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OCR for page 39
Session 3
Impact on Health and Crime
Speaker Presentations
ProŁ Philip Cook is the ITT/Stanford Professor of Public Policy at
Duke University and a member of the Institute of Medicine, a unit
of the National Academies. Among his works is a book coauthored
with lens Ludwig, Gun Violence: The Real Costs (Oxford University Press,
20001. Prof. Cook said that one of the things he found most remarkable
about the morning proceedings was the significant push by the federal
government to develop personalized gun technologies to protect law-
enforcement officers and by the New lersey state legislature to protect
children. In the grand scheme of things, he said, those two populations
represent only a small part of the problem of the misuse of handguns.
The larger concern is guns that are diverted from their intended pur-
pose into the hands of dangerous individuals who are forbidden by law to
have guns. Reducing diversion would reduce gun-related homicides, acci-
dents, and suicides.
Public health statistics give a sense ofthe scale of the problem. In 1999,
there were about 11,000 gun homicides in the United States, almost all
caused by handguns. This represents about two-thirds of the total number
of homicides in that year. Moreover, there were 187,000 robberies involv-
ing a gun, more than one-third of the total number of robberies, and
340,000 gun assaults. There were almost 17,000 gun suicides in 1999, or
57 percent of the total number of suicides. Teenage suicide is of particular
concern. Of the 17,000 suicides, 1,100 were younger than 20. In terms of
39
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40
OWNER-AUTHORIZED HANDGUNS
injuries, there were 29,000 fatalities caused by gun-related injuries in 1999
and 76,000 nonfatal injuries.
A second way of thinking about the magnitude of the issue is to look at
the impacts of gun crime. For example, the threat of gun crime imposes a
burden on all of us, Prof. Cook said. Fear and anticipation of the possible
loss of a loved one translate into costly activities to avoid victimization.
Dealing with the consequences of gun crime imposes costs on our criminal
justice and medical systems. In many urban neighborhoods, serious vio-
lence reduces property values, stops commercial development, and encour-
ages neighborhood flight. The dynamic was illustrated in the 1990s, when
a major decline in violence, especially gun violence, coupled with an eco-
nomic renaissance, led to huge increases in property values in inner cities.
Prof. Cook estimated that the costs associated with the criminal use of guns
amounts to about $80 billion a year.
No doubt, reducing gun violence could save a lot of money, he contin-
ued. Nevertheless, the value of a gun-safety device that adds, say, $30 to the
price of a new gun must be balanced against the average additional social
burden that additional guns impose on all of us. It is also important to
remember that guns have virtuous uses.
Thirty-five to 40 percent of American households own a handgun,
typically in conjunction with several other guns (Cook and Ludwig, 1996) .
The 200 million guns and 70 million handguns in circulation are confined
to perhaps 30 million households. Gun-owning households have on the
average five guns.
In 1999, 4.7 million new guns, 1.7 million of them handguns, were
sold in the United States. There were some 2 to 3 million transactions in
used guns. If the purpose of personalization is to reduce diversion, it is
important to understand how diversion happens. According to the Na-
tional Sample of Prisoners, 25 percent of prisoners who had a gun when
arrested had acquired it from a retail dealer. In a sample of juvenile offend-
ers, however, only 7 percent said they bought their guns from retail dealers.
Buying a gun from a retail dealer and committing a crime with it is rela-
tively rare. Guns usually pass through several sets of hands between retailer
and the commission of a crime. Ten percent of prisoners stole their guns;
2 percent took them away from their victims; and about 30 percent bought
them on the black market or on the street.
There are four ways a gun can be diverted from a legal user to an illegal
user: (1) unauthorized transfer within a household; (2) seizures from victims
OCR for page 41
SESSION 3: IMPACT ONHEALTHAND CRIME
4
1
by assailants, the so-called take-away phenomenon, a rare event; (3) thefts
from residences, vehicles, and commercial businesses; and (4) transfers in
the secondary market. Prof. Cook described the last two diversion routes in
some detail. There are at least 500,000 gun thefts a year from residences,
enough to provide a gun for every gun crime committed in a single year.
