Subject: LENGTHY CONTRA COSTA, CALIF. ALERT & REPORT - TARGETING DECEIT As you may already be aware, "Taking Aim at Gun Dealers," a report commissioned by the Contra Costa County Health Dept. (and funded with federal and local tax dollars) was presented to the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors. The report promotes a ban on residential gun dealers and ammunition registration as well as the usual "wish list" of the prohibitionists. "Taking Aim" is flawed in its entirety - misinformation, fabricated citation, and gross deceptions. We have prepared a rebuttal report, "TARGETING DECEPTION," that may be helpful to those activists planning on attending next Tuesday's hearing before the Contra Costa County Planning Commission. I will be delivering "TARGETING DECEPTION" to the Supervisors and the media tomorrow. Please plan on attending the meeting. Contra Costa County Planning Commission McBrien Administration Bldg. 651 Pine Street, Room 107 Martinez CA Tuesday, June 6 7:30 PM Contact: Jerry Avalos 510-757-6257 ************************************************************************* * Edgar A. Suter, MD suter@crl.com* * National Chair, DIPR Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research,Inc.* ************************************************************************* Targeting Deceit - An Analysis of the Report on Residential Firearms Dealers and Ammunition Registration in Contra Costa County researched and compiled by Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research, Inc. a non-profit corporation 5201 Norris Canyon Road #140 San Ramon CA 94583 June 6, 1995 Executive Summary *** According to Richmond Police Department data, the number of homicides more than doubled after a 1989 ban on residential gun dealers and institution of stringent restrictions on storefront dealers. *** According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, eighteen years of national ammunition registration (required by the Gun Control Act of 1968 until repeal in 1986) "had no substantial law enforcement value." *** According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, about half of licensed gun dealers have no inventory and sell no guns. *** According to the National Institute of Justice, 93% of crime handguns are not obtained from gun dealers. *** According to the California Department of Justice, there are 6 major categories of Federal Firearms Licensees who do not need a California Certificate of Eligibility, so possession of a Federal Firearms License without a Certificate of Eligibility is not presumptive evidence of illegal gun sales. *** According to the California Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, residential firearms dealers are not a problem. *** According to state law, the funding and mechanisms already exist to identify and prosecute illegal gun sales and violations of gun dealer laws. *** According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, guns are the safest and most effective means of protection. *** According to the most recent of several large and carefully designed research studies, every year about 2.5 million Americans use guns to protect themselves and their families, saving an estimated 400,000 lives per year. *** Guns save ten times the number of lives lost to guns. Guns prevent injuries. Guns reduce medical costs because lives are saved and injuries are prevented. Guns save money because property is protected. *** According to the California Attorney General, it is illegal under California law for local jurisdictions to attempt to regulate firearms sales through the use of zoning ordinances. *** The proponents of a residential gun dealer ban have not presented even one example of criminal activity by Contra Costa County gun dealers, whether residential or store-front dealers. *** The proponents of a residential gun dealer ban have claimed, but presented no evidence that Contra Costa County gun dealers are illegally providing crime guns. *** The proponents of a residential gun dealer ban have not presented even one research study demonstrating that a ban on gun dealers results in a reduction in crime, violence, or accident because no such study exists. *** The proponents of a residential gun dealer ban claimed that a 1988 study by Sloan, Kellermann, et al. found a relationship between the number of gun dealers and the availability of crime guns, but that study made no mention whatsoever of gun dealers and drew no such conclusion. *** "Taking Aim at Gun Dealers: Contra Costa's Public Health Approach to Reducing Firearms in the Community " contains numerous and gross errors regarding key facts and laws. *** As Mr. Andres Soto, one of Taking Aim's authors, has advised one of our researchers, over $425,000 of tax money has been spent annually by the group that produced Taking Aim , yet the report concealed key facts, misrepresented existent law, made false research citations, used demonstrably false "data," and ignored the preponderance of existent data. Taking Aim 's claims Taking Aim claims that 1) residential firearms dealers are a cause of gun violence, 2) two-thirds of residential firearms dealers are operating illegally, 3)Jbanning residential firearms dealers would reduce violence and 4) ammunition registration would assist the police in solving crimes. Considerable evidence rebuts all four claims relevant in this local policy forum and this evidence is addressed here. Considerable evidence rebuts other of Taking Aim's claims more appropriately addressed in a national public policy forum, but that evidence on national matters is addressed elsewhere. eighteen years of ammunition registration in the US The federal Gun Control Act of 1968, among its many provisions affecting the entire nation, required the registration of all ammunition capable of being used in a handgun (based on the premise that most crime guns are handguns), even if the ammunition was to be used in a rifle. Because many rifles use cartridges (e.g. .22 Long Rifle, .357 Magnum, 9mm, .44 Magnum, etc.) that can also be used in pistols, the law effectively required the registration not only of handgun ammunition, but also the registration of much rifle ammunition. Though the ammunition registration requirement was in effect for eighteen years, federal agencies repeatedly testified that the requirement had "no substantial law enforcement value." In several Congressional hearings, ammunition registration was found useless as a law enforcement tool and an expensive and unjustifiable burden on law-abiding gun dealers and owners. For these reasons, as the Congressional record shows, the ammunition registration requirement was repealed by the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986. Additionally, the Congressional committees concluded that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms abused the rights of law-abiding citizens and focused more on entrapment of innocent gun collectors than the enforcement of laws against illegal gun trafficking and possession of guns by criminals. the regulation of California's gun dealers Existent federal and California law stringently regulates gun dealers and gun sales. There is extensive oversight and enforcement of those laws. The proponents of banning residential gun dealers speculate, but offer no evidence that Contra Costa County residential gun dealers are a significant source - or even a minor source - of crime guns. If illegal activity can be identified, existent law can be used to prosecute and punish the wrongdoers. Further, a readily available and formal opinion of the California Attorney General[1] states that under California Penal Code Section 53071 local agencies are prohibited from regulating gun sales. Though local jurisdictions may not legally regulate gun sales and gun dealers, the opinion encourages the participation of local jurisdictions in the oversight and enforcement of extensive existent law. Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research provides similar encouragement, noting that the necessary funding already exists. No new local laws are needed, desirable, or legal. The authors of Taking Aim, Soto, Feinsen and Kraut, stated "To date, none of the [local gun dealer] ordinances has [sic] encountered any significant legal opposition." Their confidence is undeserved and their opinion is debatable, particularly in view of the existent lawsuit and the Attorney General's opinion. It would seem a prudent exercise of fiduciary responsibility for the Contra Costa County Supervisors to await the outcome of the existent lawsuit, rather than enacting suspect ordinances and incurring additional avoidable expense to Contra Costa County's taxpayers. a fabricated citation Soto, Feinsen and Kraut claimed that a study by Sloan, Kellermann et al.[2] "has shown that firearm availability is directly related to the number of gun dealers in a community, and the laws that regulate their activities." This claim is a blatant falsehood. It can be readily and independently confirmed that the Sloan-Kellermann made no such study and reached no such conclusion. Their study does not mention gun dealers even once. There is no peer-reviewed research showing that restricting gun dealers results in crime or violence reductions. In fact, homicide in Richmond, CA more than doubled after the institution in 1989 of the type of residential firearm dealer restrictions proposed by the authors of Taking Aim. outdated data One of Taking Aim's authors, Mr. Andres Soto, has promoted a residential firearm dealer ban for at least one year. He has repeatedly been presented the question, "What data exists showing that residential gun dealers are a cause of crime or a source of crime guns?" One year and over $425,000 later, Mr. Soto has provided no such data. In view of Mr. Soto's ardent support for his proposal, it is difficult to imagine that he would conceal any supporting data if it existed or could be developed. Mr. Soto and his colleagues have presented outdated data suggesting that there are 700 Federal Firearms Licensees in Contra Costa County. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), as of 4/1/95 there are 437 Federal Firearms Licensees (including 5 pawnbrokers) in Contra Costa County.