Guns

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Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Gimlet Media's
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Science Versus, the show where we pit facts against all
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that stuff your uncle says.
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On today's show, guns.
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In America, the gun lobby says that guns keep us safe,
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protect us against criminals and reduce the crime rate. But
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what does the science say? A quick warning before we
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get started. This episode contains the sounds of guns and
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we'll be discussing homicide, suicide and domestic violence. Please take
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care when listening to this show. And if you're feeling
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depressed or you just want to talk to someone, in
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the US you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
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at 1-800-273-8255.
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That number will be on our website along with other resources.
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Nestled in the heartland of New Jersey amongst a nail
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salon and car wash sits Gun For Hire, a gun
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range that bills itself as the only family destination gun
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range in the world. And the guy I'm here to
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see is Anthony Calandro.
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Anthony.
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He's the owner at this joint and he's like a
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celebrity around here. He seems to know who everyone is
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and he's shaking hands with all the customers. Anthony tells
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me I have to wait my turn.
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How's everything? You doing all right?
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I'm doing good.
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You can talk to me later if you want.
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I figured there was one obvious way to kill some
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time while I waited for Anthony.
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All right, so we're going to put you in the
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range for an hour.
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15 minutes is going to be with an instructor.
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You have an AR-15 and a Glock 19, a box
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of ammo for a 9mm, two boxes of.
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223, four targets.
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Well, I didn't know how long he was going to be.
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All right, that closed gun is now loaded. You have
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three shots. There you go.
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How did I do?
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These are your three shots.
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Is that good? Yes, very good.
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You're shaking your head.
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Very good, very good.
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You're shaking your head.
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When I finished my 70 rounds at Gun for Hire,
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Anthony Calandro was ready to chat.
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But before I could start asking questions.
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Quick question to you. Your perception of gun ranges before
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you started visiting them, Didn't you think that everybody in
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there would look like Duck Dynasty characters?
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I did. This is absolutely true.
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50 years of the media perpetuating us as fat white
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guys with summer teeth, some over here, some over here,
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with a beard and suspenders and a baseball cap on
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and my Bible in my left hand and clinging to
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my gun in my right hand. Am I right?
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Okay, so Anthony, he has teeth, doesn't wear suspenders, and
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no Bible that I could see. Which isn't to say
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that you'll mistake this place for the U.N., On our
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way to the interview, we did walk past this room
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full of dudes.
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What is that?
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That's a diversity shoot. We had a bunch of people
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come and.
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Shoot for the first time.
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They don't look very diverse, Anthony.
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They're not very diverse.
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What demographic would you put them at?
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Right now, it looks like they're installing a new Grand Wizard.
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That's what it looks like to me right now.
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Today we are putting down the guns and picking up
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the books to find out what guns do to a community.
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And I know in America guns are a huge topic
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and this is a very loaded debate. So we will
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be breaking this issue into two parts. This week we
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will answer the following bullet points. One, how many times
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a year are guns used for good?
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Say, in self-defence.
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Two, how many times a year are guns used for bad,
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like to murder someone? And three, what effect, if any,
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do guns have on the overall crime rate? And then
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next week, we're going to stare down the barrel of
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gun control, so whether laws that restrict guns actually save lives. Now,
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to be clear, although the Constitution is a lovely document,
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it's not a peer-reviewed journal. So you will be hearing
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the words the Second Amendment and the right to bear
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arms only once in this podcast. And you just heard them,
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because today we're talking science.
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Let's get into it. Bullet point number one, self-defence.
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Best estimates suggest there are more than 300 million guns
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in the US right now, a number that has been
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slowly rising. And I say best estimates because no one
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really knows. Guns aren't traced very effectively around the states. Still,
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a recent Pew survey, Pew Pew survey, suggests that 34%
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of US homes have guns in them. And the main
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reason Americans buy guns, according to the is to defend
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themselves and their property. The survey found that almost half
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of Americans who own guns say they have it for protection.
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And this idea that you need a gun to protect
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yourself is promoted by the National Rifle Association.
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The only thing that stops a bad guy with a
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gun is a good guy with a gun.
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This is Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the NRA. He's speaking
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at a press conference.
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And when you hear your glass breaking at 3am and
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you call 911, you won't be able to pray hard
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enough for a gun in the hands of a good
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guy to get there fast enough to protect you.
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And Anthony Calandro, owner of Gun For Hire, he agrees
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with this.
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There's an old saying, when you need help in seconds,
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the police arrive in minutes. But if you're home alone,
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who's going to protect you? If two men were trying
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to break into your house, a firearm is the ultimate equalizer.
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Anthony says he's never had to use a gun to
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protect himself, but he likes the idea that he's ready
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if something, anything, would happen.