There are a few million transfers every year in the secondary market. Most
of these are perfectly legal, but some are not. The classic straw purchase is
when a girlfriend with a clean record buys a gun at a retail store and hands
it to her boyfriend, who has a criminal record. There are also sales out of
private collections and from states with fewer controls to states with
tighter controls.
Conventional personalized technologies, a keyed lock, for example,
would do little to prevent the fourth type of diversion, voluntary transfers
in the secondary market. When a gun with a keyed lock is sold, the accom-
panying bracelet or key or ring could simply be handed over so that the
purchaser could fire the gun as easily as the seller. A biometric weapon,
however, could not be transferred as easily; the gun would have to be repro-
grammed. With some technologies, transferring the gun in working order
would be impossible.
The personalization could also include a locator built into the gun, a
technology that is already used in cars. The Lojack system has led to a steep
reduction in vehicle thefts, because it allows law enforcement to track ve-
hicles very easily. Building a signal device into guns would have a remark-
able deterrent effect. Even if the signaling device were entirely optional, but
perhaps encouraged by insurance companies, the effect could well be to
deter theft. That has been the experience with car owners they pay for
Lojack but then get an insurance break. Some miniaturization issues might
have to be overcome, but this technology has real potential to stop one very
important kind of diversion and make gun theft a lot less attractive than it
iS now.
Prof. Cook said it would be useful to analyze how these three technolo-
gies key or combination locks, biometrics, and locator signals match
up with the four diversion channels. To what extent would a particular
personalization design influence each of these?
A standard key or combination lock design should presumably prevent
household diversions, and, if the gun were locked, prevent take-aways. If it
were made very difficult to rekey the lock, if rekeying by an unauthorized
person would basically destroy the gun, this approach would also prevent
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42
OWNER-AUTHORIZED HANDGUNS
thefts of workable guns. A very similar analysis could be performed for
biometric weapons. A gun with a locator device wouldn't prevent house-
hold thefts or take-aways, but it might have a substantial effect on theft.
Prof. Cook also raised the issue of"competing" risks. When a new
safety technology is introduced, it introduces new, so-called competing
risks. The classic example is air bags and seat belts, which reduced old risks
but created new ones. For new gun-safety technology, a competing risk
might be that, as safer options become available, handgun ownership might
rise, thus increasing the overall risk of gun violence. A second competing
risk is that some people might get a false sense of confidence, and choose to
keep their guns loaded and otherwise unlocked because they think their
guns are now safe. Finally, if the locking mechanisms fail, the owner would
be prevented from using the weapon during an attack.
Prof. Cook suggested several policy approaches to introducing person-
alization as a way to address the problem of gun diversions. Handguns with
internal locking devices or a built-in geopositioning system could be pro-
duced but not required. Another approach would be to require certain
groups to carry personalized guns for instance, people with concealed-
carry permits or security guards, who are usually not trained in gun use but
are required to carry guns. The third policy option would be to require
every new handgun to have an accepted personalization device built in.
The result would be a steady increase in the percentage of guns of no inter-
est or use to thieves. It would take a long time for these guns to penetrate
the market, but newer handguns are greatly overrepresented in criminal
use, so penetration might be fairly rapid.
The fourth and most radical approach would be to require that any
conventional handgun being transferred to another owner be retrofitted
with an appropriate personalization technology. That would greatly accel-
erate market penetration.
Social reforms, including gun control, have always been subjected to
the same criticisms: futility, perversity, and jeopardy. Futility suggests that
reform is hopeless because of the large number (200 million) of guns in
circulation. Perversity suggests that smart guns will not fire when necessary,
so they would be worse than useless. Jeopardy suggests that requiring smart-
gun technology would interfere with our right to own guns. These same
arguments have been made for every past social policy reform. But studies
of social reforms show that, on balance, they were effective. This suggests
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SESSION 3: IMPACT ONHEALTHAND CRIME
43
that the correct answer might be that safer guns will mean fewer gun deaths
. . .
ant ~ gun injuries.
