Over The Top

After the Heller decision yesterday, I figured there would be some good Editorial comments on the subject in today's papers.

Furthermore, I expected the New York Times to be most critical of the decision, but their Editorial this morning far exceeded anything I expected.

The Editorial takes two primary issues with the decision. First, that the majority's interpretation is wrong. Second, the decision will be detrimental to public health.

The interpretation argument is an issue unto itself, but the Times' concern that the decision will result in increased homicides is unfounded.

Some selected passages from the Editorial:

"The Supreme Court on Thursday all but ensured that even more Americans will die senselessly with its wrongheaded and dangerous ruling striking down key parts of the District of Columbia's gun-control law."

"This is a decision that will cost innocent lives, cause immeasurable pain and suffering and turn America into a more dangerous country. It will also diminish our standing in the world, sending yet another message that the United States values gun rights over human life."

Maybe the Times is relying upon the 1991 study in the New England Journal of Medicine by Colin Loftin, Brian Wiersema and Talbert J. Cottey. In their study, Loftin and company concluded that the restrictive licensing of guns result in a prompt decline in homicide rates. The study looked at the 9 years before the D.C. gun ban and the 9 years after and found:

"In Washington, D.C., the adoption of the gun-licensing law coincided with an abrupt decline in homicides by firearms (a reduction of 3.3 per month, or 25 percent) and suicides by firearms (reduction, 0.6 per month, or 23 percent). No similar reductions were observed in the number of homicides or suicides committed by other means, nor were there similar reductions in the adjacent metropolitan areas in Maryland and Virginia. There were also no increases in homicides or suicides by other methods, as would be expected if equally lethal means were substituted for handguns."

Striking, isn't it? Except for the fact that the causal relationship has been proven untrue.

The Loftin study failed to use per-capita statistics which was particularly important due to D.C.'s declining population at the time. From Dean Payne's analysis of the Loftin study:

"Loftin suggests that the District's 1976 restrictive handgun licensing, effectively a ban on new handguns, prevented an average of 47 deaths per year. Inexplicably, the report fails to mention the rapid shrinkage of the District's population, or the rising population of the surrounding community in Maryland and Virginia. When homicides and suicides rates are expressed as per-capita rates, any apparent post-1976 benefit enjoyed by the District vanishes."

Furthermore, Washington D.C.'s homicide rate per 100,000 climbed after the District implemented their strict gun regulations. The rate was 10.6 in 1960 and stood at 35.4 in 2005.

Even by comparison to other larger cities, Washington D.C. is much worse.

However, the New York Times provides no data or statistical measure to back their alarmist claim that homicides will begin to drastically climb as a result of the Supreme Court's decision in Heller. The Times simply relies upon emotional appeal and their disdain for any reasoning which supports gun rights.