Michael Bane, who appears to be an outdoorsy type with a shooting sports program on the Outdoors Channel, also has contacts within the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an organization of firearm manufacturers. He's used those contacts to good effect, and he has this to say:
FLASH! CNN Violated Federal Firearms Law!
Based
on my conversations with legal experts within the firearms industry,
CNN did indeed violate at least one, and probably two, federal firearms
laws in their reporting of the .50 caliber controversy last week.
Representatives of the industry are currently in touch with the ATF.
More to come.
That's
right, folks. Expert lawyers from the firearms industry are now
saying that CNN broke the law. Better yet, this is not an ATF guy
seeing the situation for the first time this morning and firing off a
quick response to have Houston look into it. This is a reasonably
considered opinion, by more than one lawyer with expertise in the area,
informed and prompted by a fellow blogger who has been following the
situation on his own and is thus aware of the full situation as we have developed it over the weekend.
And those lawyers thought enough of the matter that they are contacting the ATF themselves. That's serious, folks. It's not just armchair attorneys and non-attorney bloggers over drinks in the den anymore.
Now we watch the situation develop, and see how the ATF chooses to handle it.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please feel free to browse the rest of the blog.
Most of what's on the front page is related to the CNN .50 caliber report, but there's quite
a bit of other stuff too. The link above the update describes the
full situation with links to all the other blogs (that I know of)
discussing this, but that's on the front page too, so feel free to start at the top and scroll to your heart's content.
UPDATE: Michael Bane has another update with more detail.
UPDATE: Since Michael has raised the intent issue, I figure it should
be addressed. As I understand it (and I should reiterate here
that I am not a lawyer), there is a common law tradition of requiring
ill intent before a criminal law can be violated. That means it's
hard to get in serious trouble unless you deliberately did something
wrong. On the other hand, that's a tradition that isn't
necessarily binding, and many laws these days are explicitly intended
to apply whether or not ill intent exists.
I don't see anything in the 1968 Gun Control Act that would require ill
intent as a matter of law. So we're basically in the realm of
prosecutorial discretion. The BATFE can choose not to prosecute
CNN's reporters for this, whether they violated the law or not, for
what amounts to strategic or economic reasons.
They have the same options with respect to the seller, but he doesn't
have the weight of CNN behind him. Much easier target,
unfortunately.
As Michael Bane noted, however, lack of ill intent doesn't excuse CNN
from the ethical concerns related to this story. In particular,
the ethical concerns related to doing a story on firearms law, in order
to advocate gun control legislation, and getting the law wrong. (Or, at best, deliberately misleading the public about what they were representing as legal). Not that this is anything new to gun owners; the Assault Weapons Ban was a model of propaganda journalism.
The fact is, gun control laws are a mess of complex, sometimes silly,
regulations that do absolutely noting to keep a determined criminal
from getting his hands on a firearm. It took all weekend for a
bunch of gunbloggers to figure out if what CNN did was legal or not,
and we know the law on this narrow subject about as well as any layman
can. CNN has an expensive legal staff for stories like this, and
they missed a detail with months to set up the story.
How can any normal person expect to safely navigate the law just to own
a gun or two for self-defense, hunting, or civil defense? If you
make a mistake, the consequences are huge: a federal felony, and
forbidden to possess a gun for the rest of your life. In America,
gun ownership is both a right and a duty. It's time we brought
the laws of our Congress back in line with the laws of our Constitution:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary
to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
shall not be infringed.
UPDATE: Countertop Chronicles doesn't think that intent is a factor here.
Since I try to avoid stepping between dueling lawyers (commenting from
the sidelines is much safer), I will quote from him:
The
simple fact is that CNN didn't commit a common law crime, where mens
rea is an element of guilt. No, instead they violated a statute that
provides for strict liability, ir-regardless of intent. Your reading is
correct Michael. As David Kopel, in his excellent article Trust The
People: The Case Against Gun Control discusses,
As a
practical man, I must admit that I doubt the BATFE will actually
prosecute anyone at CNN, regardless of what the law says, unless
serious pressure is applied to force them to do so. The question
they will most likely be asking is not, "What is the correct reading of
the law?" but "What is the reading of the law that will allow us to
avoid having CNN as an enemy?"
Justice, however, requires it. Equal justice, for all: CNN reporters included.
UPDATE: If you are here for firearms issues, you might also enjoy my coverage of Seegars v Ashcroft, a 2nd-Amendment case just decided by the DC circuit appeals court and possibly destined for the Supreme Court.
I found this link (or rather, was pointed to it by a friend) through the process of visiting Google, entering "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in the search, and clicking the button labeled "I'm Feeling Lucky" (which takes you to the top-ranked google search result directly). The link in the headline will take you to that page. It's well worth it.
When police Officer Randall Smith was accidentally shot in the head by a fellow officer with a Glock semiautomatic pistol in 1995, he sued the gun maker, claiming the weapon was defectively designed and unnecessarily dangerous.
Glock settled the lawsuit. But for the rest of his life, Smith, whose injuries left him permanently brain damaged and cost him his police job in Birmingham, Ala., is barred from talking about the case or revealing any details he learned about Glock before the settlement. His lawyer also is barred from talking, restricted by a confidentiality agreement that is a standard policy for Glock when settling lawsuits.
