From: wood@eisley.akita.com (Ken Wood)
Newsgroups: seattle.general
Subject: Murder in a fit of rage?
Summary: The average person does NOT kill someone in a fit of rage
Keywords: murder guns truth goodguys badguys
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 92 07:35:24 PDT
Organization: Mos Eisley Spaceport BBS


In article <1992Jul22.190322.21485@eskimo.celestial.com>
           alpinist@eskimo.celestial.com (David Butler) Writes:

>     This argument doesn't work.  The MAJORITY of murders in this country
>are commited by people known to the victim in a fit of rage.  Not by "Bad
>Guys" who would have owned guns illegally.  If guns were taken away from
>the "Good Guys" (ie Normal Population) then the guy in the above example
>wouldn't have had one in a dangerous drunken rage.
>
>     I do happen to support individual rights to own a gun.  But I also
>realize that the Murder rate (gun violence rate) would go down if guns
>were illegal.  If only "Bad Guys" had guns that would be a heck of a lot
>less people being shot on a daily basis.

     No I'm afraid it's your argument that doesn't work.  Please allow 
me to repost a portion of an article that appeared on T.P.G. a while 
ago.  If you are serious about this issue and want the facts please read 
the whole article, it is rather long but very informative.

In article <1992Mar12.114330.21822@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>
           bb063@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Christopher J. Crobaugh) Writes:

> THE LAW-ABIDING GUN OWNER AS DOMESTIC AND ACQUAINTANCE MURDERER
>
>Taken from "Guns, Murders, and the Constitution: A Realistic
>Assessment of Gun Control," by Don B. Kates, February, 1990,
>pp.45-49.  Mr. Kates' entire work is available from the Pacific
>Research Institute for Public Policy, 177 Post Street, San
>Francisco, CA  94108, (415) 989-2411.  The numbers embedded in
>this file refer to the references at the end.
>----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>     Concedingthat banning handguns would not disarm terrorists,
>or assassins, the anti-gun argument portrays those people as
>exceptions to the generality, which is "previously law-abiding
>citizens committing impulsive gun-murders while engaged in
>arguments with family members or acquaintances."1  The anti-gun
>crusaders claim most murders result from gun ownership among
>ordinary citizens: "That gun in the close to protect against
>burglars will most likely be used to shoot a spouse in a moment
>of rage . . . The problem is you and me--law-abiding folks."2
>
>     If this portrayal of murderers were true, a gun ban might
>drastically reduce murder because the primary perpetrators (law-
>abiding citizens) might give up guns even though hardened
>criminals, terrorists, and assassins would not.  Unfortunately
>for his appealingly simple nostrum, every national and local
>study of homicide reveals that murderers are not ordinary
>citizens--nor are they people who are likely to comply with gun
>laws.  Murderers (and fatal gun accident perpetrators) are
>atypical, highly aberrant individuals whose spectacular
>indifference to human life, including their own, is evidenced by
>life histories of substance abuse, automoile accident, felony,
>and attacks on relatives and acquaintances.3
>
>
>1. Prior Felony Record of Murderers
>
>     The FBI's annual crime reports do not regularly compile data
>on the prior criminal records of murderers, and no such data are
>otherwise available on a national basis.  But in a special data
>run for the Eisenhower Commission, the FBI found that 74.7
>percent of murder arrestees nationally oer a 4-year period had
>prior arrests for violent felonies or burglaries.4  In another 1-
>year period 77.9 percent of murder arrestees had priors.5  Over
>yet another 5-year period nationally, arrested murderers had
>adult criminal records showing an average prior criminal career
>of at least 6 years duration, including four major felony
>arrests; 57.1 percent of these murder arrestees had been
>convictd of at least one prior adult felony; and 64 percent of a
>national sample of convicted murderers who had been released were
>rearrested within 4 years. 6
>
>     These data have been confirmed by numerous local studies
>over the past 40 years.7  For instance, a profile showed that a
>typical murderer in Washington, D.C., had six prior arrests,
>including two for felonies, one for a violent felony.8  Not that
>these data do not begin to reflect the full extent of murderers'
>prior criminal careers--and thus cannot illustrate how different
>murderers are from the ordinary law-abiding person.  Much serious
>crime goes unreported.  Of those crimes that are reported, a