Different smart-gun designs would accomplish different purposes. But
the larger purpose of all smart-gun technologies should be to reduce diver-
sions, Prof. Cook said. The effectiveness of any particular design will de-
pend not only on the design, but also on the regulations that go with it.
OCR for page 44
Panel Presentations
Charles A. Moose is chief of police of Montgomery County,
Maryland, a major in the District of Columbia Air National
Guard, and a member of the adjunct faculty at Montgomery
College. Chief Moose said he has carried a handgun for the 27 years he has
been in law enforcement, but as a child he never handled a gun. His father
had a gun, however, and probably died under the illusion that he had kept
it successfully hidden from his children. No one in his household misused
his father's gun, but many young people make very poor decisions about
the use of family guns, decisions that result in accidental shootings,
accidental deaths, and suicides.
In contrast to home- and family-related misuse of handguns, law-
enforcement take-aways are a relatively minor problem. Only a small
number of law-enforcement officers are killed with their own weapons. A
much better reason to pursue smart-gun research would be to stop young
people from hurting themselves or others.
One of law-enforcement officers' biggest concerns about smart guns is
their reliability. That is the challenge manufacturers must face. ChiefMoose
said if he and his peers were not convinced that a smart gun would be
absolutely reliable every time it is used, they would rather stick with the
weapons they already have. There is considerable skepticism in the law-
enforcement community about existing gun-safety technologies. A number
of law-enforcement agencies ask their police officers to use locking devices
on their guns, at least during off-duty hours. His own agency issues the
44
OCR for page 45
SESSIONS: PANEL PRESENTATIONS
45
equipment and encourages its use, and many younger officers, he said, have
not only asked for locks but for better locks. But Chief Moose said he
doubts that many officers actually use the equipment, and he admitted that
he does not lock up his own gun at night. He said he is afraid that, if he needs
quick access to the weapon, struggling with a lock will take too much time.
A smart gun would be of most value in preventing gun misuse in the
home. ChiefMoose noted that homeowners rarely shoot criminal intruders.
More often, a criminal completes a crime and may even take the gun away
from the victims and use it against them or simply steal it. The idea that
guns provide home protection just is not borne out in real-world experience.
Chief Moose said he endorses maintaining a relationship among law
enforcement, developers of gun technology, and the public health commu-
nity. But he repeated that for personalized gun technology to catch on with
law enforcement, it would have to be 100 percent reliable. The challenge is
not only to design smart weapons but also to sell and market them.
i'
The next speaker, Paul Blackman, research coordinator for the lobby-
ing arm of the National Rifle Association, said he knows of no opposition
to efforts to develop technologies to prevent unauthorized use of hand-
guns, as long as they are conducted by the private sector. A few gun owners
want "such gadgetry," he said, and there is nothing wrong with developing
it for them. But he said such technologies will have the effect of making
handguns less reliable.
The most obvious limitation in imposing personalization technology
is that personalizing consumer products does not prevent unlawful access.
Houses and cars have personalized locks, and they are broken into or stolen
fairly often. Hacking into personal computers is done for fun and profit.
Similarly, personalizing handguns will not prevent misuse but might slow
misuse down by a few minutes.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the effort to develop smart
handguns is that proponents of improving handguns rarely have any per-
sonal interest in owning a handgun. People who push for safer cars at least
ride in cars, he said. But technological gimmickry for guns comes mostly
from people who don't like or own guns and who equate the words "gun"
and "weapon." That alone makes the notion suspect.
One reason these devices have not been successfully developed for guns
s that they don't sell. Gun owners don't want them. Most so-called safety
devices make guns less reliable, he said, and will be undone by the consumer.
A century ago, Smith & Wesson introduced the grip safety for revolvers.
