Why Not Just Tell The Truth About Guns?

"The Justice Department has released an impressive testimonial to the effectiveness of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act," trumpeted the Chicago Tribune editorial.

"The testimonial is in the numbers," it continued. "The Brady law has blocked 242,000 handgun purchases since it went into effect in 1994. ... Most of those denied guns were denied because they were convicted felons or faced felony indictments."

There were similar editorials and opinion columns in newspapers all over the United States.

It was on all the TV news shows.

It was hailed as a testament to the wisdom of our lawmakers, this report from the Justice Department.

Brady requires a waiting period and background check of prospective handgun buyers before they are allowed to make the purchase. If the person is a convicted felon, a spouse abuser or a nut, it shows up in the background check and the purchase is denied.

I think the background check is a good idea. Indiana has had a waiting period check for a long time.

As for how many convicted felons actually try to buy guns at the local gun shop, that's a different story.

When I saw the Brady numbers, I wasn't too skeptical because statistically speaking, they were pretty insignificant. In 1997, for example, there were 69,000 denials because of Brady, the Justice Department reported. But there were 2,574,000 requests. So about 2.7 percent were denied.

But then along comes the Indianapolis Star with a story saying that the numbers for Indiana were inflated.

Really inflated.

The Justice Department reported that in Indiana there were 1,085 Brady denials. According to the state police firearms division, the agency that supplied the data to the Justice Department, there were 82.

Apparently, the Justice Department counted denials of permit requests along with Brady denials.

But those are completely separate issues. A permit is not required to buy a gun in Indiana. And everybody who gets a permit is not necessarily buying a gun.

That apparently made no difference to the Justice Department.

They added the numbers in.

Why?

To make the Brady Act look more effective than it really is? To further the cause of gun control?

Certainly an agency of our government wouldn't purposely mislead us, would it?

The Star's spot check of other states shows numbers correctly reported in Ohio, Wisconsin, California and Georgia. But in Arizona there were 1,691 stops and the Justice Department reported an inflated 2,277.

I suppose these could be honest mistakes, but if so, why wasn't there an honest effort to correct them? The Star story broke early in the week. As of Friday, I saw nothing on the wire from the Justice Department.

There were no editorials. No columnists pontificating and no TV talking heads babbling about it.

So unless you happen to know about the fine journalism practiced by the Indianapolis Star, you would be left thinking incorrectly that the Brady Act has stopped all those felons from getting handguns.

So what is the real story, anyway?

John R. Lott Jr., an Olin Law and Economic Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School, has an idea.

He cites a Government Accounting Office study which estimated 60,000 handgun purchases had been stopped in one year.

That study, however, noted that of those 60,000 refusals, the vast majority were due to human error or paperwork problems. Only 3,000 of the denials were because an applicant had a violent crime record.

The numbers in the Justice Department study include everything.

If somebody makes a mistake filling out the form and it gets returned to them, the Justice Department counted that as a handgun purchase denied.

In fact, in virtually all of those cases the applicant corrected the error, resubmitted the application and got his gun.

Furthermore, the Justice Department had only pre-sale background check data from 21 states - including Indiana. From that, the Justice Department estimated how many handgun sales were denied nationwide.

I don't think Brady is a bad law. There could have been a few felons who actually were prevented from buying a handgun.

But the vast majority of convicted felons in search of weapons do not waltz into a gun shop to buy them.

They buy them on the street. In that regard, Brady is ineffective at best.

But it really bugs me that the Justice Department would so wildly exaggerate its effectiveness.

It's akin to the nonsensical 43-to-1 lunacy that gets repeated over and over by the anti-gun crowd.

A statistic - given as fact - that is largely inaccurate. And with no apparent attempt to correct it. I wonder what would have happened if the Star would have found that the Justice Department reported a thousand too few Brady stops?

Think the Justice Department would have corrected its report then?

On the topic of guns, professor Lott recently came out with a new book that Second Amendment protectors might find interesting.

The title is "More Guns, Less Crime."

In the book, Lott presents the most rigorously comprehensive data analysis ever done on crime and comes to that startling conclusion.

He maintains that criminals generally respond to deterrence. As the risks and potential costs of criminal activity rise, criminals either commit fewer crimes or move to an area where there is less of a deterrent.

Accordingly, the states now experiencing the largest reductions in crime are the ones with the fastest growing rates of gun ownership.

Another shocking conclusion the book draws: "Preventing law-abiding citizens from carrying handguns does not end violence; it merely makes victims more vulnerable. ... In the final analysis, one concern unites us all; Will allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns save lives? The answer is yes, it will."

Bet you won't hear Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw or Peter Jennings giving that book any air time.