Guns, Lies, and Wayne La Pierre

Guns, Lies, and Wayne La Pierre

Wayne La Pierre is the executive vice president of the NRA. After I read his book, "Guns, Crime, and Freedom" I felt compelled to list some obvious errors, distortions and faulty logic that I found in it.

1. In chapter 7, LaPierre compares the accidental death rate from cars to the accidental death rate from guns and concludes that guns are 36 times safer than cars and that the rate for accidental gun deaths is improving while the rate for cars is getting worse.

But it's strange that LaPierre only compares rates of accidental death. The reason for this is obvious. Accidents make up a small percentage of gun deaths, yet account for almost all automobile deaths. This misleads the reader into believing that gun deaths are on the decline while auto deaths are rising. In fact, the opposite is true. Conspicuously absent from his comparisons is the rates of overall gun deaths compared to overall auto deaths. For 1990, instead of comparing the 1300 accidental gun deaths, he should be comparing the 20,000+ overall deaths from firearms. This shows that the ratio of gun deaths vs auto deaths is actually many times higher than LaPierre is willing to admit. Clearly, had he honestly compared the overall death rates from autos to guns, he could not have made the political point he was attempting to make.

2. In the chapter titled "Is America Too Free?" LaPierre compares the U.S. to Switzerland. He points out that Switzerland has a higher rate of
gun ownership than the U.S. yet they have a lower murder rate and a lower overall crime rate. He goes on to say that "Swiss citizens are entitled to purchase and own all the firearms and ammunition they wish. Target shooting is the national sport....". He went on to conclude that "Switzerland entirely disproves the 'guns cause crime' thesis."

What LaPierre neglected to mention was that Switzerland has the very kinds of gun control laws that the NRA opposes so vehemently. Its true that all men in Switzerland are members of the militia and issued rifles by the government and these rifles are all registered and all ammunition must be accounted for. When it comes to handguns, the Swiss require a background check, a permit to purchase a handgun, and handgun registration. Apparently, Swiss gun owners don't consider this an infringement on their right to own a gun. If anything, Switzerland further proves that gun control DOES work.

3. In Chapter 7, LaPierre says we cannot regulate guns the way we regulate cars because the 2nd Amendment "guarantees the right to bear arms" and no such guarantee applies to cars. But he misses the point. If we regulated guns the way we regulate cars, law-abiding citizens would still be able to buy guns; their "right to bear arms" would still be intact. Furthermore, the 2nd amendment has never been used to strike down licensing or registration laws anywhere in the United States.

4. In Chapter 5 LaPierre criticized the idea of waiting periods by using the example of John Hinckley, the attempted assassin of Ronald Reagan who also shot James Brady in the head. LaPierre said "John Hinckley purchased the gun he used in the assassination attempt nearly six months before he shot the president and James Brady.... It was a lawful purchase. He had no felony convictions and no adjudications or record of
commitment for mental illness or incompetence. No background check or waiting period of any length would have found anything to prevent the
purchase."

But LaPierre got his facts wrong. John Hinckley did commit a felony when he used a false address on the federal form he was required to complete before he could buy the gun. Despite what LaPierre says, a waiting period and background check could have stopped him from buying that gun.

5. At the beginning of chapter 3, LaPierre stated that, according to criminologist Gary Kleck, guns are used in self defense up to 2.5 million times a year.

LaPierre's claim of 2.5 million cases of self defense a year is a misrepresentation of Kleck's results. Kleck had extrapolated from his survey that guns were used in self-defense between 800,000 and 2.45 million times a year. That's quite a huge margin of error there. So naturally LaPierre takes the high end of that range and rounds up from that. What he didn't tell you is that other criminologists dispute the results and have found several flaws with it. The biggest problem is that Kleck let the respondents of his survey determine whether their use of a gun was a legitimate act of self-defense. In other words if someone took out a gun and threatened a neighbor during an otherwise non-violent argument, and that person thinks this is a justified use of a gun, then Kleck would count that as a legitimate case of self-defense.
Think about it. Any time anyone uses or threatens someone else with a gun, that person brandishing the weapon will ALWAYS consider their use of a gun to be justified. Even a criminal who shoots someone while committing a crime thinks that they are justified.
According to the Census Bureau's annual National Crime Victimization Survey there only are about 80,000 times a year that firearms are used in self-defense. Unlike Kleck's survey, the Census Bureau's survey is not just a single phone call. It involves trained interviewers who follow up with seven interviews with the same household over a 3 year period.
The amusing thing is that LaPierre is very selective in what information from Kleck that he chooses to repeat. The fact is Kleck does support certain
gun control measures. For example, you won't hear the LaPierre mention that Kleck supports background checks on gun purchasers. Kleck says that such screening "appears to reduce homicide and suicide". He also supports
stricter regulation of federal firearms dealer's licenses. What's more, he acknowledges that harsher sentencing laws will never be the total answer to America's gun violence problem. He stated that "A long series of get-tough strategies have been tried, carefully evaluated and found to be either ineffective or hopelessly expensive." Kleck also stated that "There's little or no need for a gun for self-protection because there's so little risk of crime. People don't believe it, but it's true."

If you want to read more about Kleck and his survey check out the Aug. 15, 1994 issue of U.S. News and World Report.


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