From: Harvey Newstrom (newstrom@newstaffinc.com)
Date: Tue Jun 08 1999 - 14:16:13 MDT
I'm sorry, but these numbers for Florida are just not feasible. Looking at
today's paper, I find half a dozen crimes with legal handguns. There are
many more handgun crimes for which I can't tell the legal status of the gun,
or in some cases what kind of gun was used.
I don't see how the study can only find 18 crimes with licensed handguns,
when I can find eight such crimes in just one day, the first day I looked.
The cases are: Elderly mother shot daughter because she though she was
being put in a home, two kids shot dead in Orlando with their parents' guns
in two separate incidents, five kids arrested for bringing their parent's
handguns to school in separate incidents assumed to be a copycat of
Columbine. All of these were legal, licensed handguns.
The only conclusion I can reach is that this study is carefully wording
their statements to create misleading statistics. They say "but only 18
crimes involving firearms were committed by those with licenses". That
seems to count only those crimes committed by the licensed person themselves
with their own gun. It ignored licensed gun owners using other guns to
commit crimes, and it ignores licensed gun owners whose guns were taken away
from them and used by someone else in a crime. These types of cases are not
covered in either the pro or con discussions, but are merely ignored. The
statistic seems to support the idea that licensed handguns are rarely used
in crimes, but the facts they cite do not really support their case.
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