[3] Mr. Soto and his colleagues have presented outdated data stating that 238 of Contra Costa County's "700" Federal Firearms Licensees held California State Certificates of Eligibility (COE). Further, they falsely suggest that because some Licensees do not have COE that this is evidence of illegal gun sales. As of May 22, 1995, the Firearms Licensing and Permit Section of the California Department of Justice notes 137 COE holders in Contra Costa County,[4] calling attention to at least six categories (discussed in detail in the body of this report) of Federal Firearms Licensees who are not required under current law to possess COE. For this reason, having a Federal Firearms Licensee without a Certificate of Eligibility is not presumptive evidence of illegal gun sales or other wrongdoing. deceit Mr. Soto has been personally and repeatedly informed of the several exempt categories and informed why the disparity between the number of Federal Firearms Licensees and holders of COE cannot be honestly used as presumptive evidence of wrongdoing. As an author of Taking Aim, he has apparently ignored and concealed that information. It appears that he has knowingly attempted to deceive the public and the Contra Costa County Supervisors and used federal and local tax money in order to advance his personal political agenda. The dramatic drop in the numbers of legal gun dealers is evidence that existent law and enforcement is quite effectively reducing the number of Federal Firearms Licensees in Contra Costa County. Whether or not this reduction is desirable is debatable, but the observation of the reduction is indisputable. Still, neither Mr. Soto nor any of his co-authors have provided any evidence that a significant number - or even any - of the previous or current Contra Costa County gun dealers are or were engaged in illegal gun sales. no evidence of illegal activity by Contra Costa County gun dealers If Mr. Soto and his colleagues can belatedly provide evidence of illegal activity or if any illegal gun sales are discovered in the future, state laws and funding already exist to identify, apprehend, and prosecute violators at no cost to Contra Costa County. Among other provisions, California Penal Code Section 12071 imposes a fee upon COE applicants, creating a fund available to local agencies to ensure compliance with state laws regulating firearms dealers and firearms sales. To reiterate, if violations of state gun laws or gun dealer laws exist, the funding and mechanisms already exist to identify, apprehend, and prosecute the perpetrators. No new laws are necessary. No new expenditures are necessary or, from a taxpayer's perspective, desirable. epidemic of violence or pandemic of propaganda? Taking Aim noted that teens and young adults are at highest risk of homicide, but failed to note that, in every study that has examined the issue, more than two-thirds of homicide "victims" are drug dealers or their customers. We have become used to the hysterical fearmongering of the gun ban lobby, claims that all age groups, all socioeconomic groups, and all areas are suffering from an "epidemic of violence." As a review of the data detailed graphically in this report shows, the claims of an "epidemic" are false. The outbreak of violence is almost completely limited to inner city teens and young adults involved with the illicit drug trade. Of course, the rare mass murder and deaths of the minority of truly innocent victims, especially children, are highly sensationalized by the opportunistic gun ban lobby and a sympathetic media. It bears repeating - Good citizens who do not sell or use illicit drugs have very low risk of homicide. guns save lives, prevent injuries, reduce medical costs, and protect property As a matter of sensible and responsible public policy, it is important to note that guns are used protectively far more often than guns are misused. Every year about 2.5 million Americans use guns to protect themselves and their families, saving an estimated 400,000 lives per year.[5] Guns save ten times the number of lives lost to guns. Guns prevent injuries. Guns save money because property is protected. Guns reduce medical costs because lives are saved and injuries are prevented. Guns are the safest and most effective means of protection. criminals ignore gun laws, so disarming the innocent victims costs lives Gun laws do not affect the lawless. Those who ignore laws against rape, murder, and drug trafficking ignore existent gun laws and will ignore new gun laws. It is only good citizens who obey gun laws, so it is only good citizens, the innocent victims, who are inconvenienced or disarmed by gun laws. The only confidently predictable outcome of a residential gun dealer ban will be that the costs of doing business will be passed on to consumers, so guns in Contra Costa County will become more expensive. So, poor people will be disproportionately affected. More than the rich, the poor will be impeded or denied access to the safest and most effective means of protection. Disarming these innocent victims is a policy that costs more - not fewer - lives. Guns and the Public Health In 1662 the Armarium Urguentum recommended treatment of gunshot and other wounds: If the wound is large, the weapon with which the patient has been wounded should be anointed daily; otherwise, every two or three days. The weapon should be kept in pure linen and a warm place but not too hot, nor squalid, lest the patient suffer harm.[6] Three centuries later some public health "experts" are still treating the weapon instead of the wound. When it was discovered that mosquitoes carried yellow fever, public health experts did not dispatch armies of men with white coats and tweezers to pluck the mouth parts from mosquitoes. They sent armies of laborers to drain the swamps where the mosquitoes bred. If there is any kernel of truth in a public health approach to gun violence, it is that we should "drain the swamp" where the illicit drug trade has infected, primarily, the inner city. The drug trade has become so profitable that some immoral people will kill to reap those profits. We should eliminate the causes of violence - disrupted families, fatherless children adrift, media violence, a valueless, bureaucratically top-heavy educational "system," government policy that encourages dependency and discourages responsibility - and not waste time, effort, and money sending men with "white coats and tweezers" (or even blue coats and badges) to pluck guns from honest citizens, gun shops, or home gun dealers. The chief strategists of the gun ban lobby have attempted to reframe the debate as a "public health" issue rather than a crime issue[7] precisely because they have recognized, as much of the public has recognized, that two decades of criminological research has shown the bankruptcy of the claim that gun control reduces crime or violence.[8] Grassroots citizen activists have made legislators familiar with that research, making the legislative "front door" approach to gun bans largely unsuccessful, so gun ban strategists have recently concentrated upon the "back door" approach, advising tactics such as increasing bureaucratic paperwork for gun and ammunition dealers and purchasers, exorbitant taxation on dealers, guns, and ammunition, restrictive zoning ordinances, contrived application of environmental or consumer product safety statutes, and expanding liability litigation.[7] Using the "scatter-gun" approach, Taking Aim recommended virtually all of the Handgun Control Inc. party line. homicide and the illicit drug trade The only discernible kernel of truth in Taking Aim is that Contra Costa County is like the rest of the nation. Inner-city teens and young adults, drug dealers and drug users, are overwhelmingly and disproportionately the perpetrators[9] and victims[10] of violence in our society. Heinous crimes by callous and feralized youths no longer shock us. Far from being "innocent children," an alarming two-thirds of gun homicides are of teens and young adults in the drug trade.[11,12,13] With massive expenditures, increasing infringements of civil rights, and even the use of US Armed Forces, the War on Drugs has reduced casual, recreational drug use, but done little to reduce hard-core drug trade in the inner cities. It has been repeated so often that there is an "epidemic of violence," few question the claim or examine the actual data. The data show that gun accident fatality rates are hovering at an all time low[14] and analysis of recent homicide rates for which demographics are available show a relatively stable to slightly declining trend for every segment of American society except inner city teenagers and young adults primarily involved in illicit drug trafficking.[8,15] [See Appendix, Graphs 1-5] suicide Of the 38,000 annual American gun deaths, a majority are suicides. This has caused advocates of gun prohibition to note that gun bans result in lower _gun_ suicide rates, but they fail to note a compensatory increase in suicide from other accessible and lethal means of suicide (hanging, leaping, auto exhaust, etc.). It is also worth reviewing the high suicide rates in countries that have draconian gun bans. [See Appendix, Graphs 6 &7] The net result of gun bans? No reduction in _total_ suicide rates.[16] People who are intent in killing themselves find the means to do so. Are other means of suicide so much more socially acceptable that we should cede resources to measures that only shift the means of suicide, but do nothing to reduce total suicide deaths? international comparisons - a brief observation It is worth noting that most of the countries with which America is often compared, including Japan and the United Kingdom, have not only strict gun laws, but extensive limitations on other personal freedoms. Warrantless search and seizure, coerced confessions, police intrusions, prolonged incarceration without charges, and other infringements of protections that Americans often take for granted are the rule, not the exception in those countries.