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When I go to a restaurant, I sit with my
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back to the wall because I need to see who's
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coming in and out and watch everything because no one's
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sneaking up on me.
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Where did that begin?
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I have no idea. I think you're just, some people
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are born that way. And I was born that way.
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You know, they say, what do they call you, sheepdog?
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If you're born that way, you have that sheepdog mentality.
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It's just the way I am.
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But how many people in America will actually use their
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guns for self-defense?
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Well.
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There is one number that gets cited quite a bit
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in the media.
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There are 2.5 million defensive uses of guns every year.
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It's like 2.5 million.
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Two and a half million times a year.
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2.5 million times.
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2.5 million times last year, law-abiding citizens pulled guns in
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self-defense and saved lives.
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So let's take a closer look at this number. Where
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did it come from and can we trust it? Let's
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start with the man responsible for it, Gary Kleck. He's
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a professor of criminology at Florida State University and he's
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been writing about guns for decades.
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Do you own a gun yourself?
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I never answer that question. The reason being that people
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use it as an excuse for not thinking about the
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issues but just judging what people have to say and
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that's foolish.
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Gary's study was the first to come up with this
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number that there are 2.5 million defensive gun uses.
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And here's how he got it.
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Back in the early 1990s, Gary's team surveyed just under 5,000
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people to ask them, have you used a gun, even
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if it wasn't fired, for self-protection or the protection of
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property at home, work or elsewhere?
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And he found that 1.3%, that is 66 people, said
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that they had. So then.
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You take the percent of the sample who said they
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had that experience and multiply it times the population.
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So he took those 66 people, that 1.3%, and multiplied
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it by the adult population of the US, which equals... OK,
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so you've got to carry the one and.
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Two and a half million times a year.
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You never, ever, ever, ever sort of do that. You
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never extrapolate.
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This is David Hemenway, a professor of health policy at
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Harvard University.
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And he takes issue with Gary's methods.
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Nobody who has any training in epidemiology would ever extrapolate
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the 1% of people.
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David says multiplying out 1.3%, which in this study, remember,
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was only 66 people, to the population of America is dangerous.
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And here's why. Let me give you an example.
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A recent US survey of more than 5,000 women who
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had been pregnant found that 45 women, or 0.8% of them,
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consistently affirmed that they had had a virgin birth.
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The survey was published in the British Medical Journal.
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Now, if you pull a Gary Kleck and multiply that
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out to the number of women who gave birth in, say, 2013,
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you'd find that there would be around 31,000 women in
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America who were virgins when they had their bubs.
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So, in just a decade, there might be 310,000 Jesus babies. Well, hallelujah!
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The point is they were mistaken. They had sex and
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then they had babies. The other point is.
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that when you're talking about very small percentages being multiplied
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out to very big populations, a few people being mistaken
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can lead to a very big wrong number, which is
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why no scientist would say that there were 31,000 virgin
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births in the US in 2013. I asked Gary about
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whether his very big number on defensive gun uses might
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also have this problem.
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The percentage point is very small.
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So if you're a little bit off, then actually it's orders.
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Of magnitude that this figure could be wrong, right?
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Not if it's a little bit off. It could be
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orders of magnitude off if it's way off.
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But if it's, say, one percentage point off, if it's
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one percentage point off, this could be a problem.
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If, yeah, I mean, you can speculate anything if it were,
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but of course we don't have the slightest evidence to
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support that view and we have ample evidence to contradict it,
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which is the results of the other surveys, which always
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indicate huge numbers of defensive gun uses.
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Yes, other surveys do exist. And yes, they have gotten
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similar figures, around 1%. But David Hemenway, who has actually
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done some of these surveys, says that just because you
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can replicate a result, it doesn't mean it's true.
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Why?
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Because sometimes people lie, leave stuff out, or just misremember,
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and they do it in the same pattern over and
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over again. David points to surveys about how many sexual
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partners straight men and women have had.
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So you can ask people in the United States over
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and over and over, and the men will always tell
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you more than the women. That doesn't mean that's true.
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And you're just looking at heterosexual couples. It doesn't mean
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it's true.
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That is, either there is a small group of horny
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women out there and props to them, or men are lying,
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or women are lying, or both are lying. Given what
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we know about people, it's likely that someone is lying.
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And David Hemenway thinks this is what is happening in
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these gun surveys. Just like when you ask guys, how
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many people have you slept with? If you ask Americans
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how many times they've used their gun defensively, they tend
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to inflate the number. So if Gary's numbers are wrong,
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do we have any idea how many people use their
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guns defensively in America each year?
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Yes, we do.
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Meet the National Crime Victimisation Survey. Forget Gary's 5,000 people
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and extrapolating. This beast interviews around 90,000 people, so it's
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much more reliable. And it's considered the gold standard amongst
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researchers in this field. But it's not just the size
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of this survey that makes it more trustworthy.