>large number are never cleared by arrest; of those so cleared,
>many are juvenile arrests that are not included in the data
>recounted abov.  At the same time we know that most juvenile,
>unsolved, or unreported serious crimes are concentrated in the
>relatively small number of people who have been arrested for
>other crimes.9
>
>
>2.  Prior Violence History of Wife Murderers
>
>     Intrafamily murderers are especially likely to have engaged
>in far more previous violent crimes than show up in their arrest
>records.  But because these attackswere on spouses or other
>family members, they will rarely have resulted in an arrest.10
>So domestic murderers' official records tend not to show their
>full prior violence, but only their adult arrests for attacking
>people outside their families.  Therefore, only about "70 to 75
>percent of domestic homicide offenders have been previously
>arrested and about half previously convicted."11  As to how mny
>crimes they perpetrate within the family, even in a relatively
>short time, "review of police records in Detroit and Kansas City"
>shows that in 90 percent of the cases of domestic homicide,
>police had responded at least once to a disturbance call at the
>home during the two-year period prior to the fatal incident, and
>in over half (54 percent) of the cases, they had been called five
>or more times12
>
>     A leading authority on domestic homicide notes: "The day-to-
>day reality is that most family murders are preceded by a long
>history of assaults . . ."  Studies (including those just cited)
>"indicate that intrafamily homicide is typically just one episode
>in a long-standing syndrome of violence."13  Nor is "acquaintance
>homicide" accurately conceptualized  as a phenomenon of
>previously lawabiding people killing each other in neighborhood
>arguments.  The term "acquaintance homicide" covers, and far more
>typically is exemplified by, examples such as a drug addict
>killing his dealer in the course of robbing him; a loan shark or
>bookie killing a nonpaying customer; or gang members, drug
>dealers, and members of organized crime "families" killing each
>other.14
>
>3. Non Sequitur and Fabriction in Labeling Murderers as Ordinary
>Citizens
>
>     In contrast to these evaluations, neither of the data sets,
>which are cited as supporting claims that murderers "are good
>citizens who kill each other," is persuasive.  the National
>Coalition to Ban Handguns' assertion that "most murders are
>committed by a relative or close acquaintance of the victim"15 is
>conceptually unpersuasive because it i a non sequitur: it simply
>does not follow that because a murderer knows or is related to
>his victims, he must be an ordinary citizen rather than a long-
>time criminal.  The conclusion would make sense only if ordinary
>citizens differed from criminals by neither knowing anyone nor
>being related to anyone.
>
>     The other data set that supposedly shows murderers as
>ordinary citizens is Lindsay's asertion that "most murders (73
>percent in 1972) are committed by previously law-abiding citizens
>committing impulsive gun-murders while engaged in arguments with
>family members or acquaintances."16  While there is nothing
>conceptually wrong with this statement, it is empirically
>unpersuasive because it is simply a fabrication.  Lindsay claims
>his figures are from the FBI 1972 Uniform Crime Report. But that
>report offers no such statistic; rather it and other FBI data
>diametrically contradict the statement.  Far from showing that 73
>percent of murderers nationally were "previously law-abiding
>citizens," the report shows that 74.7 percent of persons arrested
>for murder had prior arrests for a violent felony or burglary.17
>
>     As the abstract to the NIJ Evaluation18 concludes:
>
>     It is comonly hypothesized that much criminal violence,
>     especially homicide, occurs simply because the means of
>     lethal violence (firearms) are readily at hand and, thus,
>     that much homicide would not occur were firearms generally
>     less available.  There is no persuasive evidence that
>     supports this view.19
>
>I emphasize that this statement does NOT refute the case for gun
>control, incuding rationally tailored gun bans.  The fact that
>murderers are "real criminals" with life histories of violence,
>felony, substance abuse, and auto accident highlights the danger
>in such people having handguns--or guns of any kind!20  But it is
>very misleading when homicide statistics that are idiosyncratic
>to gun misusers are presented as arguments for banning guns from
>the whole populace.  Idioyncratic statistics provide no basis
>for the claim that precautionary gun ownership by average
>citizens seriously endangers their friends or relatives.
