftin, and Brian Wiersema of the University of Maryland Violence Research Group. These researchers are best known for their 1989 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine that, in the face of a tripled homicide rate, claimed that Washington DC's 1976 handgun freeze had lowered homicide.4 In the face of data showing statewide reductions in homicide rates in many states that have adopted reforms (particularly impressive when compared to concurrent national trends),49 these researchers now claim that reform of concealed weapons laws has raised homicide rates. To contrive such a "day is night" conclusion, they ignored national trends and rejected the statewide benefits of statewide laws without credible analysis. Instead they simply selected the few exceptions, the few urban areas and irregular time periods that could be contrived to show a homicide increase. Furthermore, if FBI data is used instead of the researchers' National Center for Health Statistics data (FBI data culls at least a fraction of lawful self-defense homicides), MacDowall et al.'s claim collapses. The anti-self-defense lobby has claimed that violent crime rose 19% in Florida following reform, but they fail to note that violent crime rose 23% nationally. Additionally, the data became more difficult to interpret because the definitions of violent crimes except homicide changed during this period. So, the observed homicide rate reductions are the best available indicator of the effectiveness of reform. Following reform, Florida's homicide rate fell from 36% above the national average to 4% below the national average and remains below the national average to this day. Notwithstanding gun control extremists' unprophetic imagery , the observed reality was that crime fell, in part, because vicious predators fear an unpredictable encounter with an armed citizen even more than they fear apprehension by police or fear our timid and porous criminal justice system. It is no mystery why Florida's tourists are targeted by predators - - predators are guaranteed that, unlike Florida's citizens, tourists are unarmed. Those who advocate restricting gun rights often justify their proposals "if it saves only one life...." There have been matched state pair analyses, crime trend studies, and county-by-county research demonstrating that licensing good, mentally-competent adults to carry concealed weapons for protection outside their homes saves many lives, so gun prohibitionists, including The California Police Chiefs Association, should support such reforms, if saving lives is truly their motivation. California's current system of concealed weapon license issuance based on local police chief "discretion" has resulted in considerable and widespread abuse. Virtually no women, poor people, or minorities are issued licenses - - even though they typically live and work in the areas of greatest risk. As an example of how egregious such abuse is, recently the Police Chief of Los Angeles, among others, was sued because no licenses had been issued in nearly two decades. Within a few weeks Los Angeles, knowing it could not survive such a challenge, sought settlement, and subsequently a stipulated judgment has been entered in the California Superior Court in Los Angeles mandating Los Angeles to begin issuing licenses reasonably. "Assault Weapons" Over two dozen studies show that military-style semiautomatic guns are used in a barely measurable fraction of crime guns. About ten times as many Americans die from assaults using hands and feet than die from "assault rifles." Even in the worst areas of gang and drug crime, pejoratively-named "assault weapons" account for generally 0% to 3% of crime guns. Nationally, the data suggest that military-style rifles account for less than one-quarter of one percent (<0.25%) of crime guns, 10 times less common as crime guns than their proportion amongst American guns . Only sensationalized news reports and the repeated, but baseless, claims of the gun prohibition lobby suggest otherwise. Both military and medical studies show that these false icons of violence actually have reduced lethality in comparison with "sporting" guns. Unfortunately, the California Police Chiefs completely overlooked the legitimate and constitutionally protected uses of these guns. As the accompanying references show, the US Supreme Court has repeatedly acknowledged a pre-existent, inherent, irrevocable, individual right to keep and bear arms, specifically protecting military-style ("militia") weapons. Some polls claim that Californians support "more restrictive" gun laws, yet many Californians were unpleasantly surprised to discover that existent "waiting period" and "assault weapon" laws thwarted their attempts to arm themselves for protection during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The Los Angeles Police Department (perhaps because they were overwhelmed, there is evidence indicating that officers were ordered by the Chief to remain inside the station houses) virtually abandoned the City and its residents to a "let burn" policy. Nevertheless, without causing even a single death or injury, it was those good citizens displaying their fearsome "assault weapons" who turned back mob and gang violence, protecting their lives, their families, and their livelihoods. Likewise, it was good citizens displaying such weapons who turned back looting police and out-of-control US Army National Guardsmen during Hurricane Hugo. It was armed African-Americans that protected themselves and their families from Ku Klux Klansmen and