While I don't want to write at any length on the Right to Bear Arms, I was sufficiently impressed with the content of an e-mail post to a legal listserver that I have lifted it and offer it below to explain much of my position. For the procedure in Tennessee to get a permit to carry a concealed handgun, click here. (My position is threefold: 1. The Second Amendment says we can carry guns and that should close the debate unless we are debating whether to amend the Constitution; 2.The prospect of a criminal encountering an armed citizen is an effective deterrent to what would otherwise be rampant violent crime; and 3. The reason the Second Amendment is there and the reason we must preserve it is not to allow us to protect ourselves from frontier Indians or criminals, nor is it primarily to let us form defensive militia units to protect ourselves from foreign invasion, nor to allow target shooting or hunting, but the principal reason is instead to assure that in this country where power is recognized as flowing from the people to the government and the founders believed that a government derives its authority to govern from the consent of the people and ceases to be legitimate when that consent is absent, the people are allowed to carry arms in order to protect themselves from the government. Once this is realized the debate over "automatic weapons" is seen to be a bit naive. The public should be allowed to have firearms every bit as powerful as the government, at least to the extent such firearms might be used against the public by government. (I think this might rule out nuclear bombs, B-52 bombers, aircraft carriers and big submarines though perhaps little else.) For an excellent account of the historical basis of the right to bear arms, including a look at the debate at the time of the ratification of the Constitution, click here -- "Historical Basis of the Right To Keep and Bear Arms by David T. Hardy, Partner in the Law Firm Sando & Hardy, apparently prepared as testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committe in 1982.
For those want "scholarship"
on the matter, you might look at the following law review articles, all
concluding that the Right to Bear Arms is a right belonging to the individual
and not to the society or state collectively: 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. A good
internet source is found at the Second
Amendment Law Library.
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.
Several studies and the experience
of all the modern "shall-issue" states, starting
with Florida, is that concealed carry permitees are more law-abiding
than the
general population, that the wild, wild west does NOT return, and that
crimes
against persons rate goes down after implementation of a permit system.
The best treatise on the
subject is Gary Kleck, _Point Blank_. Kleck is a
sociologist at Flordia State and his book received prestigious professional
recognition. The most recently published, well-documented report,
was _Crime,
Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns_, by John R. Lott,
Jr. and David
B. Mustard of the University of Chicago.
Abstract
Using cross-sectional time-series data for
U.S. counties from 1977
to 1992, we find that allowing citizens to
carry concealed weapons
deters violent crimes and it appears to produce
no increase in
accidental deaths. 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.
On the other hand,
consistent with the notion of criminals responding
to incentives,
we find criminals substituting into property
crimes involving
stealth and where the probabilities of contact
between the criminal
and the victim are minimal. The largest
population counties where
the deterrence effect on violent crimes is
greatest are where the
substitution effect into property crimes is
highest. Concealed
handguns also have their greatest deterrent
effect in the highest
crime counties. Higher arrest and conviction
rates consistently
and dramatically reduce the crime rate.
Consistent with other
recent work (Lott, 1992b), the results imply
that increasing the
arrest rate, independent of the probability
of eventual conviction,
imposes a significant penalty on criminals.
The estimated annual
gain from allowing concealed handguns is at
least $6.214 billion.
A final version of the Lott/Mustard study has been published in the
Journal of Legal
Studies (v.26, no.1, pages 1-68, January 1997). It is available as
a PDF file at
<http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLS/home.html> (viewable using
the Adobe Acrobat
Reader availabe for free download from the Internet at <http://www.adobe.com/>).
The
exact URL for the study is <http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLS/lott.pdf>.
Here's some more interesting information:
>
Pennsylvania Legislature
>
>Select Committee Investigating the Use of Automatic and Semiautomatic
>Firearms September 8, 1994 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
>
>
n Testimony of David B. Kopel Research
>Director, Independence Institute, Golden, Colorado Associate Policy
>Analyst, Cato Institute, Washington, D.C.
>
> Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I am David
B. Kopel, an
>associate policy analyst with the Cato Institute, a free-market think
>tank in Washington, D.C. I am also the author of the book The Samurai,
>the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls
of
>Other Democracies? The book was chosen as the Book of the Year by
the
>American Society of Criminology's Division of International
>Criminology.