[17] It is also worth reviewing intentional fatality rates (homicide plus suicide), as a measure of violence, to discover that the United States compares quite favorably with Asian and European paragons of "gun control utopia." [See Appendix, Graphs 11] "taking aim" at gun dealers and truth, but not crime "Taking Aim at Gun Dealers" is aptly named; while taking aim at gun dealers, unfortunately the report does not take aim at the "black market" in guns or other major sources of crime guns. According to the National Institute of Justice, 93% of crime handguns are _not_ obtained from gun dealers,[18] so controls on gun dealers will have an expectedly small, if any, impact of crime guns. Neither does Taking Aim offer proposals that have any significant chance of reducing crime, violence, or injuries. Sadly, because it contains so many distortions and inaccuracies, the report should be entitled "Taking Aim at the Truth." The numerous misstatements of fact, of research, and of existent law are, at best, evidence of the incompetence of the authors and, at worst, evidence of willful intent to misrepresent the facts and to deceive public officials and the public. Taking Aim is a political hit piece that has cost the taxpayers dearly. Richmond CA a case study of gun dealer restrictions in Contra Costa County In 1989 the City Council of Richmond CA enacted an ordinance that, according to Richmond's City Attorney who drafted the ordinance, initially focused upon sales of handguns and "made it nigh impossible to engage in home occupation business in selling firearms."[19]. The ordinance, as detailed in Municipal Code of the City of Richmond Chapter 7.100 et seq. and Municipal Code of the City of Richmond Section 15.04.190, now completely bans residential gun dealers; requires a conditional use permit for store-front gun dealers; requires a police investigation beyond the already-required federal and state investigations; requires a permit application process in which the fees exceed current federal and state fees combined; enacted storage, display, and security requirements; enacted compliance inspections for Building, Fire, Health, and other Codes; and more. Following enactment of the 1989 ordinance, the number of homicides in Richmond more than doubled and has never returned to levels noted prior to the ordinance.[20] The percentage of homicides committed with a gun also leaped. Obviously, the restrictions on gun dealers resulted in no discernible benefit for public safety. Homicides in Richmond CA 1985-1994 Home gun dealer ban enacted in 1989 Year Gun Homicides Total Homicides 1985 11 (55%) 20 1986 17 (81%) 21 1987 10 (55%) 18 1988 24 (75%) 32 1989 33 (82%) 40 1990 25 (69%) 36 1991 47 (76%) 62 1992 39 (85%) 46 1993 51 (93%) 55 1994 28 (54%) 52 data courtesy of Sergeant Anthony Zanetelli, , Homicide Division, Richmond Police Department Ammunition Registration a case study of useless law The federal Gun Control Act of 1968, among its many provisions affecting the entire nation, required the registration of all ammunition capable of being used in a handgun (based on the premise that most crime guns are handguns), even if the ammunition was to be used in a rifle. Because many rifles use cartridges (e.g. .22 Long Rifle, .357 Magnum, 9mm, .44 Magnum, etc.) that can also be used in pistols, the law effectively required the registration not only of handgun ammunition, but also the registration of much rifle ammunition. Though the ammunition registration requirement was in effect for eighteen years, federal agencies repeatedly testified that the requirement had "no substantial law enforcement value." In 1975, Rex D. Davis, Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, testified to the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, Committee of the Judiciary, US Senate that: "[BATF is] on record to the extent that the sale of ammunition has not proven to be a very effective enforcement tool. Obviously they have no serial numbers or other identifying features beyond the fact of a brand name of the producer of the ammunition; a box of ammunition or an individual shell cannot be associated with the purchaser.... So, we have had a very limited number of cases in which a suspect was identified or the evidence against him was fortified through ammunition records."[21] In 1986, Edward T. Stevenson, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Enforcement and Operations, US Treasury Department, testified in support of repealing the ammunition registration requirements of the Gun Control Act of 1968: "More specifically, the bill would repeal the ammunition record keeping requirements of the Gun Control Act, that the Department has recognized, have no substantial law enforcement value, since ammunition is not generally traceable through licensee records."[22] In 1986, Stephen Higgins, Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, in a report to his superiors at the Department of the Treasury stated: "The Bureau [of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] and the Department [of the Treasury] have recognized that the current recordkeeping requirements for ammunition have no substantial law enforcement value. In addition, their elimination would remove an unnecessary recordkeeping burden from licensee. Felons and other proscribed persons would still be prohibited from transporting or receiving ammunition in commerce."[23] Besides its uselessness in law enforcement, the Department of the Treasury and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms supported repeal of the ammunition registration requirements because they felt the requirement interfered with "the rights of law-abiding citizens." They noted that ammunition registration placed "undue or unnecessary Federal restrictions or burdens on law-abiding citizens with respect to the acquisition, possession, or use of firearms."[22 (p. 1137)] We find it remarkable that the authors of Taking Aim have been heavily funded with tax money for several years, yet were either unaware of - or chose to conceal - that this nation conducted an eighteen year experiment with ammunition registration, that ammunition registration was found to be virtually useless to law enforcement and an undue burden on law-abiding citizens. The California Attorney General believes that an ammunition registration ordinance would be allowable under current California preemption statutes,[1] but the authors of Taking Aim have offered no data or studies explaining why a county ammunition ordinance would be an effective law enforcement tool when, in eighteen years, national ammunition registration was not an effective tool. In the face of eighteen years of hard evidence of the burden on law-abiding citizens and the ineffectiveness in law enforcement, the authors of Taking Aim owe us more than their unsupported opinion. Fundamental Flaws "costs only" analysis ignores the lives saved by guns Taking Aim makes much of the costs of gun violence, but did not even make a perfunctory effort to assess how many lives are saved by guns. This, of course, is a familiar problem with the political tracts of the anti-self-defense lobby. Since Sarah[24] and Jim Brady[25] of Handgun Control Inc. have denied the legitimacy of self-defense with a gun, their refusal and the refusal of their devotees to discuss the millions of Americans who have protected themselves with guns is understandable. The 1990 Harvard Medical Practice Study[26] showed that doctors' negligence kills 180,000 Americans every year,[27] five times the number of Americans who die from guns, but doctors are not deemed a deadly public menace because they saves millions more lives than they take --- and so it is with guns. A conservative estimate from the largest scale, methodologically sound study to date, the study by Kleck and Gertz, suggests that there are 2.5 million protective uses of guns by adults annually.[5] As many as 65 lives are protected by guns for every life lost to a gun. For every gun tragedy sensationalized, dozens are averted by guns, but go unreported. Whether or not "newsworthy," honest scientific method begs accounting of the benefits of guns - enumeration of the lives saved, the injuries prevented, the medical costs saved, and the property protected. Such an accounting is absent from Taking Aim. The protective benefits of guns - and the politicized "science" that has been used to underestimate or totally deny those benefits and to exaggerate the costs of guns - have been extensively reviewed. [8,16,28,29,30,31,32,33,34] As ten studies have shown, in any year, about 1 to 2.5 million Americans use guns to protect themselves and their families. and about 400,000 of those defenders believe that they would almost certainly have lost their lives if they had not had a gun for defense.[5,16] Even if only one-tenth of those defenders are correct, the lives saved by guns would still be more numerous than the lives lost to guns. The flaws in the only study to suggest otherwise, the outlier data of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), have been discussed elsewhere.[5,35] Briefly, the NCVS is a study of victimization, not defense, and, by its design, undercounts the most numerous types of defensive gun use (e.g. women protecting against domestic attacks). As additional sources of undercount error, the NCVS is the only such survey conducted by law enforcement and the only study in which the respondents are denied anonymity. When any statistic, such as the NCVS count of defensive gun use, is at odds with every other measurement, it is discarded.[5] Nonetheless, even those US Bureau of Justice Statistics samples show that defense with a gun results in fewer injuries to the defender (17.4%) than resisting with less powerful means (knives, 40.3%; other weapon, 22%; physical force, 50.8%; evasion, 34.9%; etc.) and in fewer injuries than not resisting at all (24.7%).[16 (Table 4.4)] Guns are the safest and most effective means of self defense. This is particularly important to women, the elderly, the physically challenged, those who are most vulnerable to vicious and bigger male predators. [See Appendix, Graphs 8 & 9] These benefits can be weighed against the human costs of guns - recently about 38,000 gun deaths from all causes and about 65,000 additional serious injuries annually (the remainder of gun injuries were so minor as to require no hospital treatment at all). Totaling all gun deaths, injuries, and criminal mischief with guns leads to a generous estimate of about 1 million criminal misuses of guns annually (involving less than one-half of 1% of America's more than 200-million guns)[16,30] So, all things considered, the human benefits of guns at least equal and likely exceed the costs of guns to society by a factor of 2.5. Economic Analysis The actual economic cost of medical care for gun violence is approximately $1.5-billion per year[36] - about 0.16% of America's $900-billion annual health care costs. To exaggerate the costs of gun violence, the advocates of gun prohibition routinely include estimates of lost lifetime earnings - assuming that gangsters, drug dealers, and rapists would be as socially productive as teachers, factory workers, and other good Americans - to generate inflated claims of $20-billion or more in "costs."