Glock?s and other gun manufacturers? insistence on confidentiality agreements is common in product liability settlements. The agreements have kept critical information about the safety record of the gun from the public and are a prime example of how the gun industry actively conceals information about injuries and fatalities connected with its products. The industry has done so with the help of Congress and the powerful National Rifle Association lobby.
As any lawyer could tell you, confidentiality agreements regarding legal settlements and documents examined during discovery in a lawsuit are extremely common. Lawsuits often deal with and uncover many kinds of internal details of business's operation that could provide valuable information to competitors, or even to those opposing the business on other grounds -- like gun control advocates. The existance of a secrecy agreement in no way presupposes that the manufacturer has something sinister to hide -- no more than if any citizen found himself hauled into court would want the details of his own life exposed to public view.
If the plaintiffs in this case felt they had uncovered some compelling evidence, they could have chosen not to settle. The Detroit News in this case is unhappy that the terms of the settlement did not give them additional information with which to attack the gun industry, justified or not; and I have little sympathy for their desire to do so.
As for the facts of this case, and many of the others relating to Glock firearms, they are somewhat different than the description given by this editorial might indicate. Glock firearms use a safety mechanism called a "trigger safety"; they operate on the principle that the gun should fire when the trigger is pulled. Each time, every time. Police departments often choose Glock for exactly this reason. Glock firearms are simple to use; point the gun at the target and pull the trigger.
As the article itself admits, "The guns safety features effectively prevent accidental discharges if the weapon is dropped or bumped. But the Glock has no safety features that prevent it from firing if the trigger is accidentally pulled." And this is by design. When you need a firearm, you need it to work. And when you are a police officer, the extra time needed to click off a safety could mean your life -- and doubly so if you forget about the safety, and try to fire the gun while it is engaged.
Following the rules of gun safety with a Glock will prevent accidents just as with any other firearm. Don't point the gun at what you aren't willing to shoot; don't pull the trigger unless you expect the gun to go off. Remember that each time you see someone talking about a firearms "accident": if they pulled the trigger while the gun was pointed at someone, it's not an accident.
People who buy Glock firearms do so making an informed decision about the qualities of the firearm. The popularity of Glock firearms with police departments across the nation suggests that the Glock designs are well-received and fill the needs of those departments well. That's an indication of the free market working as designed -- because other firearms, with more safety features and consequently less reliability in a crisis, are available if police departments wish to purchase them.
The gun has no manual safety to prevent it from firing if the trigger is accidentally pulled. In fact, the gun?s safety features ? extremely effective in preventing discharges if the gun is dropped or hit ? automatically are turned off every time the trigger is depressed.
In addition, most Glocks have no indicator that shows the guns are loaded and no magazine safety to prevent them from firing when the ammunition clip is removed. And unlike many other guns, the Glock is always semicocked and ready to shoot. This inner tension in its firing mechanism increases the likelihood of discharge if the trigger is accidentally moved, some gun experts say.
"What you have is a gun that is almost too eager to fire," said Carter Lord, a national firearms and ballistics consultant. "I think it may be an appropriate weapon for highly trained paramilitary officers in a SWAT team, but not for most police officers and certainly not for civilians."
Nonsense. The design features of a Glock are clearly oriented towards the simple principle of firing when the trigger is pulled, each time and every time. As they say in software development, that's a feature, not a bug. It does require careful handling, and some people may prefer a firearm with more safety features -- but that's no reason to prevent those who do have a need for the Glock's design features from buying firearms with those features.
If you don't want the gun to fire, don't pull the trigger. It's that simple.
One of the Glock?s most frightening attributes is its ability to easily be converted into a full automatic weapon capable of firing at the rate of 1,000 rounds a minute. Glock has issued no warnings and made no changes in its design that would prevent its weapons from being converted into submachine guns. Experts say the problem can be corrected with minor changes in how Glock pistols are made.
A full automatic Glock will fire 33 bullets in seconds with one trigger pull. And the gun can be quickly converted to full automatic mode for as little as $10 with homemade parts. It is a well-documented danger known to law enforcement.
"In some regions of California, police are treating any Glock they encounter as a machine gun until proven otherwise," states an advisory on the Association of Forensic Firearm and Toolmark Examiners Web site that lists dangerous or defective guns.
"The conversion from standard to fully automatic is fast and simple, requiring no technical expertise. The conversion is accomplished merely by swapping one piece for the other. A ?real pro? can make the switch in 15 seconds."
Now, this is an allegation that I haven't heard before. But, I do know the law on fully-automatic firearms. In case you do not, fully-automatic firearms are legal for civilians to own and transfer (but not to manufacture) by federal law. Some states restrict this further. But the federal law defining a fully-automatic weapon for this purpose defines it as any weapon capable of firing more than one round with a single trigger pull, or which is easily converted to do so.
Think about that for a moment. If you really could convert a Glock into a submachine gun in 15 seconds, the government would be regulating the Glock firearms as fully-automatic firearms already. The law makes no distinction between "fully automatic" and "readily converted to fully automatic". And yet, Glocks are made and sold for civilian use every day.