>
> Within the United States, there are few success stories
available
>for gun control advocates. The areas with the most gun controls, such
>as New York City (severe gun licensing) or Washington, D.C. (handgun
>prohibition, a ban on keeping an assembled long gun for self-defense)
>are also the areas with the most gun crime. While it is true that
New
>York, Washington, Chicago and other gun control centers would probably
>be dangerous places with or without gun controls, these restrictive
>jurisdictions are rarely looked to as models by anyone who does not
>live there. Accordingly, the American gun prohibition movement,
>including the medical researchers and physicians who support gun
>prohibition, often extol the virtues of other democratic nations such
>as Canada, Great Britain, or Japan. Those countries have strict gun
>control laws and little gun crime, argue the prohibitionists; if the
>United States adopted similar policies, the United States would enjoy
>a similarly low rate of gun crime.
>
> To many advocates of restrictive firearms laws, the necessity
of
>imitating foreign-style gun control laws is painfully obvious. But
>surprisingly, there has been little research into how these foreign
>gun laws work, if they work at all. Even gun prohibition advocates
are
>rarely able to provide more than a paragraph or two of generalized
>assertions about gun laws in any particular country. So do foreign
gun
>laws work, and would they work if imported into the United States?
>This was the question I set out to answer as I began research for
my
>book, The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt
>the Gun Controls of Other Democracies? (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1992).
>
> After examining in-depth the gun control policies of
Japan,
>Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, and Switzerland
--
>and the gun culture in the United States -- it becomes clear that
the
>foreign gun control situation is much more complex than American gun
>control advocates have assumed.
>
> Among the foreign countries, there is no particular correlation
>between the severity of gun control and the prevalence of gun crime.
>Indeed, of the nations studied, the two that are (by far) the safest
>have diametrically opposite gun control policies.
>
>
Japan's Successful Prohibition
>
> In Japan, violent crime and homicide are virtually unknown
(except
>for crimes perpetrated by the yakuza gangsters and the murder of
>children by suicidal parents). Japan prohibits handguns and rifles.
>Shotguns may be obtained only after a rigorous licensing process that
>even includes a short psychiatric examination. The almost complete
>prohibition on guns in Japan has been strictly enforced ever since
>1588, when the military dictator Hideyoshi announced the "Sword
>Hunt,'' and confiscated all firearms and swords from the peasantry.
>Hideyoshi's decree perceptively observed that "The possession of
>unnecessary implements makes difficult the collection of taxes and
>tends to foment uprising.''
>
> So at first glance, the Japanese experience would seem
to support
>the theory that turning the possession of instruments of deadly force
>into a government monopoly will make people safer from each other
(if
>not safer from the government).
>
>
Switzerland's Mandatory Assault Rifles
>
> Only one other country examined in The Samurai, the Mountie,
and
>the Cowboy has a murder rate as low as Japan. That country is
>Switzerland, where gun control laws are also strict, but in a rather
>different way.
>
> Every Swiss male aged 20 to 50 is strictly required to
spend
>several weeks a year in militia training. Switzerland has no
>professional standing army, and has always relied for defense on
>having its entire male population trained in warfare and ready to
>mobilize. As part of the militia duty, every militiaman (that is,
>every male aged 20-50) is given a fully automatic assault rifle,
>required to keep it in his home, and obliged to periodically
>demonstrate his marksmanship proficiency.
>
> Swiss policy makes the acquisition of other weapons simple
for
>everyone, including women and men who are too old for militia service.
>Ammunition sales are subsidized; three thousand shooting ranges
>flourish in a nation two-thirds the size of West Virginia. Many long
>guns may be bought with no restrictions at all (whereas federal U.S.
>law requires all gun purchases to be registered at the point of sale).
>Most handguns and some rifles require a simple permit to purchase,
>which is given freely to any adult who is not a criminal, alcoholic,
>or otherwise disqualified. Even antitank weapons, howitzers,
>antiaircraft guns, and cannons may be purchased with a readily
>obtained license.
>
> Firearms, shooting competitions, and survival training
pervade
>Swiss life in a way that would startle many suburban Americans, who
>see guns mainly on television. And yet for all the machine guns and
>other weapons in Switzerland, the country is as safe as Japan, and
>significantly safer than countries with much more restrictive gun
>control laws, such as Great Britain or Australia.
>
> What Japan and Switzerland have in common (and what is
>conspicuously absent in most of the metropolitan United States) is
a
>very strong family structure, tightly-knit communities, stable
>residential patterns, and good relationships across generational
>lines. The crucial variable is not the presence of firearms, but the
>degree to which young people are successfully socialized into
>non-criminal, responsible behavior patterns.