[36] One recent study went so far as to claim the "costs" of work time lost while workers gossip about gun violence.[37] What evidence is there that the average homicide decedent can be fairly compared to the average worker, that average wages should be attributed to homicide victims? What fraction of homicide victims are actually "innocent children" who strayed into gunfire? Far from being pillars of society, more than two-thirds of gun homicide "victims" are involved with drug trafficking or have evidence of ante-mortem illicit drug use.[11,12] In one study, 67% of 1990 homicide "victims" had a criminal record, averaging 4 arrests for 11 offenses.[12] Such active criminals cost society not only untold human suffering, but also an average economic toll of $400,000 per criminal per year before apprehension and $25,000 per criminal per year while in prison."[38] It is not a slander on the few truly innocent - and highly sensationalized - victims to note that the overwhelming predominance of homicide "victims" are as predatory and socially aberrant as the perpetrators of homicide. Cost-benefit analysis is necessarily a bit hardhearted, and, though repugnant for physicians to consider monetary savings alone, the advocates of gun prohibition routinely force us to address the "costs" of gun violence. So, we are forced to notice that, in cutting their violent "careers" short, the gun deaths of those predators and criminals may actually represent an economic savings to society on the order of $4.5 billion annually - three times the declared "costs" of guns. Those annual cost savings are only a small fraction of the total economic savings from guns, because the $4.5 billion does not include the additional financial savings from the innocent lives saved, injuries prevented, medical costs averted, and property protected by guns. If the "average cost of medical treatment for a gunshot wound is $33,000," as Taking Aim claims, then $33,000 is saved for each gunshot wound prevented when a defender uses a gun for protection. ***If we applied the prohibitionists' methods[37] to compute the savings by guns, we would find that the annual savings approach $1/2 trillion, about 10% of the US Gross Domestic Product.*** We perform this exercise only to demonstrate that all such "virtual reality" estimates of "indirect" costs and savings are inflated and to condemn them all as meaningless. Whether by human or economic measure, we conclude that guns offer a substantial net benefit to our society. Some "quality of life" benefits, such as the feeling of security and self-determination that accompany protective gun ownership, are not easily quantified. There is no competent research that suggests making good citizens' access to guns more difficult (whether by bureaucratic paperwork, exorbitant taxation, zoning laws, contrived application of environmental or consumer product safety statutes, reframing the debate as a "public health" issue, or outright bans - the current tactics of the anti-self-defense lobby[7]) will reduce violence. No matter what tactics are used by the anti-self-defense lobby to incrementally achieve citizen disarmament, it is only good citizens and honest gun dealers who comply with gun laws, so it is only good citizens who are disarmed by gun laws. As evidenced by jurisdictions with the most draconian gun laws (e.g. New York City, Washington, DC, etc.), disarming these good citizens _before_ violence is reduced causes more harm than good. Disarming these good citizens costs more - not fewer - lives. Police Protection Criminals do not announce their intentions and police resources are stretched, so it is unsurprising that the police rarely arrive in time to prevent death or injury from much violent crime. Many are surprised, however, to discover that the police do _not_ have any legal obligation - not even a theoretical obligation - to provide protection to individuals, even if in immediate danger. The police are only obligated to provide some unspecified level of general protection to the community at large.[39,40,41,42,43 ] It is a bitter irony indeed that, at the same time the police are relieved of responsibility for our protection, we are forced to depend upon their protection. We are often told that we may not and should not have the same tools that the police say they _need_ to protect themselves from the same criminals who threaten us. Gun ban advocates routinely portray good citizens with guns as inept and dangerous, but good citizens use guns about seven to ten times as frequently as the police to repel crime and apprehend criminals[16] and they do it with a better safety record than the police. About 11% of police shootings kill an innocent person - about 2% of shootings by citizens kill an innocent person. The odds of a defensive gun user killing an innocent person are less than 1 in 26,000.[44] Citizens intervening in crime are less likely to be wounded than the police.[44] We can explain why the citizen record is better than the police (the police usually come upon a scene in progress where it may not be clear who is attacker and who is defender; also, the police, unlike defenders, must close to handcuff the arrestee), but the simple truth remains: citizens have an excellent record of protecting themselves, their families, and their communities. Impeding the access of good citizens to the safest and most effective means of defense, guns, by the measures proposed in Taking Aim would cost more - not fewer - lives. Disarming good citizens, the innocent victims, is _not_ a policy that saves lives. failing to target the source of crime guns Taking Aim makes much of residential gun dealers, but did not even make a perfunctory effort to present any evidence whatsoever that even one such dealer illegally provided a single crime gun. It is unlikely that the authors of Taking Aim could develop any significant data suggesting residential gun dealers are a significant source of crime guns, because residential and store-front gun dealers combined account for only a small percentage of crime guns. The largest scientific study of the source of crime guns was conducted by the National Institute of Justice, a branch of the US Department of Justice. The report of that study showed only 7% of criminals' handguns are obtained from retail sources.[18] For this reason, controls on retail gun sales cannot be expected to reduce criminals' access to guns much, if at all. As the experience with the Brady Law shows, denial of retail gun sales to felons only diverts criminals into the "black market" or other sources of crime guns. Ironically, since residential gun dealers generally conduct few transactions and invite customers into their homes, they are more likely to know and trust their customers than the average store-front gun dealer. President Clinton and his administration have spotlighted violent crime and demanded draconian gun restrictions as a "solution." The administration's lack of action, however, belies its rhetoric. Senators Orrin Hatch and Robert Dole have inquired of Attorney General Janet Reno why, according to the Administrative Office of the US Courts, prosecutions have actually declined 5% overall and, in the case of gun crimes, prosecutions have declined 23%, under the Clinton-Reno administration).[45] Despite exaggerated claims of the success of the Brady Law,[46] the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) has acknowledged that the little existent evidence is only anecdotal.[47] If fact, almost all of Brady Law background check discoveries of "thousands of _possible_ felons" are errors. Many are innocents whose names are similar to felons. Misdemeanor traffic convictions, citations for fishing without a license, and failure to license dogs are the types of trivial crimes that resulted in a computer tag that labeled the others as "potential" felons.[48] Of the minuscule number of _actual_ felons identified by Brady Law background checks, the Department of Justice has discovered four cases that were "prosecutable," but not one has been prosecuted.[49] Instead, those felons are merely displaced into the "black market." In such circumstance, the minimal expected benefit of the Brady Law diminishes to no benefit at all. Instead of heaping more onerous restrictions upon good citizens or law-abiding gun dealers (residential or otherwise) who are not the source of crime guns, is it not more reasonable - though admittedly more difficult - to target the real source of crime guns? It is time to admit the futility of attacking the _supply_ of _legal_ guns to interdict the less than 1% of the American gun stock that is used criminally. Instead, we believe enforcement effort should focus on targeting the long illegal "black market" in stolen guns. It is equally important to reduce the _demand_ for _illicit_ guns and drugs, most particularly by presenting attractive life opportunities and career alternatives to the inner-city youth that are overwhelmingly and disproportionately the perpetrators and victims of violence in our society. Disarming violent criminals is a policy that saves lives. Targeting the "black market" in guns is a policy that saves lives. State Preemption and "Home Rule" During the debate on the Brady Bill, Handgun Control Inc. and others in the gun prohibition lobby claimed that preemptive federal law was necessary because "home rule" resulted in different state laws on waiting periods and background checks, a "patchwork" of laws. They claimed that the "patchwork" made gun laws ineffective. Since state preemption laws have been an impediment to passage of more restrictive gun laws like those proposed by Taking Aim, the gun prohibition lobby sees no problem with a "patchwork" of laws and, in fact, as part of its inaptly-named "Campaign to Protect Sane Gun Laws," Handgun Control Inc. proposes the dismantling of uniform state gun laws. It would appear that, logic and consistency notwithstanding, the gun prohibition lobby would like to have it both ways. Innocent gun owners traveling to an unfamiliar part of the state should not be snared in a net of conflicting gun laws. We do not wish to see good citizens prosecuted or incarcerated