>
>
>References
>
>1.  Lindsay, "the Case for Federal Firearms Control," p.22
>(1973).  Citing Lindsay, the National Coalition to Ban Handguns
>pamphlet, "A Shooting Gallery Called America," asserts that "each
>year" thousands of "gun murders [are] done bylaw-abiding
>citizens who might have stayed law-abiding if they had not
>possessed firearms"; and "that most murders are committed by
>previously law-abiding citizens where the killer and the victim
>are related or acquainted."  See also Edwards, "Murder and Gun
>Control," 18 Wayne State U. Law Rev. 1335 (1972).
>
>2.  Kairys, "A Carnage in the Name of Freedom, "Philadelphia
>Inquirer, Sept. 12, 1988.  Mr Kairys is a lawyer and part-time
>teacher of sociology.
>
>3.  Lane, "On the Social Meaning of Homicide Trends in America,"
>in T. Gurr, "Violence in America," v. 1, 59 (1989) ("...the
>psychological profile of the accident-prone suggests the same
>kind of aggressiveness shown by most murderers").
>
>4.  Set out in tabular form in D. Mulvihill et al., "Crimes of
>Violence: Report of the Task Force on Indiidual Acts of
>Violence" (Washington, D.C.: Govt. Print. Off., 1969) at 532.
>
>5.  FBI, "Uniform Crime Report," 1971, at 38.
>
>6.  FBI, "Uniform Crime Report," 1975, at 42ff.
>
>7.  Kleck & Bordua, "The Factual Foundation for Certain Key
>Assumptions of Gun Control," 5 Law & Pol. Q. 271, 292ff. (1983);
>Kleck, "Capital Punishment, Gun Ownership, and Homicide," 84 Am.
>J.  Of Soc. 882, 893 (1979); R. Narloh, "Criminal Homicide in
>California" 53-54 (Cal. Bur. of Crim. Stats., 1973); A. Swersey &
>E. Enloe, "Homicide in Harlem" (Rand, 1975) 17 ("We estimate that
>the great majority of both perpetrators and victims of assaults
>and murders had previous arrests, probably over 80 percent or
>more").
>
>8.  Data reported to the Senate Sub-committee to Investigate
>Juvenile Delinquency, 19th Congress; see "Hearigs, Second
>Session" 75-76.
>
>9.  Survey released by NIJ in summary form only.  Entire survey
>privately published as: J. Wright & P. Rossi, "Armed and
>Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms"
>(N.Y.: Aldine 1986);  J. & M. Chaiken, "Varieties of Criminal
>Behavior" (1982); M. Wolfgang et al., "Delinquency in a Birth
>Cohort" (1972).
>
>10.  Police have traditionally been loathe to arrst in such
>situations; moreover, in upwards of 50 percent of relatively
>serious cases, the police have no opportunity to make an arrest
>because the victim fails to report the matter (out of belief that
>the matter is a private affair, or that the police will not take
>action, or out of fear of retaliation).  See the U.S. Bureau of
>Justice Statistics releases, "Family Violence" (april 1984);
>"Preventng Domestic Violence Against Women" (Aug. 1986); and
>"Violent Crime by Strangers and Non-Strangers" (Jan. 1987), all
>based on survey responses rather than reports to police.
>
>11.  Kleck, "Policy Lessons from Recent Gun Control Research," 49
>Law & Contemp. Probs. 35 (1986) at 40-41.
>
>12.  Browne & Williams, "Resource Availability for Women at Risk:
>Its Relationship to Rates of Female-Perpetrated Patner
>Homicide," a paper presented at the 1987 annual meeting of the
>American Society of Criminology (available from the authors at
>Family Research Laboratory, U. of New Hampshire).
>
>13.  Straus, "Domestic Violence and Homicide Antecedents," 62
>Bull.  N.Y. Acad. Med. 446, 454, 457 (1986); and Straus, "Medical
>Care Costs of Intrafamily Assault and Homicide," 62 Bull. N.Y.
>Acad. of Med. 556, 557 fn. 1986).  For a detailed review of
>relevant studies, see Browne & Flewelling, "Women as Victims or
>Perpetrators of Homicide," a paper presented at the 1986 annual
>meeting of the American Society of Criminology (available from
>the authors at the Family Research Laboratory, U. of New
>Hampshire).
>
>14.  Current Research above at 203 (in T. Gurr, "Violence in
>America'" v. 1).