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46
OWNER-AUTHORIZED HANDGUNS
But purchasers began to undo it, so the company gradually withdrew it,
first making it easy to undo, then leaving it off entirely. Much the same is
true today for guns sold with magazine interlocks. Most purchasers remove
them. It costs only a "buck or two" to put on, and it costs even less to take
off, Dr. Blackman said.
The personalized technology that is being talked about will add con-
siderably to the price of a handgun. Any serious personalization being con-
sidered today could double or even triple the price of a handgun when you
add in the increased cost of liability insurance.
Dr. Blackman said he was opposed to the idea of the federal govern-
ment imposing the technology and becoming involved in all handgun trans-
fers. He said he also opposed any system of government regulation, ap-
proval, or record keeping, which would amount to gun registration. One
concern of gun owners is that registration would make confiscation fea-
sible. A few decades ago in Bermuda, after a political assassination, the
authorities temporarily called in all registered guns; that temporary confis-
cation has still not ended. Registration of radios was used by Quisling to
confiscate radios in Norway (during WWII) and thus to limit listening to
Allied broadcasts. And the Vichy regime in France used registration of lews
as a way to ''confiscate'' people. One form of personalization, inserting a
homing device into guns, would enable police to confiscate non-stolen guns
as well, he noted.
Some of the opposition to personalizing handguns, he continued, is
based on warranted fears of ultimate goals. Other fears relate to concerns
about the reliability of personalized guns. Because most personalization
would make handguns unreliable, he said, any attempt to guess their im-
pact on public health and crime is problematic. The question is how unre-
liable handguns would be, and what would be done by gun owners to keep
at least some of them reliable. If unreliability were forced onto all new or all
transferred handguns, many buyers would be anxious to restore reliability
to their guns.
With respect to personalizing handguns to prevent misuse by children,
the NRA shares the concern of the Violence Policy Center that some people
who buy these guns would not understand or conform to firearms safety
procedures. Moreover, the safety claim would be complicated if only hand-
guns were made childproof, and indeed only new handguns.
Much is simply not known. For instance, Dr. Blackman asked, how
would a government willing to force unwanted technology into guns react
to owners' efforts to remove or disable the technology? How would gun
OCR for page 47
SESSIONS: PANEL PRESENTATIONS
47
owners respond to changes in their guns? How would criminals respond?
Currently, gun manufacturers bundle locks with their guns, but these locks
will have no impact on the criminal, suicidal, or accidental misuse of guns,
because they are easy for criminals and suicides to defeat.
It is impossible to say how many child gun accidents or potential sui-
cides would be defeated by personalization. The restrictions on use pro-
vided by personalization would have to be balanced against the possibility
that access would be easier, because personalized guns might be more likely
to be stored loaded. In addition, children might play with other,
unpersonalized guns thinking that now all guns were safe. Similarly, no one
knows how many criminals might gain access to unreliable handguns and
would be unable to restore their reliability, or whether that would matter.
Since most gun-related crimes don't involve shots actually being fired, an
unreliable handgun may be as effective a tool for the average criminal as a
reliable handgun.
No one knows how police would respond to personalized guns in the
hands of children or criminals. Would they be fooled into thinking that
newer handguns would fire in the hands of criminals? How many children
with access to handguns left lying around because their parents think them
childproof might playfully point them at less playfill law-enforcement officers?
Would the new technology make handguns unaffordable for the people
who most need them for protection and who are already given the least
police protection? If so, wouldn't that encourage crime and prevent self-
defense? What would be the effect on the cost and availability of used,
reliable handguns of having some reliable and some unreliable handguns in
the same marketplace?
Tom Diaz, a senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center (VP C)
and author of the book Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America
(The New Press, 1999), was the next speaker. The gun industry is an
extremely innovative industry, according to Mr. Diaz. Gun manufacturers
have scored some stunning successes through innovation and design. VPC
believes that if the gun industry wants to develop and market owner-
authorized guns, they should, but they should do it with their own
resources, not government funds.