because of non-violent technical violations of local laws of which such travelers could not possibly have any knowledge. Misrepresenting the Facts Is it too easy to buy guns or be a gun dealer in California? Taking Aim - "Minimal federal and state regulation of firearms sales, and lax enforcement of these regulations, has contributed to an explosive growth in the number of gun dealers..." Fact - Contrary to the claim of "lax enforcement," two US Senate subcommittees investigated the tactics used by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms [hereinafter, "BATF"] and found otherwise. A report to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 1982 found: "Based upon these hearings it is apparent that enforcement tactics made possible by current federal firearms laws are constitutionally, legally, and practically reprehensible. Although Congress adopted the Gun Control Act [of 1968] with the primary objective of limiting access of felons and high-risk groups to firearms, the overbreadth of the law has led to neglect of precisely this area of enforcement.... The Subcommittee received evidence that BATF has primarily devoted its firearms enforcement efforts to the apprehension... of individuals who lack all criminal intent and knowledge. Agents anxious to generate an impressive arrest and gun confiscation quota have repeatedly enticed gun collectors into making a small number of sales - often as few as four - from their personal collections Although each of the sales was completely legal under state and federal law, the agents then charged the collector with having "engaged in the business" of dealing in guns without the required license. Since existing law permits a felony conviction upon these charges even where the individual has no criminal knowledge or intent numerous collectors have been ruined by a felony record carrying a potential sentence of five years in federal prison. Even in cases where the collectors secured acquittal, or grand juries failed to indict, or prosecutors refused to file criminal charges, agent of the Bureau have generally confiscated the entire collection of the potential defendant upon the ground that he intended to use it in that violation of the law. In several cases, the agents have refused to return the collection even after acquittal by jury. "The defendant, under existing law is not entitled to an award of attorney's fees, therefore,...an individual who has spent thousands of dollars establishing his innocence of the criminal charges is required to spend thousands more... without hope of securing any redress. This, of course, has given the enforcing agency enormous bargaining power in refusing to return confiscated firearms. Evidence received by the Subcommittee on the Constitution demonstrated that Bureau agents have tended to concentrate upon collector's items rather than "criminal street guns." "The Subcommittee on the Constitution has also obtained evidence of a variety of other misdirected conduct by agents and supervisors of the Bureau. In several cases, the Bureau has sought conviction for supposed technical violation based upon policies and interpretations of law which the Bureau had not published in the Federal Register.... In these and similar areas, the Bureau has violated not only the dictates of common sense, but of 5 U.S.C. Section 552, which was intended to prevent "secret lawmaking" by administrative bodies. "The practices, amply documented in hearings before this Subcommittee, leave little doubt that the Bureau has disregarded rights guaranteed by the constitution and laws of the United States "It has trampled upon the second amendment by chilling exercise of the right to keep and bear arms by law-abiding citizens. "It has offended the fourth amendment by unreasonably searching and seizing private property. "It has ignored the Fifth Amendment by taking private property without just compensation and by entrapping honest citizens without regard for their right to due process of law."[50] So, in 1982 it was the unanimous conclusion of a US Senate subcommittee that, far from lax, enforcement of gun laws has been overzealous and that, rather than targeting the real source of crime guns, innocent citizens have been targeted to inflate arrest and seizure quotas. It is obvious to even the most casual observer that, since 1982, laws have become more stringent and BATF abuses more common and more deadly. Much press has vilified low-volume gun dealers, pejoratively named "kitchen table" dealers, yet the claim that such dealers are the source of a "proliferation of guns on our streets" is contradicted by data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF). Those data show that 43% of gun dealers had no inventory and sold no guns at all.[51] Obviously Federal Firearm Licensees who have no guns and sell no guns are not a source of, as the hysterical sound bite goes, "a proliferation of guns on the street." The Congressional Record reports the testimony of abuse of law-abiding gun collectors and gun dealers. Congressional testimony before enactment of the Firearms Owner Protection Act of 1986 [FOPA] documented that the high number of low-volume gun dealers is a direct result of BATF policy. As previously cited, prior to FOPA the BATF prosecuted gun collectors who sold as few as four guns per year at gun shows, claiming that they were unlicensed, and therefore illegal, gun dealers. To avoid such harassment and prosecution, thousands of American gun collectors became, at least on paper, licensed gun dealers. Now the BATF and the anti-self-defense lobby decry the paperwork monster BATF created. Fact - California has the most stringent gun laws of any US state. California has the most stringent regulation and oversight of gun dealers, the longest waiting period in the nation, the most extensive gun ownership and purchase records of any state, training requirements and testing before allowing hunting or the purchase of handguns, bans on military style firearms, and so on. Interestingly with each increment of lengthened waiting period, increased crime rates followed, skyrocketing well beyond the national average after California's waiting period was extended to 15 days. The graph on the following page shows marked increases in California's homicide rate (compared with the rest of the nation, "US-Cal. Murder Rate") with each increase in California's waiting period. This is further evidence suggesting that restrictive gun laws only disarm good citizens, the innocent victims. Restrictive gun laws do not appear to save lives. Is there any control over California gun dealers? Taking Aim - "The applicant... identifies any local zoning prohibitions or permit requirements. The applicant also certifies that he or she is not a felon or ex-felon, fugitive, drug addict, undocumented immigrant, under 21 years of age, mentally ill, or dishonorably discharged from the military... no proof is required." Fact - Besides providing two sets of fingerprints, in an investigation that takes two months or more, all applicants for a Federal Firearms License [FFL] undergo an FBI background check and are required to give evidence that the Chief Law Enforcement Officer [CLEO] for their business location has been notified of the applicant's intent to engage in the gun business so that the CLEO may investigate the applicant further and to ensure that all local requirements are met. Additionally, in "high crime" areas like Contra Costa County, each and every FFL applicant is personally interviewed by a BATF Inspector to ensure that the applicant is in compliance with all state, federal, and local laws before the license is issued. Fact - Federal Firearms Licensees are subject to unannounced inspections by federal and state agents. They are routinely inspected for license renewals, any time a crime gun is traced to a dealer, and any time there is reason to suspect illegal activity. Fact - California gun dealers are also required to undergo additional fingerprinting, a criminal background check (California disqualifies applicants for misdemeanors that are not disqualifying under federal law), mental health record check, restraining order check, and to provide a copy of a local business license and California Board of Equalization Seller's Permit, and evidence that the dealer is in compliance with all local laws. All these materials and hefty fees are necessary to obtain the California Certificate of Eligibility (COE). Are residential gun dealers selling guns illegally? Taking Aim - Based on the observation that not all Federal Firearms Licensees have a COE, Taking Aim concluded that "...two thirds of gun dealers in the county (66%) are selling guns without reporting their sales to the state." Fact - Federal Firearms Licensees who are inactive and conducting no business (averaging 43% of gun dealers nationally) are not required to possess a COE. Fact - Importers, manufacturers, wholesalers, gunsmiths, and Type 03 (Curios and Relics) Federal Firearms Licensees are not required to possess a COE. Bankruptcy trustees, estate executors, and others who may be required to transfer firearms need neither the FFL or the COE. Similarly, holding an FFL but not a Board of Equalization Seller's Permit is not evidence that, as Taking Aim claimed, "sales taxes are probably not being collected on a significant number of gun purchases...." Is existent law regarding illegal gun sales too lax? Taking Aim - "Failure to comply with state [gun dealer Certificate of Eligibility] law is punishable as a misdemeanor." Fact - Violations of the California Certificate of Eligibility law are felonies with hard time penalties prescribed. Fact - If a Federal Firearms Licensee is engaging in retail gun sales without holding a valid Certificate of Eligibility, they are committing Federal and state felonies. Prosecute them. Convict them. Punish them. Fact - If a Federal Firearms Licensee is selling guns to minors, felons, addicts, or other disqualified buyers, they are committing Federal and state felonies. Prosecute them. Convict them. Incarcerate them. Fact - If a Federal Firearms Licensee is engaging in "straw sales" (knowingly selling a gun to a disqualified buyer by using a "qualified" intermediary), they are committing Federal and state felonies. Prosecute them. Convict them. Incarcerate them. Has Mr. Soto concealed the truth? Taking Aim - "The issue of non-compliance is often cited at public hearings as one of the