>
>
Britain's Decline
>
> The evidence from other nations is consistent with the
>Swiss-Japanese experience. At the turn of the century, Great Britain
>had no gun controls at all. Convicted violent felons, the criminally
>insane, and anyone else could buy and carry anything from a derringer
>to a sawed-off shotgun to a Gatling gun, with no registration and
no
>licensing. The only requirement was ready cash. And yet Great Britain
>had almost no gun crime, as the constraints imposed by the Victorian
>code of behavior provided the most effective "gun control'' system
>the nation ever experienced.
>
> As the 20th century has progressed, laws in Britain have
grown
>increasingly severe, so that only about 4% of households today legally
>own guns, and those households are subject to arbitrary
>"inspections'' by a police force with the announced goal of
>eliminating civilian gun ownership. And while Britain remains
>generally safer than the United States, violent crime and gun crime
>have skyrocketed compared to earlier decades. While Britain, in the
>name of public safety, has abolished or drastically constricted many
>rights that Americans take for granted -- including the right to bear
>arms, the right to a criminal jury trial, the right to grand jury
>indictment, the right of a criminal defendant to confront his accuser,
>and (by the most recent government proposal) the right to silence
--
>the concentration of ever-greater power in the hands of the government
>has proven a poor antidote for the steady decline in the socialization
>of children into responsible behavior by the community.
>
> Although American gun prohibition advocates appear to
endorse every
>foreign gun control law they encounter, there was only one gun law
(in
>the countries studied in The Samurai) whose enactment led to any
>statistically noticeable drop in gun crime. (In contrast, many of
the
>foreign gun laws were associated with significant reductions in the
>gun suicide rate, although the evidence also suggests that the
>substitution of other methods of suicide wiped out any statistically
>perceptible net saving of lives.)
>
>
Jamaica's Crackdown
>
> The one gun control law that was followed by a noticeable
drop in
>crime was enacted in Jamaica, where a 1974 gun confiscation law was
>accompanied by numerous other repressive measures, including
>house-to-house searches, incommunicado detention, secret trials,
>mandatory life in prison for possession of a single bullet,
>warrantless searches and seizures, and military enforcement of the
>drug laws. The Jamaican violent crime rate dropped significantly for
>six months, returned to its former level over the next year, and then
>began to grow substantially worse than it had ever been.
>
> As the homicide rate soared far above American levels,
about a
>third of all Jamaican homicides were perpetrated by the police; a
>Jamaican suffered a higher risk of being murdered by the police than
>an American did of being murdered by anyone. According to the human
>rights group Americas Watch, policemen would murder personal enemies,
>and then falsely claim that the victims were killed in a shoot-out.
>Homicides perpetrated by the police were rarely investigated, as long
>as the policeman claimed that the victim had a gun. The increasing
>police violence, made possible in part by middle-class hysteria over
>guns, in turn fueled a cycle of violence in the rest of Jamaican
>society.1
>
> Almost every scholar who has studied the Jamaican crime
situation
>shares the conclusions of criminologist William Calathes's award -
>winning analysis, which found that the gun restrictions, as well as
>the other restrictions on civil liberty, were the result of "highly
>developed skills of political management'' which were designed not
to
>reduce crime, but to distract public attention from the underlying
>problems of Jamaican society, including economic inequality.2
>
> Jamaica's experience with a soaring rate of murder-by-government
>would not be particularly surprising to many American or Australian
>gun owners. In the United States and Australia, many gun-owners view
>the fundamental purpose of the right to bear arms to be resistance
to
>a tyrannical government. Most gun owners in Great Britain, Canada,
and
>New Zealand, though, would chide their American and Australian cousins
>for placing guns in the context of resistance to authority, rather
>than innocent sporting purposes.
>
>
The Politics of Distraction
>
> The Jamaican experience is perhaps the most important
foreign gun
>control situation for Americans to study, not because there is any
>realistic possibility of similar laws being imposed in the United
>States (at least not all at once), but because Jamaica illustrates
the
>political distraction function of gun control. (Politicians in Great
>Britain and Canada have successfully used gun control to turn
>attention away from proposals to reinstatement of the death penalty
>after highly-publicized shootings.)
>
> While many tepid supporters of American gun control acknowledge
>that gun control may not accomplish much, they hope that it might
>accomplish a little, and reason that since gun control can't hurt,
it
>is worth trying even for minimal gains. Gun control opponents counter
>that gun control kills, because, at least sometimes, it deprives
>innocent persons of the ability to protect themselves. While such
an
>objection may be a relatively potent response to the stated goal of
>Handgun Control, Inc. Chair Sarah Brady -- the prohibition of the
>ownership of any firearm for self-defense3 -- the objection is less
>relevant to lesser gun control proposals which have a smaller impact
>on self-defense.