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It's also the way they ask the questions.
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So rather than straight out asking people, do you use
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your gun for self-protection, which can overestimate results because people
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like to boast, this survey first establishes that someone was
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the victim of a crime. And then they ask, did
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you do anything with the idea of protecting yourself or
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your property while the incident was going on?
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Freeze, you diseased rhinoceros pizzled.
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Now, according to data from this survey, there are only
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around 100,000 defensive gun uses per year in the US.
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So that's much smaller than Gary Collect's 2.5 million. And
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when you look into the details of this survey, you
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find that a lot of common images that we have
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about guns that are used defensively don't hold up.
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Ha!
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Hold up! So, for example.
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More than 80% of the time, the people who said
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they used their gun defensively also said that they were
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the only person with the gun in the altercation. So
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much for a good guy with a gun facing off
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against a bad guy with a gun. Another image that
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the gun lobby likes to promote is a woman pulling
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out a gun to protect herself against a man in
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an alley or trying to break into her home. This
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is from a 2013 speech by the NRA's Wayne LaPierre.
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The one thing a violent rapist deserves to face is
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a good woman with a gun.
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Firstly, only 13% of rapes in the US are committed
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by strangers. Most rapists are known to the victim. They're
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often married or related to her. So the vast majority
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of sexual assaults aren't happening in dark alleyways. And then
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when we look at the Crime Victimisation Survey... Of the
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337 women in the sample who had been sexually assaulted,
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none used a gun in self-defence. And just to challenge
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one more popular image that we have, you brandish your
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gun and.
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The bad guy flees.
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Well, sometimes things don't turn out that way. Using data
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from that big survey, David Hemenway found that when people
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used a gun to protect their property, it did work.
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Two-thirds of the time.
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Yes, there's a bit of suggestive evidence that having a
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gun may reduce property loss, but the evidence is equally
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compelling that having mace or a baseball bat will reduce
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property loss.
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In other words, just yelling at the guy, turning on
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the lights or threatening to call the police were pretty
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good tactics too. When people did that, it worked about
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half the time.
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Conclusion.
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Best estimates reckon there are around 100,000 defensive gun uses
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in America each year, not 2.5 million. And using guns
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in self-defence is slightly more effective at scaring bad guys
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than doing other things. But we've got to weigh this
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small benefit against the bad things that guns can do.
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And that's coming up. Hey, it's Wendy from Science Versus,
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00:16:17.289 --> 00:16:19.289
and I want to tell you about a podcast that
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00:16:19.409 --> 00:16:21.049
I love, Science Friday.
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00:16:21.230 --> 00:16:23.769
They cover all sorts of amazing things in the weird
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00:16:23.809 --> 00:16:27.860
and wonderful world of science, from how concussions affect our
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00:16:27.889 --> 00:16:30.950
brain to the inner secrets of a snake with a
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00:16:31.049 --> 00:16:33.600
spider on its tail. It's a lot of news that
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00:16:33.659 --> 00:16:36.100
you can use and some that you can't, but you're
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00:16:36.120 --> 00:16:36.960
going to love anyway.
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00:16:37.200 --> 00:16:38.480
It's hosted by Ira Flato and Phyllis.
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00:16:39.320 --> 00:16:42.399
Flora lichtman who is an old friend of the show
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00:16:42.559 --> 00:16:45.320
and loves a pun as much as we do science
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00:16:45.379 --> 00:16:48.549
friday is on every day wherever you get your podcasts
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00:16:51.769 --> 00:16:55.909
welcome back to science versus that was too peppy we're
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talking about guns.
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Welcome back to science versus.
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When we talk about gun deaths in America, the public
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often focuses on accidental deaths, often involving kids, and also
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mass shootings.
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These are horrifying, but they're rare.
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More than 30,000 people in America die from guns annually.
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On top of that, there are more than 81,000 non-fatal
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gun injuries.
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And according to Professor David Hemenway's research, of the 30,000
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annual gun deaths.
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around 110 kids are killed accidentally by firearms each year.
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Mass shootings are harder to put a figure on because
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people have different definitions of mass. But any way you
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count them, the maximum number of deaths each year is
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in the hundreds, not thousands. So they are a very
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small proportion of overall gun homicides. So, who's doing most
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of the shooting and killing? Well, most of the time,
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it's people killing themselves. According to the Centers for Disease
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Control and Prevention, about two-thirds of America's gun.
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Deaths are suicides. But when you talk to people like
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Anthony Calandro, owner of Gun for Hire, they don't think
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that guns are the problem.
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Suicides are a tragedy. And if you press the button
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tomorrow and all guns in this country disappeared, The suicide
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rate's not going to go down. The avenue or choice
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of taking their own lives is going to change. Hanging, drowning, asphyxiation, pills,
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whatever it may be, that's all that's going to happen.