>
>15.  Both this and the precding quote are from the National
>Coalition to Ban Handguns, undated, unpaginated pamphlet, "A
>Shooting Gallery Called America."
>
>16.  Lindsay, "The Case for Federal Firearms Control" p.22
>     (1973).
>
>17.  Cf. the FBI 4-year national homicide data set out in
>Mulvihill et al. above at 532.  Lindsay's reference gives no
>specific page citation for the 1972 "Uniform Crime Report."  His
>73 percent figre is directly contradicted by the special
>"Careers in Crime" data appearing at pp.35-38 of that "Report"
>and the other FBI data discussed above.  Please note,
>incidentally, that neither the 1972 "Report" nor any other FBI
>publication gives figures for the percentage of family and/or
>acquaintance murders that are committed with guns.  The 1972
>"Report" does contain a figure for the overall number f murders
>in which a gun was used, but it is 65 percent not Mayor Lindsay's
>73 percent.
>
>18. J. Wright, P. Rossi, & K. Daly, "Under the Gun: Weapons,
>Crime, and Violence in the United States" (N.Y.: Aldine, 1983);
>Unless otherwise stated all references to the NIJ Evaluation are
>to this, its final commercially published version, rather than to
>the NIJ-published version, which is J. Wright, P. Rossi & K.
>Daly, "Weapons Crime and Violence in America: A Literature Review
>and Research Agenda" (Washington, D.C.: Govt. Print. Off., 1981).
>
>19.  The language quoted is from the abstract to J. Wright, P.
>Rossi, & K. Daly, "Weapons, Crime and Violence in America:
>Executive Summary" (Washington, D.C.: Govt. Print. Off., 1981),
>published as a separate document accompanying the main NIJ
>Evaluation.  It oes not appear in haec verba in the revised
>commercially published version ("Under the Gun"), but see pp.192-
>94 and 321-22 thereof.
>
>20.  See for example, "Policy Lessons," 49 Law & Contemp. Prob.
>at 40-41, 59-60 (gun policy should focus on such high-risk
>owners, outlawing their possession of all guns, not just
>handguns).
>
>
>    New article follows: appending James Wright's "Crimes of
>Passion.
>
>   From REASON magazine, August/September 1990/Vol. 22, No 4
>                           Pages 44-45
>
>                    IN THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT
>
>                        By James D. Wright
>
>   Bob and Jim are good drinking buddies.  After a night at their
>favorite bar, they head back to Jim's trailer for some whiskey.
>Jim begins praising his new girlfriend.  Bob questions her
>fidelity and claims tat he has slept with her.  Seized by
>uncontrollable rage, Jim grabs a loaded .44 from the kitchen
>drawer and ends the conversation with a bang.
>
>   This is the sort of scenario that most people probably imagine
>when they hear that the majority of murders involve individuals
>who knew each other before the crime.  Based on this impression,
>gun-control advocates argue that most homicides do not invole
>murderous intent.  Rather, they are committed in the heat of the
>moment, in disputes or altercations among loved ones or close
>associates that escalate into rage -- disputes that turn fatal
>not so much because anyone intended to kill but because, in that
>lamentable fit of anger, a gun was at hand.  And if that is
>really how most murders happen, it follows that if fewer guns
>were "at hand," fewermurders would be committed.
>
>  But the data on relationships between homicide victims and
>their killers tell a different story.  The conclusion in favor of
>gun control simply does not follow from the evidence.
>
>  FBI figures for 1987 and 1988 reveal that murders by strangers
>-- for example, in the course of a robbery -- are rare.  They
>account for only about one in eight homicides (12.6 percent).
>ut this does not imply that the remaining seven in every eight
>homicides involve loved ones slaying
>one another.  After all, very few people love everyone they meet.
>Just how close is the relationship between victim and killer in
>the typical murder?
>
>  In many cases -- nearly a third of the total -- the authorities
>simply cannot determine the relationship.  Next to "unknown," the
>largest relationsip category is "acquaintance,"  accounting for
>approximately one additional third of the murders.  You might
>think that "acquaintance" refers to fairly close associates, but
>the FBI tallies neighbors, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, and
>all types of relatives in their own separate categories.  It
>there were any degree of intimacy or closeness between
>acquaintances, the FBI would almost certainlyclassify the
>homicide under another heading.  In this context, "acquaintance"
>means only that the victim and killer had some idea of each
>other's identities before the murder.
