Explaining The Brady Campaign Report Card
Howard Nemerov
January 21, 2005
Each year, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence publishes a report card rating each state in the country according to their gun violence prevention laws. They must not be very pleased with the direction of this country, as the national average was halfway between a C and a D. (A being the highest grade.) In order to understand the Brady Campaigns perspective, one must examine the relationships between state legislative environments and the Brady grading system. (1)
In their accompanying press release, Brady states: only three states actually changed grades. (2) Ohio was downgraded because they passed a shall-issue concealed carry law that took effect in 2004. South Carolina was downgraded because they repealed an anti-gun trafficking one gun per month law, a purely subjective criteria, as the CDC has concluded that such laws have no measurable effect on violent crime. (3)
Since there was so little change from the previous year, we will use the 2003 FBI Crime statistics, the latest final data available, for a comparative discussion. (4)
Brady Bias Against Liberty
In 2003, 35 states had shall-issue laws for concealed firearms, meaning that if the resident was law-abiding, the police department in that jurisdiction must approve the permit. The first clue of the Brady bias is the Virginia demerit for broadening its legal concealed weapons law. Below is a composite comparison between states violent crime rates, separated by shall-issue legislation.
Comparison Between Brady Grades and Concealed Carry Laws
State Legislation
Average Grade
Composite Violent
Crime Rate
Average Violent
Crime Rate
Shall Issue
D
475.3
398.7
Discretionary/Non-Issue
B+
469.1
477.1
Based upon population, violent crime rates were about 1% different between shall-issue (CCW) and non-issue states. (Note that if we include Washington D.C., the non-issue states violent crime rate would be virtually identical at 474.4. One can extrapolate from Brady criteria that the District of Columbia would receive an A grade, because of their ban on civilian firearms.) However, since Brady Campaign considers each state an equivalent entity in their report, the average violent crime rate comparison shows that non-CCW states are 20% more violent. This correlation shows that the Brady Campaign does not rate states based upon their relative safety.
Of the twelve states with the lowest violent crime rates, Wisconsin, the only non-CCW state, rated C+, while the rest were D or F. By contrast, the twelve most violent states contained four non-CCW states: two As, one B, and a C. Of the 35 shall-issue states, there was only one A and three Cs, the rest being D or F. The non-issue states contained only one D with the rest graded A to C. This correlation shows that the Brady Campaign rates states based upon their policy of issuing concealed carry permits.
There is a factual bias against states which trust their law-abiding citizens to actively provide for the common defense through the issuing of concealed carry permits. These citizens have been proven to be more law-abiding than average. For example, in Florida, 2,675 concealed carry licenses have been revoked due to crime after issuance between October 1987 and December 2004, out of 340,288 valid licenses. This is a crime rate of 786.1 per 100,000, while Floridas overall crime rate (violent and property crimes) in 2003 was 5182.3. The average Floridian is 6.6 times more likely to be involved in crime than a concealed carry permit holder. (5)
An analysis of the arrest rates for all Texans over age 21 found that they are about 7.5 times more likely to be arrested than concealed permit holders. (6)
Brady Campaigns alleged concern about gun violence prevention laws amounts to nothing more than an unsubstantiated premise that concealed carry laws contribute to violence.
Using Tragedy to Promote a Political Agenda
Since the Brady Campaign began grading state gun laws eight years ago, the number of young people killed by guns nationwide has dropped from an average of 16 per day to eight
Despite these improvements, the CDC [Centers for Disease Control] reports that there are still, on average, more than 40 children and teens killed or injured by firearms in this country every single day. Brady Campaign Press Release, January 12, 2005
The latest data available online from the CDCs National Center for Injury Prevention and Control is for 2002. (7) Assuming young people means minors, the actual rate of firearm death, both accidental and intentional, was under three per day. In order to reach the Brady claim of eight child firearm deaths per day, one must include young adults ages 18 and 19legal adults where crime is concernedand firearm-involved suicides. If you remove deaths associated with criminal activity, you end up with 115, or less than one child dying every three days from unintentional firearms injuries.
During this same time span, the number of states with non-discretionary concealed carry laws increased 60% from 23 to 35, with both violent crime and property crime rates falling significantly. However, I am sure if it were promulgated that increased trust in armed citizens was the reason for the drop in crime and child firearm mortality, there would be an attack from Brady about NRA madness and extremism. (
Conclusion
Its okay to make baseless claims as long as they support Brady Campaign beliefs. The Brady Campaign revises the truth and capitalizes upon peoples pain and suffering to promote a political goal: banning civilian firearms. They roll out the for the children refrain in an attempt to grab moral high ground and portray those who disagree as too self-absorbed with guns to care about the death of innocents, even though statistical fact indicates that it is the Brady Campaign that prefers demagoguery to reality.
Footnotes
(1) The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence 2004 Report Card, January 12, 2005.
http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/reportcards/2004/details.pdf(2) Brady Campaign Press Release, January 12, 2005.
http://www.bradycampaign.org/press/release.php?release=617(3) First Reports Evaluating the Effectiveness of Strategies for Preventing Violence: Firearms Laws, CDC Publication, November, 2002
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm (4) FBI: Crime in the States, 2003.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_03/xl/03tbl05.xls(5) Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Division of Licensing, Concealed Weapon/Firearm Summary Report October 1, 1987 - December 31, 2004.
http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/stats/cw_monthly.html(6) An Analysis of The Arrest Rate Of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders As Compared To The Arrest Rate Of The Entire Texas Population (1996 - 1998) Revised to include 1999 and 2000 data, copyright 2001, W.E. Sturdevant.
http://www.tsra.com/arrests.htm(7) 10 Leading Causes of Violence-Related Injury Deaths, United States, 2002, All Races, Both Sexes, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcaus10.html (
StoptheNRA.com is an organization associated with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun violence. Their home page contains a message from Michael Barnes, President of Brady Campaign, and links using various anti-NRA exhortations.
http://www2.stopthenra.com/