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It's just that the firearm is a very easy tool,
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a very easy vehicle to help with that. But if
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you're set on killing yourself, you are going to do it.
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It doesn't matter what you have accessible to you.
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In suicide research, Anthony's argument is called substitution. This is
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the idea that if you remove one way for people
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to kill themselves.
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They'll just substitute it for another.
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Now, this theory of substitution has actually been studied internationally,
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looking at many ways that people suicide. Professor Helen Christensen
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is an expert in suicide prevention. She heads up the
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Black Dog Institute in Sydney, Australia.
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So if you took away a particular way in which
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people die, do you get an outbreak and a greater
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number doing it in a different way? And there's been
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quite a bit of research, for example, putting barriers on bridges.
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Do people just move two kilometres further down the river
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and jump from the next bridge? And the answer is no.
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And there's no reason to think that guns or firearms
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would be any different?
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In my view, no.
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Over and over, evidence suggests that if you eliminate a
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popular way that people suicide, fewer people kill themselves.
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And this is known as means reduction. Here's an example.
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In the 1980s, a common method of suicide in Sri
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Lanka was swallowing certain pesticides. And after the country banned them,
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the total suicide rate fell by 50%. Now, there was
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a minor increase in hangings, but this didn't come close
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to offsetting the total number of lives saved. This has
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also specifically been seen with guns. In Australia, after a
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gunman killed 35 people in Tasmania in 1996, heavy gun
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restrictions were implemented.
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And once the bans.
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Kicked in, there was a slight increase in hangings, but
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the total suicide rate dropped. For men, it was by 8%.
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Every study I've seen and every academic I've spoken to
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agreed that restricting access to guns would significantly reduce suicides.
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Every academic except Professor Gary Kleck because he said there's
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no real difference between people trying to kill themselves with
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a gun or with a rope.
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It's just tying a piece of rope around your neck.
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Are you saying that it is just as easy to
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kill yourself... using a gun as it is to hang yourself?
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No.
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What I said is that people who are that seriously
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motivated will take the somewhat longer period of time it
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takes to prepare a hanging suicide attempt than it does
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to shoot yourself. The difference is a matter of minutes.
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You can do it in under a minute with a
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gun and, well, maybe it'd take 10 minutes to do
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it by hanging. And So the question is, are seriously
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intended suicide attempters willing to take 10 minutes to make
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the attempt? Yeah, I'd say it's almost certain that they
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would be.
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But suicide researcher Helen Christensen says this idea that time
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doesn't matter isn't true for the vast majority of people
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who kill themselves.
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Time is your friend in suicide prevention. So the argument
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is within 10 minutes, for example, of making the full
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intention to take your own life, many people do attempt
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within that tiny window. The longer you allow the person
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with these thoughts to be delayed, then the more likely
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it is that they will in fact survive.
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Conclusion.
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The current evidence suggests that for most people, thoughts of
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suicide come at a time of acute crisis. They're not
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carefully planning their death, which is why removing deadly means
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from vulnerable people is such a powerful way to prevent suicide.
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You can think about it like this.
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When your friend or lover or child is feeling very low,
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you don't want them to have access to a gun.
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We still need to look at murders and violent crimes.
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But before we do that, let's take a little break.
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It's getting pretty heavy here. Let's all take a big
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breath while I tell you about some very cool octopuses.
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They're called the southern sand octopuses and they're found on
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the eastern coast of Australia. And it was recently discovered
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00:23:07.819 --> 00:23:12.619
that these octopuses create houses for themselves under the bottom
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of the sea. Using their ingenuity and bodily fluid, they
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00:23:17.309 --> 00:23:21.750
line the burrow of these little apartments they create for
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themselves with mucus so that it gives it more structure.
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And then they create little chimneys for ventilation. Isn't that amazing?
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It's remarkable.
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Oh, and don't send me letters because the plural, the
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collective noun.
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Of octopus, is octopuses.
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Sometimes people say octopi because they think that octopus comes
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from Latin, in which case the plural would be I.
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00:23:50.369 --> 00:23:54.650
But actually, octopus is borrowed from Greek, so you add
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ES if you want to make it a plural. So
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that would be octopuses. And you should use that word
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as often as possible because octopuses are cool.
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00:24:08.089 --> 00:24:11.990
So, back to guns and on to the next argument.
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The gun lobby says that guns not only help people
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to defend against crime, as we talked about... But they
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argue that if law-abiding citizens are armed, then criminals will
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be deterred. That is, they reckon that the mere presence
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of a gun not only could be used to stop
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someone who's in the middle of committing a crime, but
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it could be used to stop them before the crime
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even happens. Burglaries, assaults, murders, all of it.