So is this a valid claim? It's hard to say. The Detroit News cites the
Association of Firearm and Tool Mark Examiners website as the source of this claim. The only reference on that website is to an ATF advisory which is for "members only" and password protected. While the subject of the advisory is suggestive, without access to the full text it's impossible to tell exactly what it says.
Did the Detroit News get special access to this advisory -- or are they making assumptions based on the name and a website search?
The Republican-led House bowed to a White House veto threat Thursday and stood by the USA Patriot Act, defeating an effort to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that helps the government investigate people's reading habits.
The effort to defy Bush and bridle the law's powers lost by 210-210, with a majority needed to prevail. The amendment appeared on its way to victory as the roll call's normal 15-minute time limit expired, but GOP leaders kept the vote open for 23 more minutes as they persuaded about 10 Republicans who initially supported the provision to change their votes.
"Shame, shame, shame," Democrats chanted as the minutes passed and votes were switched. The tactic was reminiscent of last year's House passage of the Medicare overhaul measure, when GOP leaders held the vote open for an extra three hours until they got the votes they needed.
This sucks. We won this one and the fuckers stole it! I'm including a list of representatives who switched their votes from yes to no; we should complain to them about it, especially if you happen to be a constituent for any of them. Links below are to the contact page of the official website of each representative. I suggest you let them know that you're not pleased with their recent waffle.
I am extremely displeased with your decision to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in a recent vote concerning the Patriot Act. Although you initially voted correctly to limit the powers granted to government under the Act, you then caved to politically-motivated pressure from the Bush administration -- an administration that has been responsible for deliberate civil rights abuses up to and including torture. You had an opportunity to take a stand for freedom and liberty, a stand that would have made the founding fathers of our nation proud, and instead you have chosen to cower in craven terror at the first hint of opposition. If you cannot stand up for your views in the face of opposition from the Bush Administration, how can you possibly stand up for America in the face of true terrorism?
Liberty must not be a victim in the war on terror. I am ashamed of you, and I expect better.
Get the word out. We have no use for craven cowards. Leave a comment after you've contacted the Representatives above.
As we go through the long list of lies and tricks in Fahrenheit 911, keep in mind that Michael Moore has assembled a ?war room? of political operatives and lawyers in order to respond to criticism of Fahrenheit 911 and to file defamation suits. (Jack Shafer, ?Libel Suit 9/11. Michael Moore?s hysterical, empty threats,? Slate.com, June 12, 2004.)
Of course if his staff contacts National Review Online and points out any genuine errors in this report, the errors will be promptly corrected. Conversely, because Moore has a paid expert staff which is monitoring criticism of the movie, it is reasonable to assume that?unless NRO has specifically retracted some item in this column?every factual statement in this column has been tacitly conceded to be legitimate by Moore and his staff.
In this report, I number Moore?s deceits. Some of them are outright lies; some are omissions which create a false impression. Others involve different forms of deception. A few are false statements Moore has made when defending the film.
Dave Kopel has an extensive, researched list of errors from Moore's Fahrenheit 911; it's good reading from a thorough scholar. The tidbit about Moore's "trained attack lawyers" ready to file libel lawsuits against critics is just the icing on the cake. As usual, though, I don't recommend actually paying to watch the movie, even if your intent is to criticize. It's a waste of your time and the money goes straight to Moore whether you like him or not.
If you absolutely must descend into this sewer of filth, I suggest a four-pack: get Moore's movie, get the rebuttal, and get the original book and movie that Moore is referencing with his title.
So, CNN sends a reporter to conduct an out-of-state purchase from a
private seller in order to obtain a .50 caliber rifle for their
story. (I wonder if, maybe, they tried to obtain one from the
manufacturer and Barrett refused?) To see their video clip,
you'll have to look on the right of this search results page.
Suffice it to say, after they get the rifle, they shoot at an airplane
door and proceed to demonstrate that just about any rifle is powerful
enough to put a hole in an airplane's thin aluminum skin.
So what's the legality of this little adventure? The 1968 Gun
Control Act made out-of-state firearm sales illegal. The 1987
Firearm Owner's Protection Act may have removed that restriction for long guns; I say may because I haven't found a good explanation. From memory, I think
that the 1987 law relaxes the rules for purchases from a dealer but
continues to prohibit long guns. And, of course, if your state
bans the .50 (eg, California) then your purchase cannot be legal.
Worse, after the 1987 law, and in part due to the hoopla over the
so-called "gun show loophole", many states passed laws restricting
private sales in a variety of ways. So depending on the state,
performing a private sale without a background check may be illegal
even if the seller is not a licensed firearms dealer.
I will try to nail down the details of the law on this matter.
But I find it interesting that CNN would choose to air this
story. They just recently lost Eason Jordan,
one of their executives, to the blogosphere's demands for
accountability. Are they really that eager to attract more
attention? Well, the segment is out there now. They
shall reap what they have sown.
Lloyd Woods is a Vietnam veteran and longtime hunter who has spent much of his life handling and using guns. But when he bought a used Remington 700 bolt action hunting rifle in 1988, he had no way of knowing that the sleek, carefully finished exterior hid a dangerous design flaw ? a defect that has injured more than a hundred people.
The series of small, metal parts that control the gun?s firing mechanism were prone to failure, making the rifle accidentally discharge without the trigger being pulled.