primary reasons that localities need to begin developing and enforcing restrictions on dealers." Fact -Mr. Andres Soto was present at the first such hearings in Contra Costa County (Lafayette, June 1994). At the Lafayette hearings, Mr. Soto was present when several citizens testified as to the numerous legitimate reasons why not every FFL held a COE. The authors and contributors to this report personally and repeatedly informed Mr. Soto of the several exempt categories and informed him why the disparity between the number of Federal Firearms Licensees and holders of COE cannot be honestly used as presumptive evidence of wrongdoing. In less than a year has Mr. Soto forgotten the repeated reminders? Why has he failed to acknowledge or explore these reasons?... was $425,000 per year in funding insufficient to obtain accurate or current data?... or has Mr. Soto knowingly concealed the truth in order to fan the flames of anti-gun hysteria and to advance his personal political agenda using tax money? Who is really costing us money? Taking Aim - "The high number of dealers who have not paid for business licenses [73%] represents a significant loss of revenue to local governments." Fact - Though presented as fact, this claim is highly speculative. Even if none of the FFLs were gunsmiths, collectors, or inactive, the loss of revenue to local governments would amount to approximately $13,000 which is less than 3% of Mr. Soto's $425,000plus annual budget - for a department that was commissioned to provide, but did not provide, accurate information on gun violence. Is there an individual right to keep and bear arms? Taking Aim - "The Miller (1939) decision confirmed that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual the right to bear arms, but only a collective right through a reasonable relationship to a state militia." Fact - There is no US Supreme Court case that even once mentions a "collective right." In fact, the Supreme Court has explicitly acknowledged a _pre-existent_ ("pre-existent," rather than "granted" by the Constitution) _individual_ right[52,53,54,55,56] to keep and bear _military-style_[56]weapons. The familiar contention that there is no individual right to arms derives partly from a common misunderstanding of the constitutional "militia." Advocates of "broad-based gun control,"[57,58,59] including the authors of Taking Aim, emphasize merely the mention of "militia," but historians, legal scholars, and Supreme Court Justices agree that, "The 'militia' was the entire adult male citizenry," so that "one purpose of the Founders having been to guarantee the arms of the militia, they accomplished that purpose by guaranteeing the arms of the individuals who made up the militia."[60], Adherents of the "states' right only" theory of the Second Amendment assert their position without examining the implications of their own theory. A full understanding of the "states' right only" theory leads to conclusions that will make its proponents even more uncomfortable than if they accepted the individual right theory.[61] An honest application of the "states' right only" theory, according to the rationale advanced by its own adherents,[57-59] demands not merely armed state militias, but full military parity for the states. In these times of tension between the states and the federal government, gun prohibitionists should rethink the advisability of promoting a theory that would return the US to armed confederacy. Further, as Reynolds and Kates discuss, citizen disarmament would not necessarily be an outcome of an honest application of the "states' right only" theory of the Second Amendment.[61] That the Supreme Court has acknowledged the individual right, but done little to protect that right, is reminiscent of the sluggishness of the Supreme Court in protecting other civil rights before those rights became politically fashionable. It has taken over a century for the Supreme Court to meaningfully protect civil rights guaranteed to African-Americans in the Fourteenth Amendment. The claim that "no court has ever overturned a gun law on Second Amendment grounds" is not only false (Nunn v. State[62] and in re: Brickey[63] overturned gun laws on Second Amendment grounds), but is also the equivalent of a morally indefensible claim in 1950 that "no court has ever overturned a segregation law." Supreme Court decisions have been thoroughly reviewed in the legal literature. Since 1980, of thirty-nine law review articles, thirty-five note the Supreme Court's acknowledgment of the individual right to keep and bear arms[64] and only four claim the right is only a collective right of the states (three of these four are authored or co-authored by employees of the antiselfdefense lobby and the fourth is authored by a politician).[65] So, the substance of "states' right only" scholarship consists of four articles by employees and politicians of the gun ban lobby and an offhand remark in a television interview with former US Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger: "[I]f I were writing the Bill of Rights now, there wouldn't be any such thing as the Second Amendment.... This has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word, _fraud_, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."[66] Interestingly, in 1982, while Burger was US Supreme Court Chief Justice, the Morton Grove case[67] offered the Court an opportunity to speak definitively on the right to keep and bear arms, but the Court "denied cert," declining to accept the case or to speak on the issue. Since a majority of Supreme Court Justices declined to hear the Morton Grove case, perhaps they found Burger's claim of "fraud" unconvincing and were content with the existent case law supporting the individual right to keep and bear arms. One would never guess such a precedential and scholarly mismatch from the casual misinterpretations of the right in the medical literature and popular press. The error of the gun prohibitionist view is also evident from the fact that their "states' right only" theory is exclusively an invention of the twentieth century "gun control" debate - a concept of which neither the Founding Fathers nor any pre-1900 case or commentary seems to have had any inkling.[68,69,70,71,72,73] Though the gun control debate has focused on the Second Amendment, legal scholarship also finds support for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in Ninth Amendment "unenumerated" rights,[74] Fourteenth Amendment "due process" and "equal protection" rights,[75,76,77,78] and natural rights theory.[73] Also, in the absence of explicit delegated powers, the Tenth Amendment guarantees that the powers are reserved to the States and the people,[79] making several provisions of the Brady Law unconstitutional.[80] US v. Miller The US Supreme Court's decision in the Miller case is often misrepresented. The phrase "collective right" or similar verbiage appears nowhere in the Miller decision. The Supreme Court's decisions uniformly recognize the Second Amendment as an individual right, from the nineteenth century decisions through the 1990 Verdugo-Urquidez[81] in which the US Supreme Court, expressly referring to the Second Amendment, as well as the First and Fourth, held that "the people" means "citizens" and is to be construed alike wherever it appears in the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court's only extended treatment of the Second Amendment is the 1938 U.S. v. Miller case.[56] No brief was filed to support the individual right view because Miller died before the case was heard in the Supreme Court. Unfortunately the language of the Miller decision is narrow and the case's full import has proved difficult to comprehend, especially for readers antipathetic to the individual right view which the Court accepted. The facts of the case must be reviewed. Miller had been charged with possession of a "sawed-off" shotgun for which he had not paid the tax required under the National Firearms Act of 1934. Miller filed a "bare bones" motion asserting that the Act violated the Second Amendment. The federal district court agreed and dismissed the case. The United States pursued an appeal. Miller died before the appeal reached the Supreme Court. The Miller case's salient points may be briefly summarized: (1) Reading of the brief filed by the United States shows that it urged the collective right view on the Supreme Court,[82] which failed to accept that view even though no brief was filed opposing it; (2) On the contrary, the Court accepted that Miller could invoke the Second Amendment to attack the constitutionality of a federal tax on sawed-off shotguns, even though Miller was not a member of the National Guard or any formal state militia; but (3) As Miller had failed to present evidence in the _trial_ court that a sawed-off shotgun was a militia-type weapon, the Court remanded the case to the _lower_ court where Miller would have the chance to present any such evidence that he might have. (The Court was not aware of Miller's death; the Court knew only that Miller had not filed a brief supporting his position). In other words, the Miller case accepts that ordinary citizens may invoke the Second Amendment against gunlaws and _upheld an individual right to own military weapons._ The Supreme Court had only stated they had no knowledge of whether or not a "sawed-off" shotgun was such a protected military weapon. The Miller case does indicate that there are types of arms which the Second Amendment does not protect, namely, weapons unsuitable for military service. Conclusion and Recommendations Taking Aim, as we have shown, is flawed in its entirety. It is full of misinformation, half-truths, and gross deceptions. It honestly represents neither the law, nor research. It misrepresents the only peer-reviewed research it cites, then ignores decades of other readily available research on guns and gun violence. It promotes a ban on home gun dealers that would be illegal under existent state preemption statutes and promotes ammunition registration that would be legal, but useless and burdensome, under state preemption statutes. It recommends a panoply of other draconian gun control measures that, after review and testimony on available data and research, have already been considered and rejected at state and national levels. Worse and possibly criminally, Taking Aim was produced with vast amounts of our federal and local tax money. The fruits of our labors, our tax money, are being used to subvert our civil rights and to promote illegal, dangerous, and even deadly public policy. We recommend that the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors reject the recommendations of Taking Aim and sever all contracts with Taking Aim's authors. Further, in view of the apparent politicized, incompetent, and deceptive nature of Taking Aim, we recommend that the Board investigate Mr. Andres Soto, his co-authors, his department, and their financial affairs in contemplation of civil action and criminal charges regarding the possible political use and misappropriation of tax money. We suggest that the Grand Jury be convened to review these matters. 