Gun control measure splits Americans

Debate revives questions on self-defense

beam from the intruder’s flashlight pierced the blackness of the bedroom, sweeping into Eric Martin’s eyes. As Martin rolled to the floor, reached into the nightstand drawer and drew out his 9 mm pistol, the 46year-old executive’s mind raced: Would this man harm Martin’s fiancee or her son? Was an accomplice outside waiting? What if he pulled the trigger and hit the sleeping 8-year-old across the hall?

In the weeks since the Connecticut school massacre, some of the most intense debate has swirled around how to keep guns from criminals without infringing on the ability of lawful gun owners, like Martin, to protect themselves and their families.

Self-defense is now the top reason gun owners cite for having a firearm, a new survey shows, a figure that has nearly doubled since 1999.

But even after years of study, there is little clarity on how, exactly, Americans use guns to protect themselves – or how often. Researchers known for sharp disagreement on the self-defense riddle say the answers may be shifting dramatically because of a steep drop in crime, an increase in guns and state laws giving owners more leeway to wield them.

Both advocates of gun rights and of gun control understand the issue’s importance in shaping the debate.

“When there’s a threat outside your door, the police aren’t going to be there ... the guys trained to save lives aren’t going to be there,” said Dom Raso, a commentator for the National Rifle Association’s online news channel, in a video posted recently by the gun rights group.

Legitimacy

And even while calling for new gun laws, President Barack Obama, too, acknowledged the legitimacy of self-defense in an April 8 speech when he recounted a conversation with his wife, Michelle, after campaigning in rural Iowa.

“Sometimes it would be miles between farms, let alone towns,” Obama said. “And she said, ‘You know, coming back, I can understand why somebody would want a gun for protection. If somebody drove up into the driveway and, Barack, you weren’t home, the sheriff lived miles away, I might want that security.’”

Since the 1990s, 18 states have passed stand-your-ground laws. At the same time, many more states eased the ability of gun owners to legally carry concealed weapons. The number of guns Americans own has also jumped to about 300 million, although researchers say the percentage of households with guns has declined.

Today, more gun owners than ever – 48 percent, according to a March poll by the Pew Research Center – cite self-protection as their primary reason for having a firearm. That has nearly doubled since 1999, and now far surpasses the declining number of gun owners who say they own a firearm primarily for hunting.

The figure confirms personal security as a major concern for most Americans, said Michael Dimock, director of Pew’s political polling unit.

With Americans split over whether guns more often save lives or jeopardize them, researchers have long parsed surveys of crime victims done in the 1990s, arguing over what the numbers mean.

Plummeted

But since then, crime has plummeted in the US. The rate of violent crimes including murder and assault fell by nearly half from 1992 to 2011, while the rate of reported property crime dropped 41 percent, data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation show.

That drop has researchers considering the possibility that many fewer Americans are drawing firearms to protect themselves.

“I’m pretty confident that whatever the number is, it did go down ... because overall crime went down,” said Gary Kleck, a Florida State University criminologist whose 1990s research, widely cited by gun rights activists, concluded that Americans drew their firearms in selfdefense up to 2.5 million times a year. That translates to about 3 percent of all gun owners during the course of a single year.

But the drop in crime means there are far fewer occasions now for Americans to use guns for self-protection, Kleck said, making it likely that the number of annual selfdefense usages of guns “should be about half as big now as they were back then, 20 years ago.”

Kleck’s most outspoken critic has long been David Hemenway, director of the Harvard University Injury Control Research Center. He contends Kleck’s survey vastly overinflates the number of times people use guns to defend themselves – for example, by estimating thousands during the course of break-ins, though many of those homeowners either didn’t own guns or remained asleep. Kleck, in turn, says Hemenway and others depend on surveys that significantly undercount self-defense gun use.

Hemenway, also relying on 1990s surveys, concluded Americans were then wielding guns for self-defense about 200,000 times annually.

Others researchers, analyzing the federal government’s National Crime Victimization Survey, say the number of times guns were drawn for selfdefense was even lower, about 80,000 times a year. (AP)