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00:24:41.670 --> 00:24:45.299
There are AR-15s, shotguns and pistols all around you that
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deter crime and violence every day.
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00:24:47.940 --> 00:24:51.220
This is NRA News commentator Dom Rasso.
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00:24:51.680 --> 00:24:55.130
The presence of weapons alone can stop crime. And when
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you take them away, the bad guys have the upper hand.
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00:24:58.029 --> 00:25:04.140
So, do guns reduce crime? Well, according to Fox News commentators, yes.
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00:25:04.779 --> 00:25:08.529
And they invoke studies to make their claim. Here's commentator
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00:25:08.809 --> 00:25:11.109
John Stossel speaking with Megyn Kelly.
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00:25:11.230 --> 00:25:13.490
The jury is still out on the global warming theory.
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00:25:13.529 --> 00:25:14.150
Whoops, sorry.
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00:25:14.170 --> 00:25:18.420
It's just in my folder of outdated science that gets cited.
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00:25:19.170 --> 00:25:21.869
Here it is, John Stossel and Megyn Kelly.
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00:25:22.089 --> 00:25:26.109
The best example is concealed carry. In the states where
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00:25:26.130 --> 00:25:30.950
they passed the laws, crime, gun crime, murder went down
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00:25:31.220 --> 00:25:33.400
after states passed concealed carry laws.
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00:25:33.420 --> 00:25:33.720
Why?
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Why is that?
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Because the bad guys start thinking, gee, if I rob
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00:25:37.180 --> 00:25:38.559
this guy, he might be packing.
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00:25:39.000 --> 00:25:44.339
OK, this claim has been firmly debunked by the scientific community.
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00:25:44.960 --> 00:25:48.119
And to understand the whole story, we have to go back.
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00:25:50.650 --> 00:25:51.680
Not that far back.
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Nice.
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We are in the 1980s, when a bunch of US
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states unintentionally set up a nice experiment. These states passed
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laws making it easier for people to carry concealed weapons,
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so-called right-to-carry laws. And by doing that, it allowed scientists
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00:26:12.349 --> 00:26:15.859
to measure the crime rate before and after the laws
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were passed to answer the question... Do legal guns on
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the street really mean less crime? Economist John Lott, who
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00:26:26.289 --> 00:26:28.599
at the time worked for the University of Chicago, was
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one of the first academics to publish on the case.
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Using some statistical models, he reported a significant drop in
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violent crimes in states that had passed the gun laws.
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This work was published in 1997 and John went on
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00:26:42.380 --> 00:26:47.789
to write a very cryptically titled book called More Guns,
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00:26:48.410 --> 00:26:52.349
Less Crime. These days, John is no longer aligned to
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00:26:52.390 --> 00:26:56.970
a university and is instead a Fox News columnist. Meanwhile,
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00:26:57.329 --> 00:27:00.950
a bunch of other scientists still working for universities have
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00:27:00.970 --> 00:27:04.119
looked into John's work and found serious.
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00:27:03.819 --> 00:27:08.680
Flaws within it. When one academic tried to replicate the findings...
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He couldn't.
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And this led an expert committee of some 20 scientists
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00:27:13.589 --> 00:27:17.069
to reanalyse the data. And while John still maintains the
477
00:27:17.130 --> 00:27:22.109
accuracy of his findings, this committee found, quote, no credible
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00:27:22.230 --> 00:27:25.769
evidence that the passage of right to carry laws decreases
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00:27:26.670 --> 00:27:32.609
or increases violent crime, end quote. OK, so people carrying
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00:27:32.630 --> 00:27:36.430
their guns around doesn't affect the crime rate. But what
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00:27:36.470 --> 00:27:39.789
happens when you take into account the guns in people's homes?
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00:27:40.250 --> 00:27:43.529
Do the number of guns in a state affect the
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00:27:43.710 --> 00:27:46.829
overall crime rate? No.
484
00:27:47.769 --> 00:27:48.930
Here's David Hemenway.
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00:27:49.430 --> 00:27:52.259
Guns don't cause violent crime. Guns also don't seem to
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protect against violent crime. Guns don't reduce violent crime. Whether
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00:27:55.960 --> 00:27:57.720
it is guns or not, you can have violent crime.
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There are US states with lots of guns that have
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a low crime rate, like Montana. And there are US
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00:28:03.059 --> 00:28:05.849
states with lots of guns... with a high crime rate,
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00:28:06.170 --> 00:28:09.450
like Alaska. Equally, around the world, while the US has
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00:28:09.509 --> 00:28:13.359
a bucketload more guns than any other high-income country, the
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00:28:13.410 --> 00:28:17.380
crime rate over here is just average. And for more
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00:28:17.440 --> 00:28:19.660
evidence that the number of guns and the crime rate
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00:28:19.680 --> 00:28:22.480
are unrelated, we need to go back.
