The horrific shootings and bombings in Colorado, which claimed the lives of 13 victims, have spurred calls for more gun control. President Clinton has again called for measures that would hold adults criminally liable for allowing access to guns and would require firearm safety locks. But it's worth noting that the attack occurred in one of the few places in Colorado where possessing a gun is illegal. Indeed, since 1995 federal law generally prohibits guns within 1000 feet of a school.
None of Mr. Clinton's proposals would have prevented the attackers' access to the propane and plastics used to make many of the bombs. And if the past school shootings are any indication, gun locks have not proved particularly effective.
Gun prohibitionists concede that banning guns around schools has not quite worked as intended but their response has been to call for more regulations of guns. Yet what might appear to be the most obvious policy may actually cost lives. When gun control laws are passed, it is law-abiding citizens, not would-be criminals, who adhere to them. Obviously the police cannot be everywhere, so these laws risk creating situations in which the good guys cannot defend themselves from the bad ones.
Other countries have followed a different solution. Over 20 years ago in Israel, there were many instances of terrorists pulling out machine guns and firing away at civilians in public. However, with expanded concealed-handgun use by Israeli citizens, terrorists soon found ordinary people pulling pistols on them. Suffice it to say, terrorists in Israel no longer engage in such public shootings.
The one recent shooting of schoolchildren in Israel further illustrates these points. On March 13, 1997, seven Israeli girls were shot to death by a Jordanian soldier while they visited Jordan's so-called Island of Peace. The Los Angeles Times reported that the Israelis had complied with Jordanian requests to leave their weapons behind when they entered the border enclave. Otherwise, they might have been able to stop the shooting, several parents said.
Hardly mentioned in the massive news coverage of the school-related shootings during the 1997/1998 school year is how they ended. Two of the four shootings were stopped by a citizen displaying a gun. In the October 1997 shooting spree at a high school in Pearl, Miss., which left two students dead, an assistant principal retrieved a gun from his car and physically immobilized the shooter while waiting for the police.
The school-related shooting in Edinboro, Pa., which left one teacher dead, was stopped only after a bystander pointed a shotgun at the shooter when he started to reload his gun. The police did not arrive for another 11 minutes.
Who knows how many lives were saved by these prompt responses?
Anecdotal stories are not sufficient to resolve this debate. Together with my colleague William Landes, I have compiled data on all the multiple-victim public shootings occurring in the United States from 1977 to 1995. Included were incidents where at least two people were killed or injured in a public place; to focus on the type of shooting seen in the Colorado rampage, we excluded gang wars or shootings that were the byproduct of another crime, such as robbery. The United States averaged 21 such shootings annually, with an average of 1.8 people killed and 2.7 wounded in each one.
So what can stop these attacks? We have examined a range of different gun laws, such as waiting periods, as well the frequency and level of punishment. However, while arrest and conviction rates, prison sentences, and the death penalty reduce murders generally, they have no significant effect on public shootings. There is a simple reason for this: Those who commit these crimes usually die in the attack. They are killed in the attack or, as in the Colorado shooting, they commit suicide. The normal penalties simply do not apply.
To be effective, we must deal with what motivates these criminals. In their deranged minds, their goal is to kill and injure as many people as possible. Most appear to do it for the publicity, which is itself related to the amount of harm they inflict. The best way to stop these attacks is to enact policies
which can limit the carnage. We find only one policy that effectively does this: the passage of right-to-carry laws.
The impact of these laws, which give adults the right to carry concealed handguns if they do not have a criminal record or a history of significant mental illness, was dramatic. Thirty-one states now have them in place. When states passed them during the 19 years we studied, the number of multiple-victim public shootings declined by 84 percent. Deaths from these shootings plummeted on average by 90 percent, injuries by 82 percent. To the extent that attacks still occur in states after these laws are enacted they tend to occur in those areas in which concealed handguns are forbidden.
Concealed handgun laws also have an important advantage over uniformed police in that would be attackers can either aim their initial assault at the officer or wait until he leaves the area. With concealed handgun laws, it is also not necessary that many people even carry a weapon.
Unfortunately, much of the public-policy debate is driven by lopsided coverage of gun use. Horrific events like the public-school shootings receive massive news coverage, as they should, but the 2.5 million times each year that people use guns defensively - including cases in which public shootings are stopped before they happen - are ignored.
The possibility of a law-abiding citizen carrying a concealed handgun is apparently enough to convince many would-be killers that they will not be successful. Without permitting law-abiding citizens the right to carry guns, we risk leaving victims as sitting ducks.
John Lott, the John M. Olin Law and Economics fellow at the University of Chicago School of Law, is the author of "More Guns, Less Crime," from the University of Chicago Press.
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