1 Lungren D. Attorney General Opinion #94-212. Ops Cal Atty Gen. July 7, 1994; 77: 147-154. 2 Sloan JH, Kellermann AL, Reay DT, et al. "Handgun Regulations, Crime, Assaults, and Homicide: A Tale of Two Cities." N Engl J Med 1988; 319: 1256-62. 3 Anderson D, Public Information Officer, Regulatory Section, Western Division, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. personal communication. May 22, 1995. 4 Hilburn D, Firearms Licensing and Permits Section, California Department of Justice. personal communication. May 22, 1995. 5 Kleck G and Gertz M. Armed resistance to crime: the prevalence and nature of self-defense with a gun. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology. Summer 1995: 86. forthcoming. 6 Kopel DB. Guns, germs, and science: public health approaches to gun control. Presentation to the College of Public Health, University of Oklahoma, Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, OK. October 14, 1994. 7 Sugarmann J and Rand K. Cease Fire - A comprehensive strategy to reduce violence. Washington DC: Violence Policy Center. 1993. 8 Suter EA. Guns in the medical literature - a failure of peer review. Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia. March 1994; 83: 133-48. 9 Bureau of Justice Statistics, US Department of Justice. Guns and crime. Washington DC: US Government Printing Office. April 1994; NCJ-147003. 10 Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Department of Justice. Uniform crime reports: crime in the United States 1992. Washington DC: US Government Printing Office. 1993. 11 McGonigal MD, Cole J, Schwab W, Kauder DR, Rotondo MF, and Angood PB. Urban firearms deaths: a five-year perspective. J Trauma. 1993; 35(4): 532-36. 12 Hutson HR, Anglin D, and Pratts MJ. Adolescents and children injured or killed in drive-by shootings in Los Angeles. N Engl J Med. 1994; 330: 324-27. 13 Suter EA, Waters WC, Murray GB, et al. "Violence in America - Effective Solutions." Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia." June 1995. 14 National Safety Council. Accident facts 1992. Chicago: National Safety Council. 1993. 15 Centers for Disease Control. "Homicide Surveillance, 1979-1988." Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. May 29, 1992; 41(SS-3):1-35. 16 Kleck G. Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. 1991. 17 Kopel DB. The Samurai, The Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies? New York: Prometheus Press. 1992. 18 Wright JD and Rossi PH. Armed and considered dangerous: a survey of felons and their firearms. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. 1986. 19 Judkins J, City Attorney, City of Richmond CA. personal communication. May 25, 1995. 20 Zanetelli A, Sergeant, Homicide Division, Richmond Police Department. personal communication. May 25 & June 1, 1995. 21 Davis Rex D, Director , Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, US Department of the Treasury. in Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, Committee of the Judiciary, US Senate. Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, Committee of the Judiciary, US Senate, Ninety-Fourth Congress, First Session, Pursuant to S. Res. 72, Section 12, Investigation of Juvenile Delinquency in the United States, Oversight of the 1968 Gun Control Act - The Escalating Rate of Handgun Violence. Volume 1. April 23, July 22, October 28, 1975. Washington DC: US Government Printing Office. 1976. p. 116. 22 Stevenson Edward T, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Enforcement and Operations, US Treasury Department. Hearings before the Committee on the Judiciary, US House of Representatives, Ninety-Ninth Congress, First and Second Sessions on Legislation to Modify the 1968 Gun Control Act, October 28, 30, November 9, 1985; February 19 and 27 1986. Part 2. Washington DC: US Government Printing Office. 1986. p. 1138. 23 Higgins S, Director , Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, US Department of the Treasury. Memorandum to Assistant Secretary, Enforcement and Operations, US Treasury Department. CC-34,270. February 10, 1986. page 1. 24 Sarah Brady of Handgun Control Inc.: "To me, the only reason for guns in civilian hands is for sporting purposes." in Jackson T. "Keeping the Battle Alive." Tampa Tribune. October 21, 1993. page unknown. 25 James Brady of Handgun Control Inc.: "Question: Aren't any handguns defensible? James Brady: For target shooting, that's okay. Get a license and go to the range. For defense of the home, that's why we have police departments." in Brady J (no relation). "In Step with: James Brady." Washington Post. Parade Magazine. June 26, 1994. p. 18. 26 Harvard Medical Practice Study. Report to the State of New York. Cambridge MA: Harvard Medical School. 1990. 27 Leape LL. Error in medicine. JAMA. 1994; 272(23): 1851-57. 28 Kates DB, Lattimer JK, Murray GB, Cassem EH, Schaffer HE, and Southwick L. Gun control: epidemic of violence or pandemic of propaganda. University of Tennessee Law Review. Spring 1995. 29 Kates DB, Lattimer JK, and Cottrol RJ. Public health literature on firearms - a critique of overt mendacity. a paper presented to the American Society of Criminology annual meeting. New Orleans, LA. November 5, 1992. 30 Blackman PH. The federal factoid factory on firearms and violence: a review of CDC research and politics. a paper presented to the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. Chicago IL. March 8-12, 1994. 31 Blackman PH. Criminology's astrology: the Center for Disease Control approach to public health research on firearms and violence.. a paper presented to the American Society of Criminology. Baltimore, MD November 7-10, 1990. 32 Blackman PH. Children and firearms: lies the CDC loves.. a paper presented to the American Society of Criminology. New Orleans, LA. November 4-7, 1992. 33 Suter E. 'Assault weapons' revisited - an analysis of the AMA report. Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia. May 1994; 83: 281-89. 34 Wright JD. and Rossi PH. Weapons, crime, and violence in America: executive summary. Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, National Institute of Justice. 1981. 35 Kellermann A, Kleck G, and Suter E. Letters to the Editor. Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia. June 1994; 83: 42-47. 36 Max W and Rice DP. Shooting in the dark: estimating the cost of firearm injuries. Health Affairs. 1993; 12(4): 171-85. 37 Nieto M, Dunstan R, and Koehler GA. Firearm-related violence in California: incidence and economic costs. Sacramento CA: California Research Bureau, California State Library. October 1994. 38 Zedlewski EW. Making confinement decisions - research in brief. Washington DC: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice. July 1987. 39 Hartzler v. City of San Jose, App., 120 Cal. Rptr. 5 (1975). 40 Warren v. District of Columbia, D.C. App., 444 A.2d. 1 (1981). 41 South v. Maryland, 59 U.S. (HOW) 396, 15 L.Ed., 433 (1856). 42 Bowers v. DeVito, U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, 686F.2d. 616 (1882). 43 Besides case law, statutes relieve the police of any responsibility to provide protection to individual citizens, for example, California Government Code Section 845. Failure to provide police protectionJ- Neither a public entity nor a public employee is liable for failure to establish a police department or otherwise provide police protection service or, if police protection service is provided, for failure to provide sufficient police protection service. 44 Cramer C and Kopel D. Shall issue: the new wave of concealed handgun permit laws. Golden CO: Independence Institute Issue Paper. October 17, 1994. 45 Hatch O and Dole R, US Senators. letter to US Attorney General Janet Reno. November 3, 1994. 46 Aborn R, President of Handgun Control Inc. Letter to the editor. Washington Post. September 30, 1994. 47 Howlett D. Jury still out on success of the Brady Law. USA Today. December 28, 1994. p A-2. 48 Halbrook SP. Another look at the Brady Law. Washington Post. October 8, 1994. p A-18. 49 Harris J, Assistant Attorney General, US Department of Justice. Statement to the Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice, Committee on the Judiciary, US House of Representatives concerning federal firearms prosecutions. September 20, 1994. 50 U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution. The right to keep and bear arms: report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary. United States Congress. 97th. Congress. 2nd. Session. February 1982. p. 20-24. 51 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, US Department of the Treasury. ATF News.. Washington DC: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. FY-93-38. 1993. 52 Presser v. Illinois. 116 U.S. 252 (1886). at 265. 53 U.S. v. Cruickshank. 92 U.S. 542 (1876). 54 Miller v. Texas 153 U.S. 535 (1894). 55 Roberston v. Baldwin 165 U.S. 275 (1897). 56 Miller v. U.S.. 307 U.S. 174 (1938). 57 Vernick JS and Teret SP. Firearms and health: the right to be armed with accurate information about the second amendment. Am. J. Public Health. 1993; 83(12):1773-77. 58 Henigan DA. Arms, anarchy and the second amendment. Valparaiso U. Law Review. Fall 1991; 26: 107-129. 59 Ehrman K and Henigan D. The second amendment in the 20th century: have you seen your militia lately? Univ. Dayton LawJReview. 1989; 15:5-58.; 60 Van Alstyne W. The second amendment and the personal right to arms. Duke Law Journal. 1994; 43(6): 1236-55. 61 Reynolds GH and Kates DB. The second amendment and states rights: a thought experiment. College of William and Mary Law Review. Summer 1995. 62 Nunn v. State. 1Ga. 243 (1846). 63 in re: Brickey. 8 Idaho 597, 70 P. 609 (1902). 