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Editor:
I find it interesting that a world-class research university like the UA would shove aside volumes of scholarly research and real world experience, in favor of making policy based on simple phobic knee-jerk reaction. I'm referring of course, to the university's designation as a "defenseless victim zone." Over the past several years, more and more states have been revising their laws to enable law abiding citizens to carry weapons for self-defense for one simple reason. It works!
In spite of the hand-wringing crowd's worst predictions, the presence of a weapon does not magically transform otherwise mild-mannered people into homicidal maniacs. What it does do, according to every thorough, impartial study conducted to date, is reduce violent crime rates overall, and greatly increase your chance of surviving an encounter with a violent criminal.
The latest study, "Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns", by John R. Lott, Olin Fellow in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School and David B. Mustard, graduate student at the Department of Economics, will appear in the January 1997 issue of the Journal of Legal Studies, but is available now at http://law.lib.uchicago.edu/faculty/lott/guns.html In it, Lott and Mustard show that "If those states which did not have right-to-carry concealed gun provisions had adopted them in 1992, approximately 1,570 murders; 4,177 rapes; and over 60,000 aggravated assaults would have been avoided yearly."
In their "National Firearms Defensive Use Survey," conducted in 1993, Dr. Gary Kleck, criminologist at Florida State University and Dr. Marc Gertz show that American civilians use their firearms as often as 2.5 million times every year defending against a confrontation with a criminal, and that handguns alone account for up to 1.9 million defenses per year. In his book, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, Dr. Kleck shows that guns not only thwart crime far more often than they abet it, but also that their availability has little or no impact on provoking violence.
Now compare the above to the university's stance: As Assistant Dean Veda Hunn put it, "I would hope it (the signs) would stand for and promote a safe environment." Well Veda, you can hope and wish all you want, but here in the real world, criminals ignore laws (and signs). In the real world, the UAPD, as efficient and effective as they may be, are unable to be everywhere, or protect everyone, and in the real world, good, law-abiding people, regardless of whether or not they choose to take responsibility for their own safety, are NOT the problem. To strip these people of their federal and state (Article 2, Section 26) Constitutional right to self-defense is not only patently immoral, it just doesn't work!
Scott D. Benjamin
senior staff technician
Optical Sciences Center
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