Remington Arms Co. officials knew of this problem in some rifles as early as 1947, but for decades failed to fix the firing mechanism or warn customers of the danger.
The problem, the company?s own records show, could have been fixed for 32 cents a rifle.
There are a couple things to bear in mind here as we begin a careful examination of the Detroit News' attack on Remington.
They've gone back to 1996 to find an illustrative incident, regarding a gun that was bought (used) in 1988. Thats about 15 years -- quite a long time for something that is supposed to illustrate a current, serious problem. Especially when you have to go back even further to find the date of original sale.
They claim the problem dates back to 1947, and their quoted cost figure to 1981, which means the "32 cents per rifle" figure is in 1981 "cents" rather than 2003 "cents" -- what would be an almost trivial cost today would be more serious in 1981.
They claim that over 100 people have been injured by this design flaw since 1970. Reality check here. 100 people over 30 years? More children drown in bathtubs over a SINGLE year.
This "design flaw" does not occur on new rifles. The firing mechanism must first be damaged or worn.
And, of course, in order for this design flaw to actually injure anyone, the person holding the gun must break the rules of gun safety -- by pointing a loaded gun at something they are not willing to shoot.
It was far from an isolated incident. Since the 1970s, more than a hundred people ? mainly hunters ? have been injured, maimed or killed when their Remington rifles accidentally fired without the trigger being pulled.
Missouri attorney Richard Miller, who estimates he has handled about 100 cases against Remington, said the firearm manufacturer?s own records show it has received more than 1,500 complaints of unintentional discharges involving the 700 rifle.
Leaving aside the interesting habit of the Detroit News reporters of quoting from lawyers on only one side of these cases, there's an interesting ratio here: 1,500 complaints resulting in 100 cases. That is, a 15-to-1 ratio of people experiencing the problem versus people being injured by the problem. Once more we see that safe gun handling is the order of the day.
Remington, under new ownership since it was sold by DuPont for $300 million in 1993, insists that modifications in the 1982 rifles ? which allow them to be unloaded with the safety on ? have ended the problem. And they say an ongoing recall of pre-1982 rifles, initiated last year, is addressing the problem with older rifles.
Hmm. I'm trying to recall the theme of this series -- you know, how current laws are not enough to encourage responsible behavior from firearm manufacturers? And yet, I'm seeing that Remington fixed this problem in 1982, and has a recall in progress for guns made prior to that year!
Since CNN aired a story on hw "easy" it is to legally purchase a .50
caliber rifle, and in the process appears to have violated the Gun
Control Act of 1968 at least once and possibly more than once, the
blogosphere has been in a rage. This post serves to collect all
the links in one place. I had some problems editting this post
earlier, so if I am missing any posts on this issue, please put them in
trackbacks, or comments, or email.
Apparantly, someone thinks Canada's gun registry is actually working...
OK, let's see here. 2 million firearm owners registered, with a totally made up 90%. That leaves 10% "known" unregistered firearm owners -- about 200,000 people. And how many unregistered firearms? 7 million registered, estimated 85% coverage... leaving about 1 million unregistered firearms. This is after 2 years and at least two missed deadlines. The people who haven't registered by now aren't going to. And the criminals never were going to, and their ranks are probably not counted in those official estimates.
All this at a cost of nearly $1 billion (Canadian), which is at least a 5x cost overrun from estimates of 200 million. And given the hideous mess the system was in for the first couple years, who knows how accurate those records are?
But this is a success because 9,000 people have been denied firearm licenses under the new program? Hmm. 2 million owners and not even 10,000 denials. How do you know those who had their applications denied did not simply go and acquire one of the 1 million unregistered firearms? That's right -- you don't. In fact, you don't even know that their firearms were collected and taken away. They just don't have the legal piece of paper that says the gun is registered.
Personally, though, I don't consider any program a success just because it signs people up. There needs to be a measurable effect on the problems you're trying to solve -- in this case, crime rates.
What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is straight out of Minority Report. Canada's police agencies have officially implemented the doctrine of precrime. If you look at a police officer the wrong way, or spit on a Mounties' mount, then they'll take your guns away and count it a crime prevented and a success of the program.
Would it be impolite to ask what has happened to Canada's crime rates? Any change? Hmm?
Ah, here we go. Straight out of "How to Lie with Statistics", we have the attempt to redefine terms in a manner that supports your argument. Suddenly, it's not crime that's important: it's firearm death, robbery, and injury rates. When you start taking away firearms, obviously you reduce the rate of firearm-related crime. But what about overall rates? Strangely silent on those.
This journalist at least has the decency to admit that it's too soon to assess the impact of the program... right after implying that the program is responsible for those 30-year lows in firearm crime. Not to be outdone, she immediately follows up by assessing the impact of the program as "encouraging". Impressive intellectual rigor there.
Let's rephrase this with something a bit more illustrative. Let's replace the term "gun owners" with "Jews" and the term "gun" with "Torah" (which is, I think, what Christians would call the books of the Old Testament; but I am no expert on Judaism). Go ahead and read the quoted paragraph again, making those substitutions.
If that doesn't make my point clear, nothing will, so you might as well stop reading here.