64 Articles supportive of the individual rights view include: Van Alstyne W. The second amendment and the personal right to arms. Duke Law Journal. 1994; 43(6): 1236-55.; Amar AR. The bill of rights and the fourteenth amendment. Yale Law Journal. 1992; 101: 1193-1284.; Winter 1992; 9: 87-104.; Scarry E. War and the social contract: the right to bear arms. Univ. Penn. Law Rev. 1991; 139(5): 1257-1316.; Williams DL. Civic republicanism and the citizen militia: the terrifying second amendment. Yale Law Journal. 1991; 101:551-616.; Cottrol RJ and Diamond RT. The second amendment: toward an Afro-Americanist reconsideration. The Georgetown Law Journal. December 1991: 80; 309-61.; Amar AR. The bill of rights as a constitution Yale Law Journal. 1991; 100 (5): 1131-1210.; Levinson S. The embarrassing second amendment. Yale Law Journal. 1989; 99:637-659.; Kates D. The second amendment: a dialogue. Law and Contemporary Problems. 1986; 49:143.; Malcolm JL. Essay review. George Washington U. Law Review. 1986; 54: 452-464.; Fussner FS. Essay review. Constitutional Commentary. 1986; 3: 582-8.; Shalhope RE. The armed citizen in the early republic. Law and Contemporary Problems. 1986; 49:125-141.; Halbrook S. What the framers intended: a linguistic interpretation of the second amendment. Law and Contemporary Problems. 1986; 49:151-162.; Kates D. Handgun prohibition and the original meaning of the second amendment. Michigan Law Review. 1983; 82:203-73. Halbrook S. The right to bear arms in the first state Bills of Rights: Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Vermont, and Massachusetts. Vermont Law Review 1985; 10: 255-320.; Halbrook S. The right of the people or the power of the state: bearing arms, arming militias, and the second amendment. Valparaiso Law Review. 1991; 26:131-207.; Tahmassebi SB. Gun control and racism. George Mason Univ. Civil Rights Law Journal. Winter 1991; 2(1):67-99.; Reynolds GH. The right to keep and bear arms under the Tennessee Constitution. Tennessee Law Review. Winter 1994; 61:2. Bordenet TM. The right to possess arms: the intent of the Framers of the second amendment. U.W.L.A. L. Review. 1990; 21:1.-30.; Moncure T. Who is the militia - the Virginia ratifying convention and the right to bear arms. Lincoln Law Review. 1990; 19:1-25.; Lund N. The second amendment, political liberty and the right to self-preservation. Alabama Law Review 1987; 39:103.-130.; Morgan E. Assault rifle legislation: unwise and unconstitutional. American Journal of Criminal Law. 1990; 17:143-174.; Dowlut, R. Federal and state constitutional guarantees to arms. Univ. Dayton Law Review. 1989.; 15(1):59-89.; Halbrook SP. Encroachments of the crown on the liberty of the subject: pre-revolutionary origins of the second amendment. Univ. Dayton Law Review. 1989; 15(1):91-124.; Hardy DT. The second amendment and the historiography of the Bill of Rights. Journal of Law and Politics. Summer 1987; 4(1):1-62.; Hardy DT. Armed citizens, citizen armies: toward a jurisprudence of the second amendment. Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. 1986; 9:559-638.; Dowlut R. The current relevancy of keeping and bearing arms. Univ. Baltimore Law Forum. 1984; 15:30-32.; Malcolm JL. The right of the people to keep and bear arms: The Common Law Tradition. Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly. Winter 1983; 10(2):285-314.; Dowlut R. The right to arms: does the Constitution or the predilection of judges reign? Oklahoma Law Review. 1983; 36:65-105.; Caplan DI. The right of the individual to keep and bear arms: a recent judicial trend. Detroit College of Law Review. 1982; 789-823.; Halbrook SP. To keep and bear 'their private arms' Northern Kentucky Law Review. 1982; 10(1):13-39.; Gottlieb A. Gun ownership: a constitutional right. Northern Kentucky Law Review 1982; 10:113-40.; Gardiner R. To preserve liberty -- a look at the right to keep and bear arms. Northern Kentucky Law Review. 1982; 10(1):63-96.; Kluin KF. Note. Gun control: is it a legal and effective means of controlling firearms in the United States? Washburn Law Journal 1982; 21:244-264.; Halbrook S. The jurisprudence of the second and fourteenth amendments. George Mason U. Civil Rights Law Review. 1981; 4:1-69. Wagner JR. Comment: gun control legislation and the intent of the second amendment: to what extent is there an individual right to keep and bear arms? Villanova Law Review. 1992; 37:1407-1459. The following treatments in book form also conclude that the individual right position is correct: Malcolm JL. To keep and bear arms: the origins of an Anglo-American right. Cambridge MA: Harvard U. Press. 1994.; Cottrol R. Gun control and the Constitution (3 volume set). New York City: Garland. 1993.; Cramer CE. For the defense of themselves and the state: the original intent and judicial interpretation of the right to keep and bear arms. Westport CT: Praeger Publishers. 1994. Cottrol R and Diamond R. Public safety and the right to bear arms. in Bodenhamer D and Ely J. After 200 years; the Bill of Rights in modern America. Indiana U. Press. 1993.; Oxford Companion to the United States Supreme Court. Oxford U. Press. 1992. (entry on the Second Amendment); Foner E and Garrity J. Reader's companion to American history. Houghton Mifflin. 1991. 477-78. (entry on "Guns and Gun Control"); Kates D. "Minimalist interpretation of the second amendment" in E. Hickok, editor. The Bill of Rights: original meaning and current understanding. Charlottesville: U. Press of Virginia. 1991.; Halbrook S. The original understanding of the second amendment. in E. Hickok, editor. The Bill of Rights: original meaning and current understanding. Charlottesville: U. Press of Virginia. 1991.; Young DE. The origin of the second amendment. Golden Oak Books. 1991.; Halbrook S. A right to bear arms: state and federal Bills of Rights and constitutional guarantees. Greenwood. 1989.; Levy LW. Original intent and the Framers' constitution. Macmillan. 1988.; Hardy D. Origins and development of the second amendment. Blacksmith. 1986.; Levy LW, Karst KL, and Mahoney DJ. Encyclopedia of the American Constitution. New York: Macmillan. 1986. (entry on the Second Amendment); Halbrook S. That every man be armed: the evolution of a constitutional right. Albuquerque, NM: U. New Mexico Press. 1984.; Marina. Weapons, technology and legitimacy: The second amendment in global perspective. and Halbrook S. The second amendment as a phenomenon of classical political philosophy. -- both in Kates D (ed.). Firearms and violence. San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute. 1984.; U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution. The right to keep and bear arms: report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary. United States Congress. 97th. Congress. 2nd. Session. February 1982. regarding incorporation of the Second Amendment: Aynes RL. On misreading John Bingham and the fourteenth amendment. Yale Law Journal. 1993; 103:57-104.; 65 The minority supporting a collective right only view: Ehrman K and Henigan D. The second amendment in the 20th century: have you seen your militia lately? Univ. Dayton LawJReview. 1989; 15:5-58.; Henigan DA. Arms, anarchy and the second amendment. Valparaiso U. Law Review. Fall 1991; 26: 107-129.; Fields S. Guns, crime and the negligent gun owner. Northern Kentucky Law Review. 1982; 10(1): 141-162.; and Spannaus W. State firearms regulation and the second amendment. Hamline Law Review. 1983; 6:383-408. In addition, see: Beschle. Reconsidering the second amendment: constitutional protection for a right of security. Hamline Law Review. 1986; 9:69. (conceding that the Amendment does guarantee a right of personal security, but arguing that personal security can constitutionally be implemented by banning and confiscating all guns). 66 Burger W, US Supreme Court Chief Justice (1969-86). on MacNeil Lehrer News Hour. December 17, 1991. 67 Quilici v. Village of Morton Grove, 532 F.Supp. 1169 (N.D. Ill. 1981), aff'd 695 F.2d 261 (7th Cir. 1982), cert. denied 104 S. Ct. 194 (1983). 68 Kates D. Handgun prohibition and the original meaning of the second amendment. Michigan Law Review. 1983; 82:203-73. 69 U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution. The right to keep and bear arms: report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary. United States Congress. 97th. Congress. 2nd. Session. February 1982. 70 Malcolm JL. To keep and bear arms: the origins of an Anglo-American right. Cambridge MA: Harvard U. Press. 1994. 71 Halbrook SP. That every man be armed - the evolution of a constitutional right. Albuquerque NM: University of New Mexico Press. 1984. 72 Cramer CE. For the defense of themselves and the state: the original intent and judicial interpretation of the right to keep and bear arms. Westport CT & London, England: Praeger. 1994. 73 Kates D. The second amendment and the ideology of self-protection. Constitutional Commentary. Winter 1992; 9: 87-104. 74 Johnson NJ. Beyond the second amendment: an individual right to arms viewed through the ninth amendment. Rutgers Law Journal. Fall 1992; 24 (1): 1-81. 75 Curtis M. No state shall abridge. Durham NC: Duke. 1986. pp. 52, 53, 56, 72, 88, 140-1 and 164. 76 Amar AR. The Bill of Rights and the fourteenth amendment. The Yale Law Journal. 1992; 101: 1193-1284. 77 Aynes RL. On misreading John Bingham and the fourteenth amendment. Yale Law Journal. 1993; 103:57-104. 78 Halbrook S. Freedmen, firearms, and the fourteenth amendment. in That every man be armed: the evolution of a constitutional right. Albuquerque, NM: U. of New Mexico Press. 1984. Chap. 5. 79 New York v. United States. 112 Sup.Ct.Rptr. 2408 (1992). 80 18 USC Section 922(s) (2), the portion of the Brady Law that orders State-created chief law enforcement officers to search available records and to ascertain the legality of handgun transactions, has been held unconstitutional in Printz v. United States. , 854 F. Supp. 1503 (D. Mont.) 1994), appeal pending (9th Cir. No. 94-36193); Mack v. United States, 856 F. Supp. 1372 (D. Ariz.), appeal pending (9th Cir. No. 94-16940); McGee v. United States, 863 F. Supp. 321 (S.D. Miss. 1994), appeal pending (5th Cir No. 94-60518); Frank v. United States, 860 F. Supp. 1030 (D. Vt. 1994); Romero v. United States; Romero v. United States No. 94-0 81 U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez. 494 U.S. 259 (1990). 82 Cottrol R. Gun Control and the Constitution. New York: Garland. 1993. Introduction, p. xxvii.