alt.energy.homepower

Trygve Lillefosse wrote:


> If more guns equals less crime, why is there so many criminals in the
> US?

From:
/lott/

These life and death stories represent only a tiny fraction of
defensive gun uses. A survey of 1,015 people I conducted during
November and December 2002 indicates that million defensive gun
uses occurred nationwide in 2001. Guns do make it easier to commit bad
deeds, but they also make it easier for people to defend themselves
where few alternatives are available. That is why it is so important
that people receive an accurate, balanced accounting of how guns are
used. Unfortunately, the media are doing a very poor job of that today.

Though my survey indicates that simply brandishing a gun stops crimes
95 percent of the time, it is very rare to see a story of such an
event reported in the media. A dead gunshot victim on the ground is
highly newsworthy, while a criminal fleeing after a woman points a gun
is apparently not considered news at all. That’s not impossible to
understand; after all, no shots were fired, no crime was committed,
and no one is even sure what crime would have been committed had a
weapon not been drawn.

In other words, airplane crashes get news coverage, while successful
take-offs and landings do not. Even though fewer than one out of 1,000
defensive gun uses result in the death of the attacker, the newsman’s
penchant for drama means that the bloodier cases are usually covered.
Even in the rare cases where guns are used to shoot someone, injuries
are about six times more frequent than deaths. You wouldn’t know this
from the stories the media choose to report.

But much more than a bias toward bad news and drama goes into the
medias selective reporting on gun usage. Why, for instance, does the
torrential coverage of public shooting sprees fail to acknowledge when
such attacks are aborted by citizens with guns? In January 2002, a
shooting left three dead at the Appalachian Law School in Virginia.
The event made international headlines and produced more calls for gun
control.

Yet one critical fact was missing from virtually all the news
coverage: The attack was stopped by two students who had guns in their
cars.

The fast responses of Mikael Gross and Tracy Bridges undoubtedly saved
many lives. Mikael was outside the law school returning from lunch
when Peter Odighizuwa started shooting. Tracy was in a classroom
waiting for class to start. When the shots rang out, chaos erupted.
Mikael and Tracy were prepared to do something more constructive: Both
immediately ran to their cars and got their guns, then approached the
shooter from different sides. Thus confronted, the attacker threw his
gun down.

Isn’t it remarkable that out of 208 news stories (from a Nexis-Lexis
search) in the week after the event, just four mentioned that the
students who stopped the shooter had guns? A typical description of
the event in the Washington Post. "Three students pounced on the
gunman and held him until help arrived." New York’s Newsday noted only
that the attacker was "restrained by students." Many stories mentioned
the law-enforcement or military backgrounds of these student heroes,
but virtually all of the media, in discussing how the killer was
stopped, said things such as: "students tackled the man while he was
still armed" "students tackled the gunman" the attacker "dropped his
gun after being confronted by students, who then tackled him to the
ground" or "students ended the rampage by confronting and then
tackling the gunman, who dropped his weapon"

In all, 72 stories described how the attacker was stopped, without
mentioning that the heroes had guns. Yet 68 stories provided precise
details on the gun used by the attacker: The New York Times made sure
to point out it was "a .380 semiautomatic handgun"; the Los Angeles
Times noted it was "a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol."

A week and a half after the assault, I appeared on a radio program in
Los Angeles along with Tracy Bridges, one of the Appalachian Law
School heroes. Tracy related how "shocked" he had been by the news
coverage. Though he had carefully described to over 50 reporters what
had happened, explaining how he had to point his gun at the attacker
and yell at him to drop his gun, the media had consistently reported
that the incident had ended by the students "tackling" the killer.
When I relayed what the Washington Post had reported, Tracy quickly
mentioned that he had spent a considerable amount of time talking
face-to-face with reporter Maria Glod of the Post. He seemed stunned
that this conversation had not resulted in a more accurate rendition
of what had occurred.


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/misc/