This editorial appeared in the July 11 edition of The Daily Camera (Boulder, CO).  My comments follow.

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Ellis: Gunning for guns

By Mike Ellis
The Daily Camera (Boulder, CO)
Posted: 07/11/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT

The University of Colorado Regents are trying to preserve their right to ban guns on campus. They say they decide who gets to do what on university property.

Meanwhile, gun rights activists are telling us that guns are necessary on campus (and elsewhere) because you never know when a random killer is going to attack. Someone with a concealed gun can take out that killer and prevent mass casualties.

By my calculation fewer than two lives per year would have been saved in this country since 1966, even if every university shooter had been killed by a legitimate gun owner at the first shot.

School shootings have gone up in the past decade, but still, fewer than five lives would have been saved per year in that period.

Clearly, more than five additional deaths would occur each year with the presence of legal guns due to gun accidents, escalation of arguments, stolen weapons, and other types of mortality.

And yet, the U.S. Constitution, as recently confirmed by the Supreme Court, guarantees the right of the people of this country to have weapons and to carry them.

The people of the United States, and our government, don`t get to choose which parts of the Constitution to follow. The Second Amendment is as much a part of the law of the land as the First.

READ THE REST AT DAILYCAMERA.COM.

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I’m sure that many proponents of gun rights see this article as a triumph of the Second Amendment—an “anti-gun” editorialist conceding that, whether he likes it or not, the right to keep and bear arms is the law of the land and concluding that the University of Colorado board of regents should, therefore, drop their appeal of the court ruling that overturned CU’s ban on campus carry.  I, on the other hand, see this as simply one more editorialist who just doesn’t get it.

The first clue that Mike Ellis doesn’t quite get it is his speculative attempt at statistical analysis.  He states, “Clearly, more than five additional deaths would occur each year with the presence of legal guns due to gun accidents, escalation of arguments, stolen weapons, and other types of mortality.”  But on what does he base that claim?  Does he base it on the 12 U.S. colleges (33 campuses) that have allowed concealed carry on campus for a combined total of 124 semesters (an average of more than five years per school)?

Let’s do the math on that one:  We’ll estimate the number of U.S. colleges at about 4,500.  Then we’ll divide that number by 12 (the number of colleges that allow campus carry); that gives us 375.  So, roughly one out of every 375 U.S. colleges allows campus carry.

The 12 colleges that allow campus carry comprise a pretty good cross-section of major universities and smaller community colleges, so by multiplying 375 by the annual number of campus-carry-related deaths (based on a five-year average) at those 12 colleges, we should get a fair estimate of the number of campus-carry-related deaths we could expect nationwide if campus carry were allowed at all U.S. colleges.

So, what is 375 times zero?

Oh, right, it’s still zero.

To be fair, 1/375 is a pretty small sample size.  What if we extrapolate the number from the rate of murders and negligent deaths committed by all concealed handgun license holders, not just those on college campuses?

There aren’t any national statistics kept on the number of people murdered or negligently killed by concealed handgun license holders, but some states do keep such statistics.  According to a five-year (2002-2006) average of statistics from the Texas Department of Public Safety, the annual odds of a person being murdered or negligently killed by a concealed handgun license holder in the state of Texas—by any means, not just those involving a handgun—are one in 10,216,278 (less than 1/20^th the odds of being struck by lightning).

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average annual enrollment in U.S. degree-offering institutions of postsecondary education during that same time period was 17,208,200.  So, if we put aside the fact that the Texas DPS statistics include deaths caused by any means, not just deaths related to handguns, and use those statistics to estimate the number of campus-carry-related deaths we would have seen if all U.S. colleges had allowed campus carry during that time period, we get an estimate of 1.68 deaths per year, well below Ellis’s estimate of “more than five additional deaths” each year.

But even that doesn’t consider all of the pertinent factors.  During that five year period, the average rate of concealed handgun licensure among Texans was just over 1%—approximately one Texan out of every 100 was licensed to carry a concealed handgun.  But only 3.896% of Texas concealed handgun licenses issued during that time period were issued to individuals of traditional college age (18-24).

So, let’s estimate that the rate of concealed handgun licensure on a college campus is about 5% that of the statewide or nationwide average.  If that’s the case, it’s also fair to assume that the odds of being murdered or negligently killed by a concealed handgun license holder on a college campus would be about 5% that of the statewide or nationwide average.

When we multiply our estimate of 1.68 campus-carry-related deaths by 0.05 (5%), we get 0.084 campus-carry-related deaths per year, or approximately one campus-carry-related death every 12 years.  And remember, that estimate is actually based on the odds of being murdered or negligently killed by a concealed handgun license holder by any means, not just the odds of being killed with a handgun.  So, it’s not fair to assume that the statistically predicted one death every twelve years could be avoided by refusing to allow campus carry.

Clearly, the above calculations demonstrate a much more scientific approach to estimating campus-carry-related deaths than Ellis’s baseless speculation.  Of course, he only overestimated by about 6,000%.  I guess that’s not so bad.

Sadly, the numbers aren’t the only area where Ellis is a bit mixed up.  He also doesn’t seem to grasp that the lawsuit against CU (Students for Concealed Carry on Campus v. The Regents of the University of Colorado) challenges the CU gun ban on the basis of Colorado state law, not on the basis of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  Even the attorney for the plaintiffs said that he doesn’t expect the recent Supreme Court ruling to affect the outcome of the lawsuit.

People on both sides of the gun rights/gun control debate (and even people who aren’t particularly interested in the gun rights/gun control debate) need to be clear on what the Supreme Court’s incorporation of the Second Amendment does and doesn’t mean.  In many ways, what it does mean is something that must now be sorted out by the lower courts.  But what it doesn’t mean is very clear—it doesn’t mean that all restrictions on the possession of firearms are now null and void.

The Colorado Supreme Court may very well rule against CU’s gun ban, but it won’t be on the basis of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; it’ll be on the basis of Colorado state law.

Fortunately, Mike Ellis does get at least one thing right.  He’s absolutely correct in his assessment, “I`d be willing to bet our society will survive just fine when a few people on campus have concealed weapons.”