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Posted on 10/01/2001 6:10:45 PM PDT by Antiwar Republican

Wall Street Journal Europe

October 1, 2001
International Commentary

Switzerland Needs Less Gun Control, Not More

By John R. Lott Jr.

After a heavily armed man named Friedrich Leibacher entered a regional parliament in central Switzerland and killed 14 people Thursday, the question on everyone’s lips is, What can be done to stop similar attacks in the future? Not surprisingly, a raft of new security legislation is being proposed. But the opposite may be what’s needed here; to wit, rescinding new gun-control laws that make mass murders of the sort seen last week more, not less, likely.

The slew of new security measures were immediately announced for the federal capital in Bern and the 26 regional parliament buildings, including metal detectors, baggage screening, identity controls and protective grills on windows. There is an obvious desire to establish "safe zones," where guns are forbidden.

What’s not being discussed is abolishing Switzerland’s recently instituted gun-control laws. On Jan. 1, 1999, the country adopted a national policy strictly limiting citizens’ ability to carry concealed handguns. Prior to that date, half of Switzerland’s cantons had no regulations on concealed handguns and people could carry their guns anywhere. Why the law was even adopted is not very clear. In 1998, guns were used in only 66 cases of attempted or successful homicides, in a country of seven million people.

The law now severely limits permits to those who can demonstrate in advance that they need a weapon to protect themselves or others against a precise danger. But we should ask how last Thursday’s attack might have turned out differently if even one of the people in the Zug parliament had been armed and able to defend himself and his colleagues.

Perverse Outcomes

While the desire for so-called "safe zones" is understandable, such policies frequently lead to perverse outcomes. Guns surely make it easier to kill people, but they also make it much easier for people to defend themselves. When restrictions are passed, it is law-abiding citizens, not would-be criminals, who obey them. Unfortunately, the police cannot be everywhere, so these laws risk creating situations in which the good guys stand defenseless before the bad ones.

While horrible crimes such as the one in Zug get world-wide attention, rarely mentioned are the many more attacks that are stopped by citizens who are able to defend themselves. In the U.S., people use guns defensively some two million times a year, about five times more frequently than guns are used to commit crime. Women and the elderly benefit the most from having a gun to protect themselves. The crimes stopped with legally carried concealed handguns range from rapes and robberies to attempted murders with bombings and all sorts of other weapons. Few realize that some of the notorious public-school shootings were stopped by citizens with guns.

The potential benefit of concealed handguns is that the killers don’t know until they attack which of their intended victims will be able to defend themselves. Even when only a small portion of the population is carrying a concealed handgun, in large public places there is still a high probability that someone unknown to the attacker will be able to defend those being attacked.

William Landes of the University of Chicago and I have compiled data on all of the multiple-victim public shootings that occurred in the U.S. from 1977 to 1999. Included were incidents in which at least two people were killed or injured in a public place. To focus on the type of shooting such as we’ve now seen in Zug, we excluded gang wars or shootings that were the byproduct of another crime, such as robbery. Over the space of 23 years, the U.S. averaged more than 20 such shootings annually, with an average of 1.5 people killed and 2.5 wounded in each one.

What, if anything, helped prevent or reduce the severity of these attacks? We examined a range of issues concerning gun laws, including waiting periods, places where guns were prohibited, background checks, as well as the frequency and level of punishment.

While arrest and conviction rates, prison sentences and the death penalty reduce murders generally, they do not consistently deter public shootings. The reason is simple: Those who commit these crimes (including the Zug murderer) usually die. They are either killed in the attack or commit suicide. The normal penalties thus rarely apply.

To be effective, policies must deal with what motivates these criminals:

killing and injuring as many people as possible. Some attackers crave publicity, which obviously is related to the carnage inflicted. The best way to stop these attacks is to enact policies that also limit the carnage. We found only one policy that effectively accomplishes this: right-to-carry laws, which allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns.

‘Gun-Free Zones’

A total of 33 U.S. states now give adults the right to carry concealed handguns as long as they do not have a criminal record or a history of significant mental illness. When states passed such laws, their number of multiple-victim public shootings declined by a dramatic 67%. What’s more, each attack was on average less serious, as some of the ones that still took place were stopped more quickly. Deaths and injuries from these shootings fell on average by 78%.

To the extent that attacks still occurred in U.S. states that allow concealed handguns, they disproportionately took place in "gun-free safe zones" where concealed handguns are forbidden. The people who get these permits are extremely law-abiding and rarely lose their permits for any reason.

Unfortunately, authorities constantly advise people to behave passively when confronted by criminals. The mantra seems impervious to considerable scholarly research that shows that passivity is definitely not the safest course of action. Without letting law-abiding citizens defend themselves, we risk leaving victims as sitting ducks.

Mr. Lott JLott@aei.org is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "More Guns, Less Crime" (University of Chicago Press, 2000).

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