Hindsight from The New Gun Week March 1, 1999
The Antis Prove Liars Can Figure
by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor
There's an old saying related to the statistics of the gun-grabbers that dates back at least to the 1960s. I don't recall who said it first, but it still applies to the kind of misinformation fabricated in the anti-gun shops and circulated by their friends in the media.
The next time you pick up a newspaper or turn on a radio or TV set and hear claims that such and such data prove that guns, or gunmakers, cause such and such a result, remember this: "Figures don't lie, but liars figure."
I was reminded of this on Feb. 14 when I scanned the National Report section of The New York Times and found an article by Fox Butterfield headlined "To Rejuvenate Gun Sales, Critics Say, Industry Started Making More Powerful Pistols."
Note that Butterfield, or more likely the headline writer, qualified the statement by using "critics say." Nevertheless, the story used a bar-graph chart created by The Times from handgun production data obtained from the National Association of Federally Licensed Firearms Dealers. The chart graphic was headlined "More Powerful Guns" and carried a caption which read: "In the last 10 years, production of low-caliber weapons decreased, while production of more powerful weapons rose sharply. Here are the number of pistols produced each year, arranged in order of caliber."
Anti-Industry Book
The production data in the bar-graphs appears accurate and reflects not just a 10-year span, but the period of 1980 to 1996. I gathered that one was supposed to take the charts and statistics as proof of the claim in the headline, but I decided to take a closer look, since the whole article was based heavily on interpretations of that data made by Tom Diaz in his new book, Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America.
Diaz is a former staffer of the House Judiciary's Subcommittee on Crime who is now a senior policy analyst for the Violence Policy Center. Not surprisingly, his book is praised by the junior senator from New York, Charles Schumer, for whom Diaz worked on the House subcommittee. In his biographical notes, Diaz claims to be a former NRA member and one-time competitive shooter.
Diaz's book comes out at a time when the anti-gunners are mounting an all-out campaign, with the city suits against gunmakers, the Administration's agenda, anti-gun legislation in federal and state lawmaking bodies, and exploitation of the various propaganda engines hospitable to them.
Making a Killing addresses a whole range of subjects, all in ways that portray the gun industry as "the evil empire."
It also claims that firearms manufacturers and pro-gun organizations have targeted children and women in order to shore up sagging sales. The book develops themes which were first originated by the Violence Policy Center, Handgun Control Inc., and anti-gun researchers like Garen Wintemute, MD, an emergency room doctor and director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California at Davis. In a later issue, Gun Week will review and discuss Making a Killing at greater length. In this column, I want to discuss the artful interpretation of statistics to prove a thesis which is incorrect.
Contrary to what The Times article and Diaz claim, the spike in production of .38 Special and 9mm handguns in the early '90s is not consistent with the Diaz-Wintemute interpretation.
A close look at the numbers shows that production of .22 handguns also peaked at about the same time and held almost steady for .25 caliber pistols. The less significant increase in production of .45s is actually part of a more gradual upswing in numbers which began in the early 1980s. While production of handguns in all the selected calibers declined in 1995 and 1996, only a relatively greater drop in .25 cal. numbers appears out of the ordinary.
Butterfield's article does provide some opposing commentary to explain the increased interest in larger caliber handguns and the sudden decrease in overall handgun production numbers.
Richard Feldman, executive director of the American Shooting Sports Council, is quoted in remarks that suggest a better grasp of marketing and economics theories.
"Just like the fashion industry, the firearms industry likes to encourage new products to get people to buy its products," Feldman is quoted as saying.
"We design weapons, not for the bad guys, but for the good guys," Feldman continued. "The problem is, you can't design a product and insure who is going to get it."
Bill Davis, a wildlife biologists from the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, explained that declines in some gun sales were related to the encroachment of development on traditional hunting areas, competition from other sports for recreational time and dollars, and the recent "political incorrectness" of guns.
After having gone briefly head-to-head with Diaz at the Atlanta Fox TV outlet during the SHOT Show in early February, and having already discovered how the figures were being made to fit the anti-gun theories, I took a special interest in The Times article. Additionally, I couldn't help but feel that the timing of the release of his book and the appearance of the article in a major bell-cow newspaper was more than a coincidence.
The Brooklyn federal court jury's decision in the Hamilton v. Accu-Tek case had just been made public the previous week. And the city lawsuits against the industry had just gone into another round-robin of publicity. I felt that I should try to correct the record, so I wrote a letter to The Times, offering some different ways to look at the production numbers.
It's unlikely to be printed in the Letters to the Editor section of The Times, but here's what it said:
The Fox Butterfield article about claims that the gun industry started making more powerful guns to rejuvenate sales (The New York Times, National Report, Sunday, Feb. 14, Page 16) might have contributed more to the public debate if it had looked to sources better informed than Tom Diaz (Making a Killing) and the Violence Policy Center.
There are other explanations for the production statistics quoted in Butterfield's story. An alternative interpretation of the data more closely follows accepted economic theories of substitution.
In the mid-1980s, the focus of gun controllers shifted heavily to the small caliber .22 and .25 caliber pistols so often preferred for defense because of their concealability but saddled with the "Saturday night special" label of racist origin. Indeed, the state of Maryland created a Handgun Review Board to prohibit sales of the so-called Saturday night specials, and other state legislatures considered similar action. One consequence was that police agencies, law-abiding citizens and criminals shifted to larger caliber .38, 9mm and .45 caliber pistols. Indeed, Maryland Department of Justice statistics compiled for the 10 years after the law became effective indicate that the substitution theory applied to criminals; the rate of felonious use of handguns did not decrease after the "Saturday night special" ban as have been hoped, but the level of lethality increased as felons substituted larger, more powerful calibers.
Who's Really at Fault
At about the same time, state and local law enforcement agencies across the country were switching to 9mm, .45 cal. and the newer .40 S&W caliber pistols of higher capacity. Almost simultaneously, the US military adopted the 9mm Beretta, thereby increasing general interest in such calibers among the lawful gun-owning public as well. As should have been expected, gun manufacturers moved to satisfy this new market demand, as well as that created by the increasing number of states which were enacting more liberal concealed carry laws.
The ban on large capacity magazines which was enacted as part of President Clinton's 1994 Crime Bill also helped switch consumer interest to smaller, concealable but more powerful pistols and revolvers. The combination of more people wishing to legally carry concealed handguns combined with the statutory reduction in capacity of pistols pushed manufacturers to design and produce smaller pistols of larger caliber, with the maximum capacity allowed by law. I referred to these guns in a trend article in the Spring 1996 issue of Gun New Digest as the "Clinton compacts," because of his consequential influence in their design.
Diaz, the Violence Policy Center and others who supported "Saturday night special" bans and the 1994 magazine capacity restriction, probably are more responsible for the market shift to "more powerful pistols" than anybody in the gun industry.
Note: Gun News Digest is a quarterly magazine published by the Second Amendment Foundation. That particular issue is sold out of back copies. But if you want to request a copy of the article "Clinton Compact Pistols: How legislation and other outside factors affect firearms design," send a stamped self-addressed envelope to me at Gun Week.
The New Gun Week is published three times a month by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) on the 1st, 10th, and 20th. Hindsight is a commentary written by SAF President and Gun Week Executive Editor Joseph P. Tartaro. This commentary may be reprinted so long as credit is given to the author and the publication. For more information or to subscribe, write Gun Week, PO Box 488, Buffalo, NY 14209, or call 716-885-6408 Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST, or inquire on Compuserve to John Krull, Production manager-JohnSAF@Compuserve.com or gunweeksaf@broadviewnet.net
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