Copies of the submission made by the Gun Control Network appear to have been made available to the public during the Committee Hearing in Northern Ireland and a copy has been sent to me.

  Some research was required before I could consider their submission properly, and this has delayed matters. It now seems very clear to me that the submission is factually incorrect in a number of areas and seriously misleading in others. I attach a critique that I have prepared.

INTRODUCTION

  1.  The submission of the Gun Control Network (GCN) to the Parliamentary Northern Ireland Affairs Committee was made available to members of the public attending the hearings held in Northern Ireland and a copy has been sent to me. The submission contains a number of assertions that may be seriously misleading and the purpose of this paper is to highlight those areas of the submission so that the Committee might consider them further.

AIR WEAPONS

  2.  In paragraph 2.5, the Gun Control Network claims, "in its Eleventh Annual Report, the Firearms Consultative Committee (FCC) recommended that any air weapon with a muzzle energy of more than one joule should be regarded as a firearm and licensed as such". That is untrue. The FCC considered the matter in both its Tenth and Eleventh Reports, but at no time has it suggested that air weapons falling between the one joule suggested as the minimum level for lethality and the limits set in the Firearms (Dangerous Air Weapons) Rules 1969 (six foot pounds for pistols and 12 foot pounds for any other air gun) should be licensed in any way. The GCN statement is both untrue and misleading.

  3.  There is nothing in either of the two FCC reports which could lead to any misunderstanding about their position and misunderstanding is made even less likely by the fact that the GCN is represented on the FCC.

HANDGUNS

  4.  At paragraph 3.3 the GCN "draws the Committee's attention to the evidence from the United States indicating that the widespread use of handguns for personal protection does not result in a safer society" etc. It also asserts that "most published research shows that increased gun availability increases gun deaths and the few studies that have reached an opposite conclusion are based on flawed research which has been given disproportionate publicity by shooting organisations."

  5.  As the sole support of their assertions they cite Josh Sugarmann in Every Handgun is Aimed at You, The New Press, New York, 1999 as an analysis of the relevant data.

  6.  At paragraph 5.3 GCN refer to "Independent research ie that which is not funded by shooting organisations" but they fail to point out that Sugarmann is the salaried executive director of the Violence Policy Centre, a self appointed and notably extreme group linked to various anti-gun groups in the US some of which have links with the Gun Control Network. Research funded by one side of the argument apparently cannot be independent, but that funded by those who strongly hold an opposing view is advanced as being wholly independent!

  7.  Sugarmann's book was described in the Publishers Weekly (an independent source concerned only with any book's potential sales) as "a book length editorial in favour of banning handguns in the United States" and as "Thus muckraking book". Another reviewer, Dr Michael S Brown of Vancouver (whose credentials are not explained) describes the book as "emotional fear mongering that is specifically designed to bypass any logical filters in the reader's mind", and suggests that it should be "placed on the bookshelf right beside Mein Kampf".

  8.  The opening parts of Sugarmann's book includes unquestioning references to and quotations from a book, Arming America—the Origins of a National Gun Culture by Professor Michael Bellesiles. Following investigations into "suspicious inaccuracies" in the book by a panel of senior historians, and despite an appeal against their findings, Bellesiles has had to resign his university post. A major literary prize awarded for that book has been rescinded on the ground of academic fraud and Bellesiles work is now publicly discredited. Sugarmann's enthusiastic support for such work may be indicative of the quality of his own book.

  9.  Still on the subject of handguns, paragraph 3.5 of the GCN paper refers to what is called "short term fluctuations in gun crime figures". Any statistics that seek to measure the effect of the ban on handguns in 1997 can only relate to the period from that year, but Home Office Statistics presented to the Northern Ireland Committee cover a period of 20 years so that a proper perspective is maintained. For convenience the figures are reproduced.

  10.  The trend away from the use of shotguns and towards the use of pistols is marked and unarguable as is the change post 1997.

  11.  The reference to International Studies at paragraph 5.5 suggests complete ignorance of the largest such study conducted by the United Nations, published on 7 March 1997 (E/CN.15/1997/4), which shows that there is no international correlation between levels of gun ownership and homicide, suicide and gun accidents. An analysis of the report has been submitted to the Committee.