VPC also believes that such technologies should be subject to the same
oversight as other American consumer products regular reviews by an
independent agency that balances risks against benefits. The gun industry
should also be subjected to the time-honored collective effects oftort litigation.
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48
OWNER-AUTHORIZED HANDGUNS
As has been suggested during this workshop, for the law-enforcement
community, a user-authorized gun is a "dog that won't hunt," he said. The
community today is not in a buying mode. The real target of the gun
industry's efforts to develop personalized handguns is not law enforcement,
and has never been law enforcement, he suggested. Introducing a new gun
technology to the law-enforcement or defense community first is a means
of getting into the civilian market, which can then be much more easily
penetrated, and which is orders of magnitude bigger. Anyone interested in
selling owner-authorized guns would not be in this business if they think
they would only be able to sell to the highly fractionated and extraordinarily
skeptical police market. They want to sell to civilians, and they think
they can.
It is not entirely accurate to compare user-authorized gun technology
to automobiles. A better comparison, Mr. Diaz said, would be with filter-
tip cigarettes, which encouraged people to keep smoking cigarettes and
destroy their health. Similarly, a smart gun would not do anything to pro-
tect American public health. It would encourage large numbers of people
who would not have bought handguns otherwise to go out and buy them,
believing they are safe. Thus the pool of people who own handguns would
expand dramatically.
An owner-authorized handgun poses two risks a direct risk from the
gun itself and an indirect risk related to the pattern of gun ownership in
America. Both risks should be studied before anyone assumes that techno-
logical success equals epidemiological success.
In terms of indirect risk, gun ownership in America is highly concen-
trated. Fewer and fewer people now own more and more guns. Moreover,
the nature of handguns has changed dramatically in the last quarter cen-
tury. Twenty-five years ago, most police departments carried six-shot re-
volvers; today, probably none does. Most police departments have gone
through several rounds of rearming and now carry high-capacity, semiauto-
matic pistols. The same pattern holds true for private owners. In the last
20 years, guns have become far more powerful, with new calibers, bullet
sizes, and cross-dimensions. Entirely new calibers have been introduced,
such as the Smith & Wesson 40. Gun buyers are seeking out guns with
bigger calibers and higher capacity. There is no convincing reason to think
that people who purchase smart guns will be any different, and smart guns
will probably be of the highest capacity legally allowed. Furthermore, some
ofthe people who are persuaded to buy these guns will already own "dumb"
guns, which they intend to keep. That means that, in the same household,
OCR for page 49
SESSIONS: PANEL PRESENTATIONS
49
there will be both technologically brilliant and technologically stupid guns
available, which will create the serious problem of opportunistic use.
If one examines people's behavior, the argument for technologically
smart guns begins to fall apart. Chief Moose's description of what he does
and doesn't do with his own gun is a good example. Mr. Diaz said that, as a
former gun owner and from his own observations, he doubts that people
who buy these guns will keep them in an inoperable mode. The main
reason most people buy handguns is for self-defense, and they are not going
to buy an implement for self-defense that they make ineffective, by their
own actions.
Advocates of so-called smart guns like to draw attention to uninten-
tional shooting deaths of children. Statistically, that occurrence is very small.
For 1999, out of 28,874 gun-related deaths, a very small number, about
824, were unintentional. Of those, 158 victims were under the age of 18. If
we assumed that every firearm in every household were replaced with a
smart gun and that every child under 18 never figured out how to override
the safety device, the number of lives saved would still be negligible. Unless
you subscribe to the hoary premise that saving one life is enough, the statis-
tics are not persuasive, given the ballooning numbers of new buyers.
Furthermore, almost all unintentional deaths of adults occur during
gun-cleaning and hunting activities. In both of those cases, the authorized
user is already in control of the firearm.
Suicide is an important category to consider in the argument over user-
authorized guns. First, suicide success rates by methods other than guns are
far lower. However, authorized gun owners obviously could turn their guns
on themselves. Therefore, that category of suicides would not be affected
by personalization technology. Teen suicides are often the focus of atten-
tion, but many teenagers in America own their own guns. If they are too
young to own one legally, their parents often give them one, so they, too,
would be authorized users. Much of the gun suicide problem cannot be
solved with authorized guns.