In Canada, governments may have a "duty" to protect their citizens from harm (they do not in the US), but they certainly don't have the ability. It's unclear if the author hasn't thought it through or just doesn't realize that not everyone lives within 30 seconds of a police station.
As for regulating dangerous products, firearms (when used properly) are remarkably safe... for the user. They tend not to be safe for people on the wrong end of the barrel, but that is, as they say in software development, "A feature, not a bug." In any case, it's hard to equate "firearms safety regulation" with "nationwide registration scheme", because the firearm doesn't get any safer once the government knows it exists.
And claiming that lack of a firearms registration system might run afoul of human rights laws is ... well... laughable. Or would be, if she wasn't serious.
So it's a good value to spend two-thirds of a billion dollars to identify under 10,000 "precrime" suspects? Interesting math there.
Betcha thought I was kidding about the precrime stuff, huh?
How exactly will either system reduce those costs? Firearm injuries and deaths can be divided into several categories:
Accidents
Crimes
Suicides
Will the criminals stop committing crimes because they would have to register their firearm? Not likely. Will the people who legally own firearms, registered or otherwise, injure themselves at a lower rate now that the government knows they have firearms? Unlikely. Will people who plan on committing suicide balk at registering a gun to do it -- or simply choose another method, perhaps even a gun they have already owned? Doubt it.
So we have a system that costs $70 million per year. Even taking that at face value rather than multiplying it by 5, is it worth that much to buy absolutely no reduction in the $6.6 billion price tag? You would be better off spending the money buying firearms for the poor in high-crime neighborhoods -- then you might actually see a reduction in crime!
Here, we have a couple points to make. First, note the switcheroo -- suddenly we're talking about "firearm" rates rather than overall crime rates. It helps make up better numbers, don'tchaknow. Second, the "preliminary evidence" is in regards to a program which you just admitted earlier is "too soon to assess". But you love to assess it when you can handwave the results! And, of course, let's not miss the fact that (in the US at least, and presumably in Canada) the period around 1990 was a very high crime period, and around 2002 was a very low crime period. Assuming Canadian crime rates followed the same trend, what proof do we have that any firearms registration program had any effect whatsoever?
More statistics, and more ways to lie with them. Note that the absolute numbers of homicides are compared between 1989 and 2002, without regard to changes in population. Note that we're talking about "firearm" homicides. And then we get to the kicker; murders with handguns have increased! Remember, under the "old system" (if I understand correctly), only handguns were registered, and under the new system they added rifles and shotguns. So, even though firearm homicides fell, crimes committed with the type of weapon that was now being registered increased. Crowing about the reduction in rifle and shotgun murders is meaningless when the registration programs for those firearms did not even begin until the end of the sample period.
Oh, and what is with the special line-item for "women"? Are murders of women somehow more evil?
The missing element in this analysis is what effect licensing gun owners and registering guns will have on the costs being cited. Unfortunately for the author, there is reasonable way to postulate reduced costs from licensing and registration of gun owners and their firearms. Money spent on those programs will have no practical return.
I'm ashamed to admit that anyone teaching information technology could make such a poorly-reasoned analysis. But I think the other half of her title explains much about this article.
One of the arguments being provided as support for the Assault Weapons Ban is the change in the number of firearms traces that were traces of assault weapons. This is an oft-cited number because it appears in one of the official government studies about the effectiveness of the ban, and it's one of the very few numbers in that report that suggests any benefit at all. However, anyone reading the study with a basic knowledge of statistics will understand that the number is actually meaningless.
This particular study result is usually cited as a "2/3rds reduction in assault weapons used in crime", and sometimes as a "65% drop". In actual fact, it's a drop from 3% of firearms traces to 1% of firearms traces. The studies cite the change rather than the absolute percentage because the absolute percentage is so low. That's understandable, since it sounds more impressive and is technically accurate. To understand what is misleading about that number, you have to dig even deeper.
For people who don't have the training in statistics to understand this, here's a very short course in statistics to show you what's going on. Most of this information can be applied to just about any public-policy poll or study, since the analysis of such issues depends on the application of statistical analysis.
Without such knowledge, it's easy for the author of a study to mislead by implication about his results.
Sample Bias
Statistics is a science that depends on extrapolating the qualities of a small sample selected from the overall population to predict or explain the behavior of an entire population. This technique is used because, in public policy questions, it's a lot cheaper to measure the sample than the entire population. In order for this extrapolation to be valid, the sample must be taken from the population at random.
This point cannot be overemphasized. A sample which is biased in a way related to the measurements being made will not produce valid results, and there is no simple way to detect the bias by examining only the sample. You may think that getting a random sample is easy, but in fact, it's an extraordinarily difficult thing to do.
Consider a simple telephone survey -- suppose you want to employ someone to call people on the phone, selected at random from a phone book using a computer algorithm. Every day at 9am, this person starts making phone calls to people on the list, and giving surveys to the people who answer. Every day at 5pm, he goes home. Even though you started with a computer-generated random sample drawn from a fairly-complete list of people, you've just eliminated from your survey:
Anyone with a 9-5 job
Anyone who can't afford a telephone
Anyone who has moved since the last phone book was published
Anyone whose privacy concerns are such that their number is unlisted
That's just the beginning of the possibilities, but it should give you an idea how subtle and tricky the question of sample bias can be. There are polling firms that exist solely for the purpose of developing truly random samples and conducting surveys.