IMITATIONS

  12.  The GCN paper describes what it calls imitation firearms at paragraph 4.1, failing to note that, in connection with their use in crime, imitations can be rolled newspapers, courgettes in paper bags, crude home-made devices or children's toys, as well as more realistic replicas. They go on to claim at paragraph 4.2 that "police in England and Wales give varying estimates of the proportion of gun crime that is committed with imitation firearms. Although these figures range from 50% to 80% there is agreement that the quantity of imitations in circulation is rising." The statement does not reveal a specific source that would allow verification, but is, in any case, entirely wrong and misleading.

  13.  The classification of the crime referred to is not stated, but it clearly cannot include homicide or wounding since imitations cannot kill or injure. Only in robbery are imitation firearms used to a significant extent. The class of imitation is not referred to, but reference to paragraph 4.1 of the GCN paper show that they have imitation pistols in mind.

  14.  The use of firearms in robbery was studied in 1994 by researchers from Oxford1 who found that guns were not recovered in 80% of robberies and could not be identified as real or imitation unless they had been fired during the robbery. Guns were fired in only 4% of the robberies investigated. Half of the guns recovered were found to be imitations, including items such as rolled up newspapers, amounting to 11 per cent of the firearms used in robbery—not the 50% to 80% claimed by GCN. An unknown proportion of the guns not recovered may have been imitations.

  15.  The fact that half the guns recovered after robbery were imitations cannot be extrapolated to suggest that half the guns used in robbery are imitations, but it emerges from the report that robbers attacking high return targets almost invariably use real firearms whilst robbers who use imitations generally attacked softer targets, were less competent and more likely to be caught. Similarly, robbers who use imitations are much more likely to discard them than those who use real firearms.

  16.  It seems likely that some of the cases in which witnesses describe a real gun actually involve an imitation, but imitations range from the realistic replicas to the most innocuous items and are not restricted to the class of imitation described by GCN in their paragraph 4.1. There is no way that a precise figure can be put on this but the suggestion that 50 per cent to 80 per cent of the cases involve the type of replica described by GCN, "weapons which have the appearance of lethal guns but are not sold as such" are untenable.

  17.  In the summary of their findings at page 80, Morrison and O'Donnell note, "Those robbers who did not carry a real gun but relied on a replica or the operation of a subterfuge for the success of their attacks, had generally decided that a real firearm was not essential for the kind of robbery which they intended to commit. This was not because they would have been unable to obtain a real firearm. Indeed, nearly three quarters said that they could have obtained a genuine gun if they had wished to do so."

  18.  In presenting evidence about the dangers from replicas, two factors should have been brought to notice in addition to the vague suggestions about the numbers of replicas used in robbery. One is the fact that replicas manifestly do not kill or cause physical injury, and the other is that criminals denied access to replicas are likely to revert to real guns which they can obtain easily. At the very least, there should have been an acknowledgement of the existence of evidence over and above the unsubstantiated comment made by GCN.

GUNS AND CHILDREN

  19.  It seems doubtful if the GCN has even seen the Harvard School of Public Health study to which they refer at paragraph 5.3 as showing a direct link between gun availability and gun death. They may have noted a reference to it in material disseminated by organisations such as the US Brady Group. GCN cite the article as appearing in the March 2002 issue of the Journal of Trauma, but in fact it appeared in the February issue at pages 267-275 and has been studied for this critique.

  20.  The authors are Doctors Andrew Miller, Deborah Azrael and David Hemenway, all from the Harvard School of Public Health. The latter is a frequent and controversial writer on the subject of gun control.

  21.  The study uses an indicator of "gun availability" in each State and compares that with homicide, suicide and unintentional firearm deaths in children aged five to 14 years. They claim that a disproportionately high number of their study group died in States with high gun availability.

  22.  Though the study is applied across the States, the authors have mysteriously excluded the District of Columbia, which virtually bans private ownership of firearms but has the highest homicide rate in the US.

  23.  Two of the measures of gun availability come from published surveys in which householders are asked if they own a gun. Such surveys have been shown to be notoriously inaccurate in sensitive areas like declaring gun ownership to the authorities in the USA. Kleck2 studies this phenomenon in depth and reports matters fully.