496
00:28:22.940 --> 00:28:23.140
No!
497
00:28:23.240 --> 00:28:28.069
From the mid-1990s, crime rates plummeted around the developed world.
498
00:28:34.529 --> 00:28:38.789
Burglaries, thefts, assaults, all dropped. And this trend lasted about
499
00:28:38.829 --> 00:28:42.480
a decade. And it was so mysterious that academics have
500
00:28:42.579 --> 00:28:46.740
spent the last two decades trying to figure out what happened.
501
00:28:47.440 --> 00:28:50.180
With no concrete answers on the table, three years ago,
502
00:28:50.299 --> 00:28:53.680
the National Academy of Sciences put together a crack team
503
00:28:53.759 --> 00:28:58.740
of scientists, which included David, to finally uncover why the
504
00:28:58.779 --> 00:28:59.579
crime rate fell.
505
00:29:03.000 --> 00:29:06.119
After three years of study, I can confidently say that
506
00:29:06.180 --> 00:29:09.359
two dozen of us, mostly criminologists, really don't have any
507
00:29:09.460 --> 00:29:09.960
good idea.
508
00:29:10.500 --> 00:29:14.500
They looked at data on all the obvious stuff. The economy, unemployment,
509
00:29:14.640 --> 00:29:18.039
social trends like immigration. but also other things.
510
00:29:18.220 --> 00:29:23.380
Things like better policing and the notion of more fewer
511
00:29:23.440 --> 00:29:27.549
people in prison and the idea about less lead in
512
00:29:27.630 --> 00:29:32.589
the water, in the air and abortion.
513
00:29:32.849 --> 00:29:37.730
And of course, guns. But nothing could explain what happened. Now,
514
00:29:37.849 --> 00:29:40.660
it's true that as the crime rate increased, America was
515
00:29:40.759 --> 00:29:43.559
falling in the 1990s, the number of guns in the
516
00:29:43.599 --> 00:29:47.240
country was going up. And the NRA likes to take
517
00:29:47.319 --> 00:29:51.259
this as proof that more guns means less crime. But
518
00:29:51.279 --> 00:29:53.970
according to David Hemenway and the team... If you keep
519
00:29:54.150 --> 00:29:58.180
watching the crime statistics after that initial drop in the mid-90s,
520
00:29:58.559 --> 00:30:03.460
you'll see that that relationship between guns and crime changes.
521
00:30:04.039 --> 00:30:04.640
Which is why.
522
00:30:04.660 --> 00:30:09.670
Zero of our group thought that the number of guns
523
00:30:09.829 --> 00:30:14.369
had anything to do with the reduction in crime and homicide.
524
00:30:14.789 --> 00:30:17.630
So even though the number of guns in America continues
525
00:30:17.670 --> 00:30:20.259
to slowly rise, the crime rate has bobbed up and
526
00:30:20.299 --> 00:30:24.670
down throughout the noughties and even today. The naughties, as
527
00:30:24.710 --> 00:30:27.569
in the 2000s. I didn't even mean it like a pun.
528
00:30:27.789 --> 00:30:30.910
Like, they're naughty. They're doing crime. It's just what you
529
00:30:30.930 --> 00:30:34.490
call the 2000s. There's no other better. The 2000s sounds weird.
530
00:30:34.869 --> 00:30:39.079
It does. It sounds weird. What else? The zeros? The
531
00:30:39.180 --> 00:30:41.660
double zeros? The oh-ohs?
532
00:30:41.799 --> 00:30:42.140
No.
533
00:30:42.619 --> 00:30:42.859
No.
534
00:30:43.039 --> 00:30:47.000
The oohs? The oohs. The turn of the century.
535
00:30:47.660 --> 00:30:47.960
No.
536
00:30:47.980 --> 00:30:49.980
It's called the naughties. The point is.
537
00:30:50.750 --> 00:30:53.250
The crime rate is still going up and down. The
538
00:30:53.289 --> 00:30:56.660
number of guns in America are rising. There is no connection.
539
00:30:58.660 --> 00:30:59.079
Conclusion.
540
00:30:59.640 --> 00:31:02.339
Guns do not affect the crime rate. They don't make
541
00:31:02.359 --> 00:31:07.220
it go up or down in any consistent way. Well,
542
00:31:07.579 --> 00:31:11.799
there is one exception. Guns do not have an impact
543
00:31:11.900 --> 00:31:13.869
on the overall violent crime rate.
544
00:31:14.180 --> 00:31:15.190
They don't affect the number.
545
00:31:15.049 --> 00:31:17.190
Of assaults or rapes or burglaries.
546
00:31:18.339 --> 00:31:23.759
But they do have an effect on one particular violent crime. Homicide.
547
00:31:24.539 --> 00:31:25.160
Here's David.