>
> The more immediate risk of so many "gun control'' proposals
in the
>United States is their political distraction function. As long as
the
>American public tolerates politicians touting "gun control'' as the
>top item on the public safety agenda, then politicians will continue
>to evade the difficult job of enacting measures that would deal with
>the roots of America's crime crisis -- including a welfare system
that
>subsidizes illegitimacy and fatherless children, a dysfunctional
>government school system in most large cities, a rapidly growing
>under class of all races, tax policies which prevent many mothers
from
>choosing to stay home with their children, and a failed and
>counterproductive "war on drugs.''
>
> Yet as more and more criminologists come to recognize
most of the
>gun control lobby's agenda as a distraction from meaningful social
>reform, the Centers for Disease Control and other segments of the
>medical establishment churn out reports which insist that gun
>ownership is a ``public health'' problem. At least in regards to
>comparisons of the United States with other nations, the reports are
>far from persuasive. Sometimes the medical research compiles genuinely
>useful international data, but then contents itself with asserting
>that gun control must be good, because the American gun crime rate
is
>so much higher than in other countries.4
>
> In other cases, as in the famous Seattle-Vancouver studies,
the
>media turn a journal's press-release sound bite into a conclusion
which
>vastly overstates the inferences that can be drawn from a single case
>study, especially when the research as seriously flawed as the
>Seattle-Vancouver work. Among the limitations of the Seattle-Vancouver
>studies is (consistent with virtually all research regarding Canada)
>the absence of any perceptible beneficial effect from Canada's switch
>in 1977 from a system of no regulation for long guns and mild
>regulation for handguns to moderate regulation for long guns and
>stringent regulation for handguns.5
>
> In contrast, epidemiological or criminological research
which
>questions the efficacy of gun control (including a study of all
>Canadian provinces and adjacent American states6), rarely receive
much
>attention beyond academia.
>
> Finally, the "public health'' campaign to outlaw guns
because of
>the allegedly successful gun control policies of other nations ignores
>the potential criminogenic effect of those controls. American rates
>for crimes that usually involve guns (such as murder) and crimes that
>rarely involve guns (such as rape) are both far higher than the rates
>in most democratic nations. Curiously, the American residential
>burglary rate is below that of other nations. Perhaps this is because
>in the United States, an American burglar who breaks into an occupied
>home faces a risk of being shot that equals his risk of going to
>prison. In contrast, burglars in other nations do not face such risks.
>gun owners in Great Britain, New Zealand, and Canada express little
>interest in the protective aspects of gun ownership; Australians are
>more interested in guns for protection, but as a matter of law,
>defensive gun ownership is illegal in most of Australia.
>
> Given the poor record of restrictive firearms laws in
other
>English-speaking countries, the simplistic, reflexive insistence of
>the gun prohibition lobby and its medical allies that the United
>States immediately important foreign gun control laws may imperil,
>rather than protect, public health.
>
>
References
>
> 1. Calathes W. "Gun control in a developing nation: the gun
court
>act.'' Intl J Comp & Appl Crim Just 1991; 14:317-343.
>
> 2. Calathes W. "Criminal Justice and Underdevelopment: A Case
Study
>of the Jamaican Gun Court Act.'' J Carib Stud 1988; 6:323-358.
>
> 3. "To me, the only reason for guns in civilian hands is for
>sporting purposes,'' says Mrs. Brady. Jackson T. "Keeping the battle
>alive.'' Tampa Trib. Oct 21, 1993.
>
> 4. Fingerhut L, Kleinman J. "International and interstate
>comparisons of homicide among young males.'' JAMA 1990; 263:3292-3295.
>
> 5. Sloan JH, Kellermann AL, Reay DT, et al. "Handgun regulations,
>crime, assaults and homicides: a tale of two cities.'' N Engl J. Med
>1988; 319:1256-62. Sloan JH, Rivara FP, Reay DT, et al. "Firearm
>regulation and the rates of suicide: a comparison of two metropolitan
>areas.'' N Engl J Med 1990; 322:369-373. For criticism of the
>methodology and reasoning in the Seattle-Vancouver articles, see:
>Wright JD. "Guns and sputter.'' Reason 1990; July:46-47. Sloan JH,
et
>al. Correspondence. N Engl J Med 1989; 320:1216-1217. Sloan JH, et
al.
>Correspondence. N Engl J Med. 1990; 323:136-137.
>
> 6. Centerwall B. "Homicide and the prevalence of handguns:
Canada
>and the United States, 1976-1980.'' Am J Epidemiol 1991;
>134:1247-1251.
>
>Copyright) 1996
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