Just-posted: Marc Ayers (of the Bradley Arant firm in Birmingham) and Don Kates have written a Brandeis brief in the Supreme Court handgun brief. The brief is filed on behalf of the Claremont Institute and a group of scholars.
The main theme of the brief is debunking the “more guns, more murder” meme, which pervades the brief of DC and many of its amici. The theme is elaborated in the briefs of the American Academy of Pediatrics, of the American Public Health Association, and of Professors James Alan Fox and David McDowall.
The single largest topic is a 1991 article in the New England Journal of Medicine by Colin Loftin. The NEJM article reported that the DC handgun ban had reduced homicides and the suicide in the District.
The Claremont brief points out that the NEJM article used raw numbers rather than rates, and used the wrong start date for the law (which was delayed by an injunction issued by the D.C. Superior Court). Moreover, when one compares DC to the other 49 largest U.S. cities, or to Virginia and Maryland, the D.C. homicide rate grew worse in comparison to these other jurisdictions. Notably, a meta-study by the National Academies of Science agreed with the critiques of Gary Kleck and Chester Britt that the NEJM article’s data were so fragile as to be of no persuasive value; even small adjustments of the start/end date negated the study’s findings.
Given shorter treatment in the Kates/Ayers brief is another study which used the circulation of Guns & Ammo magazine as a proxy for gun ownership levels. The study found that higher circulation of Guns & Ammo was associated with higher homicide. This finding is frequently restated in the briefs of DC and its amici as a finding that more guns leads to more murder. Kates/Ayers cite John Lott’s article pointing out that during the study period, Guns & Ammo was giving away a huge number of free copies (to maintain circulation numbers), and targeted the give-aways at cities where it was believed that crime was increasing. The circulation of other gun magazines (which were not using G&A’s circulation-boosting method) shows no relation to homicide.
Kates/Ayers present extensive data showing that gun density is not related to homicide. For example, since the late 1940s, per capita gun ownership in the U.S. has soared, while homicide rates have fluctuated with little apparent relation to gun density. Likewise, comparative data from Europe show no relation between gun density levels and homicide rates.
DC has argued that its ban on possession of a functional firearm in the home contains an implicit exception for self-defense. Kates/Ayers explore what such an exception might mean, and argue that there is no way for a Court, or a DC resident, to discern the terms of the alleged self-defense exception.