548
00:31:25.299 --> 00:31:29.680
What guns do is they make hostile interactions, robberies, assaults
549
00:31:29.900 --> 00:31:30.700
much more deadly.
550
00:31:31.279 --> 00:31:33.099
What he means is that if you put a gun
551
00:31:33.160 --> 00:31:35.799
in the middle of an altercation, it's more likely that
552
00:31:35.880 --> 00:31:39.799
someone will die. In the US, 16,000 people are killed
553
00:31:39.839 --> 00:31:42.180
in a homicide each year, and the majority, 11,000, are
554
00:31:42.200 --> 00:31:45.940
killed with guns. And when we look at the US,
555
00:31:46.119 --> 00:31:49.140
states with more guns tend to have more homicides and
556
00:31:49.180 --> 00:31:50.880
more firearm-related homicides.
557
00:31:51.660 --> 00:31:52.920
But there are exceptions.
558
00:31:53.259 --> 00:31:56.319
So you can find states like Idaho, for example, with
559
00:31:56.420 --> 00:31:57.869
lots of guns but not.
560
00:31:57.740 --> 00:31:59.089
A lot of murders per capita.
561
00:31:59.849 --> 00:32:02.829
But there is one subset of the homicide rate where
562
00:32:02.849 --> 00:32:07.650
the correlation between guns and death is rock solid. And
563
00:32:07.690 --> 00:32:13.349
that's the female homicide rate. A paper published this year
564
00:32:13.450 --> 00:32:18.839
tracked firearm ownership and homicides across 50 states over 33 years,
565
00:32:19.319 --> 00:32:22.880
and it found that it was unambiguous. The more guns
566
00:32:22.940 --> 00:32:25.289
in a state, the more likely it is that a
567
00:32:25.349 --> 00:32:28.609
woman will be murdered. If the gun ownership in a
568
00:32:28.670 --> 00:32:33.789
state goes up by 10 percentage points, the female firearm-related
569
00:32:33.869 --> 00:32:38.589
murder rate goes up by 10%. Now, we're not exactly
570
00:32:38.680 --> 00:32:42.190
sure why the link between statewide gun ownership and murder
571
00:32:42.210 --> 00:32:45.650
is stronger for women than men. But women are more
572
00:32:45.690 --> 00:32:48.269
likely to be killed by someone they know, while men
573
00:32:48.430 --> 00:32:51.589
are killed in greater numbers and more often by a stranger.
574
00:32:52.759 --> 00:32:55.339
And one idea is that because men are often killed
575
00:32:55.380 --> 00:32:58.660
by strangers, their murders depend on a lot of other factors,
576
00:32:58.759 --> 00:33:02.000
like the overall level of violence in a state, while
577
00:33:02.039 --> 00:33:07.349
violence against women depends much less on these factors. That is,
578
00:33:07.890 --> 00:33:11.430
women are being abused everywhere, but the likelihood that one
579
00:33:11.450 --> 00:33:16.730
will die depends on who has access to guns. Conclusion.
580
00:33:17.450 --> 00:33:21.079
Guns don't affect the crime rate, but guns do make
581
00:33:21.160 --> 00:33:22.240
crimes more deadly.
582
00:33:22.799 --> 00:33:25.000
Chuck a gun in the middle of an assault and
583
00:33:25.039 --> 00:33:26.940
it's more likely that someone will die.
584
00:33:29.420 --> 00:33:33.039
So, when it comes to science versus guns, do the
585
00:33:33.079 --> 00:33:39.900
claims stack up? Bullet point number one, there are 2.5
586
00:33:39.900 --> 00:33:42.619
million defensive gun uses in America each year.
587
00:33:43.180 --> 00:33:44.160
The science says no.
588
00:33:46.509 --> 00:33:49.150
According to the research, the actual number is around 100,000
589
00:33:49.150 --> 00:33:53.430
and that includes defending property, you know, stuff in your house.
590
00:33:54.289 --> 00:33:59.039
Next bullet point, guns reduce crime. The science says no.
591
00:34:02.220 --> 00:34:04.180
Guns do not affect the crime rate.
592
00:34:04.720 --> 00:34:06.710
They don't make it go up. and they don't make
593
00:34:06.769 --> 00:34:07.390
it go down.
594
00:34:08.269 --> 00:34:13.179
But they do make altercations more deadly, which is why
595
00:34:13.440 --> 00:34:18.079
more guns, on average, means more murders. So if the
596
00:34:18.119 --> 00:34:21.699
data are pretty clear, why is there a big debate?
597
00:34:22.380 --> 00:34:26.889
Why all the fuss around guns? According to David Hemenway,
598
00:34:26.909 --> 00:34:29.710
this is more about human nature than science.
599
00:34:30.449 --> 00:34:32.710
Because the thing is, for people who have a gun.