The question of homicide and criminality is very dicey. Mr. Diaz said
it is his understanding that only a small proportion of homicides results
from a criminal intending to kill another person. The preponderance of
homicides takes place among people who know each other, and many
people who commit homicides are authorized owners. When it comes to
criminals who are not the initial authorized owners, the question becomes,
as Dr. Cook pointed out, the nature of the technology. Will it be possible to
prevent a gun from being transferred?
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50
OWNER-AUTHORIZED HANDGUNS
It is possible to imagine a technological fix to any one of these objec-
tions, but the problems are nevertheless very real. To be fair, the presence of
a smart gun in the absence of a standard gun would save some lives. But we
must balance that against the mass of new owners and new families that
would be exposed to the hazards of these guns.
In short, VPC thinks smart guns are a dumb idea, Mr. Diaz said. If the
gun industry wants to disprove that, let them. But they should do it on
their own dime, and they should be prepared to pay the consequences to
the public if they guess wrong in the name of profit.
The last speaker was Lois Mock, a senior social scientist and program
manager in the Office of Research and Evaluation (ORE) in the National
Institute of Justice at the U.S. Department of Justice. She said there is
obviously enormous skepticism about the development and use of owner-
authorized handgun technology, not only among those on both sides of the
gun-control divide, but also within the law-enforcement community.
Ms. Mock said she is concerned that both federal and state legislatures
are talking about mandating owner-authorized handguns without consid-
ering the possible unintended consequences of such requirements.
One such consequence might be an increase in the market for im-
ported nonowner-authorized handguns, as well as parts for those guns, in
response both to legitimate demand from those who want nothing to do
with the new technology and to criminal demand.
In addition, all 70 million handguns now legitimately in private hands
would suddenly become much more valuable to the criminal element. Most
offenders get their guns through secondary markets, which would still be
out there. As the number of owner-authorized handguns in circulation in-
creases, the value of guns that aren't owner-authorized would rise, thus
increasing the number of household burglaries.
Another unintended consequence of mandating owner-authorized
guns might be to increase the use of long guns in the commission of crimes.
It doesn't take much to dismantle or saw off the barrel of a shotgun and
make it more user friendly and more portable.
The ORE has conducted research for 20 years on issues related to the
prevention and control of firearms violence. However, the office has not
done social or behavioral research on the impacts of owner-authorized
handgun technology, because the technology is still under development.
Even so, Ms. Mock said, an affordable owner-authorized handgun could
effectively reduce some aspects of gun violence. For instance, personalized
OCR for page 51
SESSIONS: PANEL PRESENTATIONS
51
gun technology could prevent accidental injuries ancl deaths clue to impul-
sive acts by chilclren, ancl it could cut clown on the growing problem of
. .
teen SUlClC ~e.
She noted that the effectiveness of using handguns for self-clefense is
controversial. The figures in different surveys vary greatly, from less than
100,000 defensive uses per year to several million per year. In some cases,
it's not clear how self-clefense events are clefinecl. In any case, there is not a
one-to-one relation between the defensive use of a handgun ancl deterrence
of a crime.
Sooner or later, owner-authorizecl handgun technology will be clevel-
opecl. Politically ancl in the meclia, it sounds very goocl, ancl it will become
increasingly difficult for gun manufacturers to refuse to pursue it. Owner-
authorizecl guns could become a valuable tool in reducing certain kinds of
injuries ancl cleath, but it will not cut clown on crimes ancl violence result-
ing from the use of available nonpersonalizecl hanclguns. Moreover, great
care will have to be exercised by those who advocate laws requiring the
technology to avoid the potential for increased violence ancl crime by crimi-
nals seeking to acquire pre-law, nonpersonalizecl hanclguns.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
law enforcement