  24.  The other measure used is known as Cook's index, created by Philip J Cook, a prolific writer on the subject of gun control whose research leads him to strongly support gun control. Unable to measure "gun availability" directly, Cook proposed that it can be measured by an index that takes the proportion of suicides involving guns and adds the proportion to homicides with guns to produce a figure which the authors use to compare gun availability in one place with that in another.

  25.  The authors of the Harvard Paper modified Cook's Index to remove all children between nought to 19 years and then used the resulting index to rank the "gun availability" in States. Since the object of the study was a five to 14 year old group, the exclusion of nought to 19 year olds seems odd, particularly when 15 to 19 year olds tend to feature significantly in firearms misuse. Further, the incidence of deaths amongst children includes unintentional firearms deaths which do not feature in Cook's Index.

  26.  The results are tabulated by the Cook's Index, but comparison of even this figure with the indices for firearms deaths in five to 14 year olds does not show a sustained correlation. For example, the three States with the highest levels of deaths, Alaska at 3.97, Montana with 3.81 and Idaho with 3.52 all have Cook's indices much lower than the states which rate highest by Cook's measure, but have fewer recorded deaths.

  27.  Factors such as remoteness from medical attention have a significant influence on survival rate for all major injuries, including shooting and the highest death rates are in very remote areas. That factor does not seem to have been taken into account.

  28.  If the conclusion of a positive correlation between gun availability and child gun deaths was valid, the authors should have disclosed the fact that over the 10 year period they have studied (1988-97), overall gun ownership levels in the United States have increased at an extraordinary level. Using US BATF figures for domestic gun production and gun imports, minus guns exported, Kleck2 shows that the net additions to the gun stock in private hands in the US increased from 4.8 million in 1988 to 6.9 million in 1994 and the total civilian gun stock rose from 208 million to 235 million. The increase has continued and whilst precise levels for later years are not readily available, it is now estimated at 240 million. It is reported that Americans bought eight million new guns in 2000.

  29.  During the period covered by the study, this massive increase in gun availability has been accompanied by a reduction in the overall rate of accidental gun deaths. Citing all his sources, Kleck2 shows that the overall fatal gun accident rate has fallen from 0.61 per 100,000 to 0.47 and for those between five and 14, it has fallen steadily from 236 cases in 1988 to 151 cases in 1994. When this fall is compared to the increases in gun ownership, it represents a much greater proportionate fall.

  30.  The rate of homicide in the United States has fallen by no less than 31 per cent between 1994 and 19983 and Professor Franklin Zimring, himself a noted proponent of strict gun control, notes "a real turning point in American lethal violence". Almost the entire fall has been in gun homicide4. This dramatic fall in homicide generally and in gun homicide in particular during a period of enormous increase in gun ownership should surely have been mentioned in any research purporting to show a casual relationship between gun availability and child gun deaths.

  31.  If the Harvard study was a serious attempt to measure the correlation between gun availability and gun deaths, matters such as these should at least have been referred to so that an independent measure could be used to test their assertions.

  32.  Accompanying the Harvard Study in the Journal of Trauma is a peer review by three other doctors who conclude that though the study provides "compelling evidence, it does not permit a conclusion about cause and effect.

  33.  To cite this study, as the GCN did, as "confirming a direct link between gun availability and gun death" is quite wrong and it is equally wrong, both in the Harvard Study and in the GCN submission not to make reference, even in a bibliography, to the completely independent works of Kleck2, Lott5, Malcolm4 and others.

REFERENCES

  1.  Morrison S and O'Donnell I, Armed Robbery, A Study in London. Oxford University Centre for Criminological Research, 1994.

  2.  Kleck G. Targeting Guns. Firearms and their Control. Aldine de Gruyter, New York, 1997.

  3.  Barclay G C and Tavares C. International Comparisons in Criminal Justice Statistics, 1988. The Home Office, 22 February 2000.

  4.  Cited in Professor Joyce Malcolm, Guns and Violence, The English Experience Pages 219-20). Harvard University Press, 2002.

  5.  Lott J R. More Guns Less Crime—Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws. University of Chicago, 1998.