600
00:34:33.280 --> 00:34:36.260
there is a very small chance that something will ever
601
00:34:36.320 --> 00:34:36.840
go wrong.
602
00:34:37.300 --> 00:34:41.219
Serious injuries are fairly rare. So people will say, oh,
603
00:34:41.219 --> 00:34:42.659
I had a gun in my house when I was
604
00:34:42.679 --> 00:34:47.360
growing up and nobody ever died. Great. But because the
605
00:34:47.380 --> 00:34:49.980
gun was in your house, there was three times the
606
00:34:50.039 --> 00:34:53.460
likelihood that somebody would die. But they think their evidence
607
00:34:53.519 --> 00:34:58.030
from their own experience is, boy, things are fine.
608
00:34:58.349 --> 00:35:01.929
And for gun owner Anthony Calandro, everything has been fine
609
00:35:01.969 --> 00:35:05.099
so far. So he thinks nothing needs to change.
610
00:35:05.800 --> 00:35:06.880
And why wouldn't.
611
00:35:06.760 --> 00:35:11.920
You personally want to give some guns up to make
612
00:35:11.980 --> 00:35:14.280
America safer, if that's what the studies showed?
613
00:35:14.400 --> 00:35:17.820
Because I am safe and my guns are not hurting anybody.
614
00:35:18.199 --> 00:35:20.130
Last time I checked, none of my guns ever left
615
00:35:20.170 --> 00:35:21.869
the safe and went out and committed crimes in the
616
00:35:21.889 --> 00:35:23.289
middle of the night while I was sleeping.
617
00:35:23.989 --> 00:35:27.730
If this perfect study came up and just found that
618
00:35:28.550 --> 00:35:31.429
that if you removed the guns in America, you would
619
00:35:31.469 --> 00:35:32.949
have a homicide rate that dropped.
620
00:35:33.289 --> 00:35:36.070
The perfect study. Would you want action to happen?
621
00:35:37.289 --> 00:35:39.849
Probably not. Probably not, because we all want to blame
622
00:35:39.889 --> 00:35:43.860
everybody else and not ourselves. It's okay to take his
623
00:35:43.980 --> 00:35:46.199
guns away, but not my guns. Come on, it's just
624
00:35:46.219 --> 00:35:47.519
like when you were a kid, you had a toy
625
00:35:47.539 --> 00:35:49.340
you didn't play with, and when your mom wanted to
626
00:35:49.380 --> 00:35:51.460
give it away, all of a sudden you wanted it again, right?
627
00:35:51.940 --> 00:35:54.179
I know that I'm safe, and I know I'm diligent
628
00:35:54.199 --> 00:35:55.989
with my guns, so nobody's taking my guns.
629
00:35:56.639 --> 00:35:59.679
And the thing is, while Anthony is trained and safe
630
00:35:59.719 --> 00:36:02.420
with his guns, and maybe you'd rather be in a
631
00:36:02.440 --> 00:36:05.639
dark alleyway with him than without him, the science tells
632
00:36:05.699 --> 00:36:08.300
us that the more people who think like Anthony, the
633
00:36:08.340 --> 00:36:12.610
more guns there are around. Ultimately, the more people die.
634
00:36:16.469 --> 00:36:17.929
That's Science vs Guns.
635
00:36:18.550 --> 00:36:21.190
Stay tuned after the break for a sneak peek at
636
00:36:21.269 --> 00:36:25.289
next week's show. This episode has been produced by Caitlin Kenney,
637
00:36:25.409 --> 00:36:26.989
Heather Rogers and Caitlin Sorey.
638
00:36:27.409 --> 00:36:30.030
Edited by Annie Rose Strasser and Alex Bloomberg.
639
00:36:30.619 --> 00:36:34.440
Production assistance by Austin Mitchell and fact-checking by Michelle Harris.
640
00:36:35.079 --> 00:36:39.110
Special thanks to Struthi Pinamaneni, Diane Wu and Stevie Lane.
641
00:36:39.699 --> 00:36:43.389
Sound design and music production by Martin Peralta and Matthew Boll.
642
00:36:43.750 --> 00:36:45.170
Music written by Bobby Lord.
643
00:36:57.489 --> 00:37:00.550
Next time on Science Versus, it's part two of our
644
00:37:00.630 --> 00:37:05.210
look at guns in America. We're doing science versus gun control.
645
00:37:05.670 --> 00:37:09.829
What saves lives and what doesn't? You might be surprised.
646
00:37:10.349 --> 00:37:14.289
And the real irony is that handgun crime doubled in Britain.
647
00:37:14.849 --> 00:37:20.829
Plus, we'll tell you what this sound is. I'm Wendy Zuckerman.
648
00:37:21.800 --> 00:37:22.489
Back to you next time.