Re: Shooting of Japanese student did happen

Harvey Newstrom (newstrom@newstaffinc.com)
Wed, 9 Jun 1999 12:12:43 -0400

--
Harvey Newstrom <mailto://newstrom@newstaffinc.com> <http://newstaffinc.com>
Author, Consultant, Engineer, Legal Hacker, Researcher, Scientist.

Michael S. Lorrey <mike@lorrey.com> wrote:
>

> A kid taking a parent's gun without permission is a stolen gun.
Agreed.
> Handguns themselves are not licensed. The owners are licensed to carry
concealed
> weapons.
Agreed.
> Someone who is not licensed to carry concealed and does is committing
> an unlicensed act. If its not their gun and the owner did not give them
> permission to have it, it is theft, and is therefore criminally obtained.
Agreed. But this is an example of a legally-obtained gun being used in the commission of a crime. The study claimed that the incidence of this was very low. Careful reading of the study showed that they excluded stolen guns from being counted. Since most criminals have illegally-obtained guns, the study excluded almost all gun crime statistics from their numbers. I am not objecting to any specific claim of yours. I am merely pointing out that this study did not look at most crime numbers, but was carefully crafted to produce the unrealistic numbers being quoted. As I have said before, I am not anti-gun, but I am anti-misleading-statistics.