So how does this effect the result? Simple: firearms traces are not a random sample. Police departments do not trace every firearm used in a crime, because they don't have every firearm used in a crime. They also trace some firearms that were not used in a crime (for example, recovering stolen property). Different police departments have different policies on when to trace a firearm, meaning that some firearms used in crime will not be traced, and firearm types which police departments find "interesting" will be traced more often, and some states have local databases which they can check before submitting a trace request to the BATFE.
So on the basis of sample bias alone, the number of "assault weapons" traced by the BATFE is useless. It tells us nothing about the general population of assault weapons. Here's what the study's authors have to say about trace data:
Therefore, tracing data are a biased sample of guns recovered by police. Prior studies suggest that assault weapons are more likely to be submitted for tracing than are other confiscated firearms.
Correlation vs Causation
One of the most common mistakes made with statistics in the hands of a layman is mistaking correlation, which many statistical tools designed to analyze, and causation. The difference is vital. Correlation means simply that two factors -- for example, drug use and petty crime -- tend to occur together. Causation means that one factor causes the other, or in our example, that drug use causes petty crime. Statistical analysis can only determine correlation; a carefully designed experiment (that excludes all other conflating variables) is needed to determine causation.
Where that is not possible, studies can try to account for as many significant factors as possible. When this is done, the correlation for individual variables can be determined. This analysis looks a lot like causation; you typically end up with a large number of variables, each with a correlation coefficient relative to a result. So, in our study, we might have variables for the passage of the assault weapons ban, variables for the state each gun trace came from, a variable to indicate whether the state had a pre-existing assault weapons ban in place, and so on. This is done in an attempt to account for variables in the sample that can be known, but not eliminated.
Sometimes that kind of analysis is the best you can do, for cost or ethical reasons. Because it looks a lot like causation, it's often mistaken for such. But it has fundamental flaws when used in that manner. For example, even if the drop in assault weapons traces is highly correlated with the assault weapons ban and all other variables are accounted for, it's impossible to tell (with statistical tools) which direction the causation arrow points. Does the ban cause the reduction, or does the reduction cause the ban? It's easy to form logical assumptions about that arrow, but there is no statistical evidence to back them up.
In this case, people are mistaking the correlation between the passage of the assault weapons ban and the drop in assault weapon traces with the proposition that the assault weapons ban caused the drop. It might have, or it might not have. We just don't know. We don't even have the kind of information and analysis that would help us to eliminate other related variables, which might let us make logical guesses. We just have two raw numbers -- before, and after. That's not enough information to even suggest a causal connection.
Statistical significance
To normal people, the concept of "significance" refers to importance. In statistics, it's subtly different: a correlation is significant if it is sufficiently unlikely to have occurred by chance.
Chance matters because of the randomness (at least, the hoped for randomness) of the sample. Even using a completely random selection process, it's possible to pick a biased sample. If a population of one hundred people has 5 people who like peanuts, and your random sample of 5 people happens to be the 5 people who like peanuts, you're going to think that the entire population likes peanuts -- and you'll be completely wrong. But picking those 5 people for your sample is unlikely.
A large part of statistical analysis is understanding just how unlikely that is, and quantifying it for your specific sample. That way the analyst can report how likely it is that his results are due to chance rather than a true correlation. Sometimes this is reported as a confidence interval (a range of values between which the true value lies some percentage of the time, usually 95%), and at other times as a simple test for significance. Exactly how wide the confidence interval is depends on how much variance is in the sample.
Variance is a term that describes how closely grouped the values of the variable being measured are. If you have a sample of 3 people, one 6 feet tall, one 3 feet tall, and one 10 feet tall, you could describe that sample as having a high variance -- because most people are more tightly clustered in the 5-6 foot range. The variance of a variable influences how broad the confidence interval will be.
Another influence on the size of the confidence interval is the sample size. The larger the sample, the less likely random selection bias will be to influence the results. Using a larger sample won't reduce the variance of the population, but it will reduce the distortion of randomly selecting a non-typical member of the population as part of the sample. In other words, it's harder to pick 500 non-typical examples than it is to pick 5 non-typical exaples.
So what does this mean if you are reading a study, rather than writing one? Simple: look for the author's tests for statistical significance. If there are no tests for statistical significance, the study is bunk; toss it. If there are tests, read them carefully. Usually the level of significance will be specified, with .95 being the most commonly used standard (that is a 5% chance that the results of the study with respect to that specific variable are due solely to chance).
If the study reports that results did not attain significance it's an indication that they are probably not reliable. The results could mean nothing more than the effect of randomness in the sample selection. If the results are reported as significant, check at what level the significance test was conducted. Anything less than 95% significance should be considered questionable, although 90% is sometimes used.
One of the most common tactics for obfuscating lack of results is to report results in the summary that don't pass the significance test in the detailed paper. There's no real way to catch this without reading the whole study, but when the whole thing is available, make sure to check the results reported in the summary against the significance tests for those results.
