Re: Shooting of Japanese student did happen

Harvey Newstrom (newstrom@newstaffinc.com)
Tue, 8 Jun 1999 16:16:13 -0400

I'm sorry, but these numbers for Florida are just not feasible. Looking at today's paper, I find half a dozen crimes with legal handguns. There are many more handgun crimes for which I can't tell the legal status of the gun, or in some cases what kind of gun was used.

I don't see how the study can only find 18 crimes with licensed handguns, when I can find eight such crimes in just one day, the first day I looked. The cases are: Elderly mother shot daughter because she though she was being put in a home, two kids shot dead in Orlando with their parents' guns in two separate incidents, five kids arrested for bringing their parent's handguns to school in separate incidents assumed to be a copycat of Columbine. All of these were legal, licensed handguns.

The only conclusion I can reach is that this study is carefully wording their statements to create misleading statistics. They say "but only 18 crimes involving firearms were committed by those with licenses". That seems to count only those crimes committed by the licensed person themselves with their own gun. It ignored licensed gun owners using other guns to commit crimes, and it ignores licensed gun owners whose guns were taken away from them and used by someone else in a crime. These types of cases are not covered in either the pro or con discussions, but are merely ignored. The statistic seems to support the idea that licensed handguns are rarely used in crimes, but the facts they cite do not really support their case.