The Weapon Does Matter - Guns Make Killing Easier

One of the favorite sayings of the NRA crowd is that "guns don't kill people - people kill people". The idea is that if someone wants to commit a murder, then they can do so with a wide array of weapons. There is a grain of truth in that, but only a grain.

These people want to put all weapons on the same level, and that is simply not a valid argument. The fact is that some weapons are easier to use to kill someone than others, and if you want to kill more than one person at a time then the obvious weapon of choice is a firearm. It is easy to kill many people in a very short period of time with a gun -- far easier than using a weapon like a knife.

The choice of weapon does matter. That point is brought out in an excellent article for CNN by Professor Philip J. Cook and Assistant Professor Kristin A. Goss (both of the Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy).  Here is part of that article:

It rarely makes sense to draw big conclusions or make public policy on the basis of anecdotes. But the plural of "anecdote" is data, and sometimes one-off events are useful in crystallizing lessons to guide policymakers and inform the public.

So it was with the Pittsburgh-area rampage this week in which a teenager bearing two kitchen knives is accused of injuring 21 high school classmates and a security guard -- but none of them were killed. It's hard to imagine an anecdote that better illustrates what decades of data show: that for purposes of life and death, the weapon matters. . .

The idea that the weapon matters emerges in studies of robberies and assaults. When committed with a gun, these crimes are far more likely to result in the victim's death than are similar violent crimes committed without a gun. For example, the likelihood that a victim will die when robbed by a firearm-wielding attacker is three times as high as when the victim faces an attacker bearing a knife and 10 times as high as when the attacker has another type of weapon. For victims injured in an assault, the likelihood of death is also greater when a gun is involved, especially in cases of domestic violence. . .

Adding more evidence to the case that the weapon matters, Zimring and Gordon Hawkins later demonstratedthat overall crime rates aren't that much higher in American cities than in comparable cities in other developed countries. We just have higher rates of homicide, and that is because our criminals are more likely to be armed with guns and thus their attacks are more likely to end in the victim's death.

The most important and interesting implication of the instrumentality effect is that if public policy could reduce gun use in crime, the murder rate would go down -- even if the overall crime rate did not. As it turns out, about half of American states have enacted policies that add prison time to felons who use a gun when committing their crimes.

These so-called sentencing enhancements, most of which were adopted in the 1970s and 1980s, were intended to reduce the use of guns in violent acts. Scholarly evaluations based on data, not anecdotes, offer some evidence that these policy innovations have been effective.

This week's tragedy can't help but invoke memories of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School some 16 months ago. The difference today is that, because the Murrysville, Pennsylvania, perpetrator chose to use knives, victims' families can look forward to a future with their loved ones -- instead of planning their funerals.