>
>  All categories of relatives combined account for about one in
>six murders (15.9 percent o average).  About half of these are
>slayings of spouses by spouses.  Friends and neighbors add an
>average of 9.8 percent to the homiide total.  Altogether, then,
>relatives, friends, and neighbors commit only about a quarter
>(25.7 percent) of murders.  So it's not true that "most" murders
>involve persons who share some degree of intimacy or closeness.
>Most murders -- some three-quarters of them --are committed by
>casual acquaintances (30.2 percent), perfect strangers (12.8
>percent), or persons unknown (31.2 percent).
>
>  Gun conrol advocates, however, can easily convey the opposite
>impression of these data.  By simply omitting the unknown
>relationships from the calculation and including casual
>acquaintances within the category of intimates, they can make it
>seem as if every murder other than those by perfect strangers
>involve intimates.  But given what the category of acquaintance
>specifically omits, this would be an irrsponsible
>misrepresentation.
>
>  That most murder victims know their killers prior to the crime
>is scarcely a surprise.  That people know one another is not in
>itself evidence that they like one another.  Ordinarily, the only
>people a murderer would have good reasons to kill would be people
>he or she knows.  Indeed, slayings in the course of some other
>felony are the only obvious exception;  randomkillings are
>understandably quite rare.  So contrary to the common assumption,
>some degree of prior acquaintance between victim and offender
>definitely does not rule out murderous intent.  Cases of family
>members slaying one another figure prominently in the gun control
>debate but represent fewer than one-sixth of all murders. Studies
>of family homicide have shown that most of these families (abou
>85 percent of them) have had previous domestic quarrels serious
>enough to bring the police to the residence: in nearly half of
>the cases, the police had been called to the residence five or
>more times before the killing occurred.  Indeed, most of the
>families in which such homicides occur have histories of abuse
>and violence going back years or even decades.  These slayings
>are generally not isolted outbursts of rage between normally
>placid and loving couples.  They are, instead, the culminating
>episodes in long, violent, abusive family relations.
>
>  At least some family homicides probably do result from the
>stereo-typical "moment of rage."  Others result from a thoroughly
>willful intention to kill.  Knowing only that victim and killer
>are related by blood or marriage does not in itself tll us which
>explanation is correct for a given homicide.
>
>  Consider the bizarre case of Theron and Leila Morris, a Florida
>couple recently accused of killing their son, Christopher.
>Police say the Morrises were plotting with their son to murder
>his ex-wife for her insurance money.  Then the conspirators
>learned that the ex-wife's insurance policy had lapsed, so there
>was nothing to be gained in klling her.  Evidently annoyed by
>this turn of events, the Morrises then allegedly plotted between
>themselves to kill Christopher in order to collect on HIS
>insurance policy, which was still in force and worth twice what
>his ex-wife's policy was worth.  The Associated Press reported
>that the parents were also angry with Morris because he had "sold
>them bogus cocaine for $1,000 that they had intende to resell."
>
>  Morris's killing will appear in the FBI's 1990 Uniform Crime
>Report tabulation as a family homicide;  having been slain by his
>own parents, he will be included in the category "son."  What,
>then, will we know about the circumstances of his death, given
>that he was the child of his killers?  Nothing at all.
>
>  How many murders are committed in a moment of rage, brought to
>fruition lrgely because a gun was available, and how many result
>from an unambiguous intention to kill?  The fact is, nobody knows
>the answer to this question.  An adequate answer would require
>getting inside the heads of murders as they contemplate and
>commit their crimes.
>
>  Clearly, though, the assumption that heat-of-the-moment murders
>far outnumber willful murders cannot be justified by evidence on
>prir victim-offender relationships.  Such information does not
>support conclusions about homicidal motives or about the number
>of slayings that might be prevented if fewer guns were available.
>
>
>        James D. Wright is Favrot Professor of Human Relations
>        at Tulane University.  He is the author of "Under the
>        Gun: Weapons, Crime, and Violence in America" and "Armed
>        and Considred Dangerous: Felons and Their Firearms."


     If you stuck with it this far thank you for your patience.  

     Ken Wood




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