other racist terrorists (terrorists that often included local law enforcement officers) in years past. When faced with multiple assailants, mob and gang violence, terrorism, or civil insurrection, it is precisely high-capacity "assault weapons" that are necessary for good people to defend themselves - particularly when police resources are stretched to the breaking point. It is not only protection from criminals and lunatics about which we must be concerned. Governments are the worst mass murderers. Not including wars, in this century, as a conservative estimate, 65 million people have been killed by their governments - after first being disarmed. Protection from criminals, crazies, and tyrants, not "sporting use," is why the Second Amendment to the US Constitution acknowledges and guarantees our inherent and irrevocable right to arms. Unlawful Possession There are no gun crimes "missed" by criminal codes; no acts of violence and harms to people that they fail to address. The penalties for conviction for such crimes are far from trivial. The predominance of data show that over 20,000 American gun laws, including national gun laws, have done virtually nothing to reduce violence or to reduce availability of guns to criminals. Exectedly so! It is only good Americans who obey the gun laws. These good Americans are not the problem. Vicious predators who ignore laws against murder, mayhem, and drug trafficking routinely ignore those existent American gun laws. No amount of well-meaning, wishful thinking will cause these criminals to honor additional gun laws. The California Police Chiefs call for more draconian gun laws when existent laws are poorly enforced. In the current situation, where enhancements for gun use in the commission of another crime are routinely plea-bargained away, there is no crime reductive benefit. The increased and draconian measures advocated by California Police Chiefs Association Inc. are likely to fare no better. Of how little benefit to public safety can symbolic gestures be? Of what possible benefit can their more draconian proposals be if those proposals are not - or cannot be - enforced? If "better" data are forthcoming, we are ready to reassess the public policy implications. Until such time, the data suggest that victim disarmament is not a policy that saves lives. Consider the dramatic failure of the highly touted Brady Law, the revered centerpiece of the anti-self-defense lobby's so-called "reasonable" gun law proposals. Only 7% of criminals' handguns are obtained from retail sources, so controls on retail gun sales cannot be expected to reduce criminals' access to guns much, if at all. The data conform to that theoretical expectation. Despite exaggerated claims of the success of the Brady Law, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) has acknowledged that the little existent evidence is only anecdotal. If fact, almost all of Brady Law background check discoveries of "thousands of possible felons" are false positives. Many are innocents whose names are similar to felons. Misdemeanor traffic convictions, citations for fishing without a license, and failure to license dogs are the types of trivial crimes that resulted in a computer tag that labeled the others as "potential" felons. Of the minuscule number of actual felons identified by Brady Law background checks, not one has been prosecuted. Instead, those felons are merely displaced into the black market. In such circumstance, the minimal expected benefit of the Brady Law diminishes to no benefit at all. As to sentence enhancements for gun misuse, we question the morality of a public policy that treats the same crime differently simply because a gun was used. Is a murder less tragic when the victim is bludgeoned or stabbed to a bloody pulp? We think not. Mandatory Destruction The number of guns (often wrongfully) seized by law enforcement is minuscule in comparison with the American gun stock. At current rates of seizure by the police, it would take 800 years to seize the more than 200 million guns in America. In such a situation, the destruction of such guns serves only as a symbol, the destruction of guns as though they were magic talismans imbued with evil. Such specious symbolic benefit is nil in comparison with some small tangible benefit obtained, profit to the government and relief to burdened taxpayers, when seized guns are sold to legitimate dealers who are already fingerprinted, checked, regulated, and taxed heavily. Constitutional issues An important nexus exists where public policy touches the constitution. Television violence has been deemed a cause of violence, but outlawing entertainment violence and sensationalized newscasting is precluded by First Amendment guarantees. The spread of AIDS might be reduced by draconian measures that, thankfully, are precluded by our inherent enumerated and unenumerated civil rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Analogously, even if gun bans could be demonstrated to be effective in reducing violence, such measures are precluded by our right to keep and bear arms, our inherent and irrevocable right to protection against criminals, crazies, and tyrants. We are alarmed that the constitutional impediments to gun bans, draconian restrictions, and confiscatory levels of fees and taxation, if discussed at all, are offhandedly and mistakenly dispatched. No "need" must be demonstrated or license obtained in order to exercise a constitutional right; such "prior restraint" is a patently unconstitutional denial of civil rights. To support