In the case of the assault weapons ban study, the change from 3% to 1% was tested and found not to be significant. In other words, it presents absolutely no evidence for the effectiveness of the ban. Assault weapons, it turns out, are so rarely traced in absolute numbers that there simply isn't enough data to show any results. The drop in traces, which has been widely reported, is statistically insignificant at the standard 5% level. The authors had to reduce their standards to the 10% level to attain significance, and (as already noted) they were working with a biased and invalid sample to start with.
It's easy to lie with statistics. But it's also easy to see through those lies, if you know the basics.
Firearms with manufacturing defects or that lack safety features are involved in thousands of unintentional shootings each year. In many instances, human error and poor judgment play a role. But firearms experts who support manufacturing standards for gun makers say human error and possible misuse should be taken into account when designing weapons.
The National Safety Council advises designers to "anticipate common areas and methods of abuse and take steps to eliminate or minimize the consequences associated with such action."
In many cases of unintentional and accidental shootings, the guns provided no protection against human error. The Detroit News looked at more than 1,000 shootings across the country going back decades. Some were purely accidental, some human error, but many could have been mitigated if the guns had addition safety features, say a number of firearms experts. Among the cases The News reviewed:
What we have here is simply a list of "accidents" that the Detroit News contends could have been prevented by a government regulatory agency. I contend that most could have been prevented by the gun owner following the simple rules of gun safety. Let's cover them one by one.
AMT .380 Back-up semiautomatic
Safety issue: No magazine safety and no loaded chamber indicator.
On Dec. 23, 1992, a Texas gun dealer who sold firearms from his garage removed the magazine from the AMT pistol to give prospective buyer Ricardo Antonio a demonstration. The dealer didn?t realize there was a round left in the chamber and he shot and killed Antonio.
The dealer pointed the gun at someone and pulled the trigger, breaking the rules of gun safety.
AMT .380 Back-up semiautomatic
Safety issue: No magazine disconnect.
In 1989, Daniel Milewski, then 13, took the magazine out of the pistol like he had seen done many times on television. Milewski, of Pennsylvania, thought the gun was empty and began twirling it with his finger in the trigger guard. The gun went off and shot him in the face.
The child had unsupervised access to a firearm and was playing with it. In the course of his play, he pointed the gun at himself and pulled the trigger. Both the child and his parents broke the rules of gun safety.
Lorcin 9mm semiautomatic
Safety issue: No drop safety.
Timmy Jones, a 35-year-old Kentucky truck driver, was killed in 1996 when his Lorcin semiautomatic dropped and discharged a bullet into his stomach. He died of massive internal injuries and bleeding.
This one I'll grant, although obviously dropping a loaded gun is a little careless. But the market offers many firearms with drop safeties, so the option to purchase one was available to this individual. If you drop a knife on your foot, you will end up with a knife in your foot -- sometimes, you just have to be careful not to drop things.
RG-26
Safety issue: Firing pin.
Clarence Lemmon purchased an RG pistol for $99.95 on Dec. 10, 1980, to protect his Texas business. While attempting to put a round in the chamber, the firing pin dropped before the chamber closed and the pistol went off, firing a bullet through his left hand.
This one is borderline. The gun was not pointed in a safe direction and it sounds like the owner was not exactly familiar with proper firearms operation. It's hard to say who was at fault without knowing exactly what happened.
Tec-9, 9mm
Safety issue: No magazine disconnect.
Detroit resident Darnell Crawford, 16, was shot in the back and killed in 1987 by a friend while they and two other friends were eating pizza at home.
Crawford had taken the Tec-9 semiautomatic pistol from a closet and removed the ammunition magazine. A round remained in the chamber. Crawford passed the gun to a friend who, seeing the clip removed, thought the gun was empty. The friend, who got pizza grease on the gun, tried wiping it clean before giving it back to Crawford. In doing so, he pulled the trigger and the gun went off, striking Crawford.
Trigger pulled, gun pointed in unsafe direction.
Hawes Firearms Co. Western Marshall revolver
Safety issue: No drop safety
Clara Sue Cobb was wounded and left a paraplegic after a Western Marshall revolver on the back floorboard of a car in which she was a passenger discharged without the trigger being pulled. The Louisiana woman was 18 at the time.
Couple thoughts here. First, the picture in the article depicts an old-west-type revolver rather than a modern design -- such a historical design might be expected to lack modern safety features. Second, how do they know the trigger was not pulled? Not deliberately pulled, sure, but any firearm bouncing around on the floorboards of a car could easily snag on something. And bouncing around on the floorboards of a car is not exactly safe gun handling in any case.
F.I.E. Model D38 derringer
Safety issue: No hammer block, no transfer bar and no rebound safety.
Mary Goodman was killed when a derringer dropped and discharged without the trigger being pulled. Alvah Yates was killed at work when a derringer fell from a deliveryman?s pocket as he stooped to put down a crate of milk. The gun struck the ground and discharged, hitting Yates.
Don't drop your gun if it's cheap; if you intend to drop your gun, buy one with a drop safety. 'nuff said.
Winchester ?94
Safety issue: Firing mechanism problem.
Lois Mamo was severely injured in 1978 when a Winchester 94 fired without the trigger being pulled. The gun went off when a family member in another room in their Michigan home adjusted the gun?s lever, without pulling the trigger.