purportedly "reasonable" restrictions, the claim is often made that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is a only a collective right of states to maintain militias. Such a claim is incongruous with Supreme Court case law, the history of the right, and legal scholarship. In fact, the Supreme Court has explicitly acknowledged a pre-existent ("pre-existent," rather than "granted" by the Constitution) individual right keep and bear military-style weapons. The familiar contention that there is no individual right to arms derives partly from a common misunderstanding of the constitutional "militia." Advocates of gun bans and draconian restrictions on gun owners oppose the individual right by emphasizing merely the mention of "militia," but historians, legal scholars, and Supreme Court Justices agree that the "militia" was the entire adult male citizenry, so that one purpose of the Founders having been to guarantee the arms of the militia, they accomplished that purpose by guaranteeing the arms of the individuals who made up the militia. That the Supreme Court has acknowledged the individual right, but done little to protect that right, is reminiscent of the sluggishness of the Supreme Court in protecting other civil rights before those rights became politically fashionable. It has taken over a century for the Supreme Court to meaningfully protect civil rights guaranteed to African-Americans in the Fourteenth Amendment. The claim that "no court has ever overturned a gun law on Second Amendment grounds" is not only false (Nunn v. State and in re: Brickey overturned gun laws on Second Amendment grounds), but is also the equivalent of a morally indefensible claim in 1950 that "no court has ever overturned a segregation law." Supreme Court decisions have been thoroughly reviewed in the legal literature. Since 1980, of thirty-nine law review articles, thirty-five note the Supreme Court's acknowledgment of the individual right to keep and bear arms and only four claim the right is only a collective right of the states (three of these four are authored or co-authored by employees of the antiselfdefense lobby). One would never guess such a precedential and scholarly mismatch from the casual misinterpretations of the right in the medical literature and popular press. The error of the gun prohibitionist view is also evident from the fact that their "states' right only" theory is exclusively an invention of the twentieth century "gun control" debate - a concept of which neither the Founding Fathers nor any pre-1900 case or commentary seems to have had any inkling. Though the gun control debate has focused on the Second Amendment, legal scholarship also finds support for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in Ninth Amendment "unenumerated" rights, Fourteenth Amendment "due process" and "equal protection" rights,and natural rights theory. Also, in the absence of explicit delegated powers, the Tenth Amendment guarantees that the powers are reserved to the States and the people, making several provisions of the Brady Law unconstitutional. Summary *** The police cannot provide and cannot be expected to provide protection to everyone *** People are, therefore, responsible for protecting themselves and their families *** Guns are the safest and most effective means of protection *** Every year about 2.5 million Americans use guns to protect themselves, their families, and their livelihoods - lives saved, injuries prevented, medical costs averted, and property protected by guns *** Even untrained citizens have an excellent record of protecting themselves, their families, and their communities *** Criminals ignore gun laws, so gun laws disproportionately disarm good citizens *** Disarming good citizens, the victims, costs more - not fewer - lives *** Virtually all of the proposals publicized by the California Police Chiefs Association are already California and federal law and are without significant evident benefit *** There is no need to speculate about what "might" happen if California Concealed Weapon law is reformed, because mountains of data already exist showing that guns in the hands of good citizens save lives The proposals of the California Police Chiefs Association are certainly "gun control" in its most virulent and deadly form. Let there be no illusion. The Chiefs' proposals are not - and can never be - "crime control." Their proposals put so many impediments in the paths of good Californians that they approach the unilateral disarmament of good people. In disarming California's good people, the victims, California Police Chiefs Association policies will cost more - not fewer - lives! California Police Chiefs Association Inc. offered no research or relevant data to support their draconian, authoritarian "gun control" and gun ban proposals. Understandably so, because no such support exists. All our commentary and rebuttal is referenced in the appended supporting documents: Suter EA, Waters W, Murray G et al. "Violence in America - Effective Solutions." Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia. June 1995 forthcoming Suter EA. "Guns in the Medical Literature - A Failure of Peer Review." Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia. March 1994 Suter EA. "'Assault Weapons' Revisited - An Analysis of the AMA Report." Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia. May 1994 Cramer C and Kopel D. Shall issue: the new wave of concealed handgun permit laws. Golden CO: Independence Institute Issue Paper. October 17, 1994. ------- End of Forwarded Message