The bullet went through the kitchen wall, a stove and pots on the counter before striking Mamo in the stomach and arm. Bullet fragments hit her liver and nearly severed her right hand. She spent 62 days in the hospital and has had numerous operations. She still has shrapnel in her body.
Last month, Michigan gunsmith John Tunney Jr. was repairing a customer?s Winchester ?94, similar to the one that wounded Mamo 25 years earlier. As Tunney took the rifle, the customer mentioned that there was a round in the chamber and the rifle had a tendency to fire without the trigger being pulled when the lever was adjusted.
Tunney pointed the rifle at a sand bag designed to capture bullets and racked the lever without touching the trigger. On the very first attempt, the rifle discharged.
This sounds like a legitimate flaw, though whether it's a design flaw or something that occurs due to damage in the field is unclear. But note the difference in outcomes! When you follow the rules of gun safety, even if the gun is defective and goes off, no one gets hurt.
The 1968 Gun Control Act, aimed at stopping the flow of cheaply made, easily concealed handguns into the country, has done little to prevent the import of millions of guns that lack important safety features.
Most imported firearms don?t have features that show if the guns are loaded or that prevent them from firing if the ammunition clips are removed, a Detroit News investigation found. Fewer still have pistol grip safeties, effective in preventing children from discharging firearms by rendering the gun inoperable unless the grip safety and trigger are depressed at the same time.
The law, which set no rules for American-made guns, also has created a breed of low-end gun makers in the country. Manufacturers, domestic and foreign, have set up U.S. operations to take advantage of the freedom from restrictions and safety standards granted guns made in the America.
With no federal agency empowered to recall problem guns, their weapons continue to injure, maim and kill.
Once again, we see a call for magazine safeties and chamber-loaded indicators. And yet, guns with both features are readily available on the market. The only reason to have a gun without those features is choice -- and the choice to buy a gun that lacks them is a perfectly valid one, as many police departments have proven by their choice of Glock firearms, which lack both safety features by design.
Why has the Detroit News focused so heavily on those features? It might have something to do with the lawsuits being brought against gun manufacturers around the country. Those lawsuits, particularly the one against Beretta in California (which has recently been ruled a mistrial for the second time), focus on obtaining in a settlement the agreement to include those safety features on handguns.
Yet the gun in that very lawsuit already had a chamber loaded indicator. It just "wasn't large enough", according to the plaintiffs, who also claimed to have no idea the feature existed. And here, in fact, is where we find the common thread: people who are hurt in firearm accidents are people who either ignored the rules of safe gun handling, or were victims of those who did.
Is a gun which fails to include a magazine disconnect and chamber loaded indicator a "junk gun"? Glock doesn't think so; neither do their customers. And while many people make fun of the Glock design ("combat tupperware", for their partially plastic construction), no one would deny that they are a major handgun manufacturer and make a quality product.
But the gun control organizations want you to think they are talking about "junk guns" rather than an optional feature which some guns happen to lack. They illustrate this with the case of Rohm GMBH, a german-based corporation selling firearms. Apparantly, in 1981, they were the fourth largest handgun manufacturer in the US. It's strange how they have to go back over 20 years to find a suitable example... but it is a good one.
The guns, manufactured for $14 apiece, lacked several important safety features, such as magazine safeties and loaded chamber indicators.
In addition, several models of RG pistols had a tendency to fire when dropped. The quality of the company?s guns was further compromised because RG workers, who were paid by the piece, were required to assemble 100 pieces every two hours to make minimum wage.
With no standards to adhere to for its American-made guns, safety features on the RG models were left to the discretion of the company?s firearm designer, Edwin Kroisandt. But Kroisandt, who joined the company as a tool and die maker, admitted during a 1994 deposition that he knew nothing about such features as magazine safeties and loaded chamber indicators until he read about them in an Italian gun magazine 13 years after he started designing RG pistols.
He also admitted that he learned gun design on the job at RG and that his only formal training was from a correspondence course. Kroisandt said had he known of the magazine safety when he designed the RG pistols, he most likely would have incorporated it into his design.
So what we have here is a single individual designing firearms for a company building them as cheaply as possible. The designer doesn't include a magazine disconnect or a chamber loaded indicator because he doesn't know about them. That's not exactly a stellar description of his knowledge of the field, but then he never claimed to be an expert. And since he's designing cheap firearms to be sold at low prices, he doesn't need to be -- people are free to purchase guns with, or without, whatever safety features they feel appropriate.
Such a safety feature could have saved Detroiter Craig Blaydes? life. The 17-year-old was accidentally shot in the chest and killed in 1994 when a 14-year-old friend took the magazine with ammunition from an RG-26, and thinking the gun empty, pulled the trigger. A bullet remained in the chamber, and the gun fired, killing Blaydes.
Despite the deaths and injuries associated with its weapons, RG never has recalled any firearms for design defects. And it didn?t warn customers of any danger.
If this is the best case they can find, it's pretty slim. But it follows the same pattern of their other stories; "young child finds gun, thinks it is empty, and shoots a friend." Would a chamber-loaded indicator have saved a life here? No, because the shooter would not have known to check it. Would a magazine-disconnect safety have saved a life? Perhaps, if it had worked; in a gun this
