THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Sunday, August 13, 1995                TAG: 9508130014
SECTION: COMMENTARY               PAGE: J4   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Letter 
                                             LENGTH: Short :   44 lines

IGNORED FACTS ON GUNS

``Secret weapons for Virginia'' (letter, July 28) from Kaye Tice, education chairman for Virginians Against Handgun Violence, twisted several facts to try to convince your readers that the Florida Carry Concealed Weapon law (CCW) and Virginia's new CCW law are bad ideas. While Ms. Tice did concede that homicides dropped when Florida started issuing CCWs, she then stated that ``the number of murders by firearm actually went up, from 697 to 800,'' implying that the CCW policy was the cause of this increase.

This is very misleading. All firearms are not handguns, and if all the FBI Uniform Crime Report information is presented, you would learn that from the first day of Florida's CCW until the date of the report (more than six years), only 17 permits were revoked because permittees later committed crimes (not necessarily violent) in which guns were present (not necessarily used). This is only .008 percent of issued permits. Obviously, few, if any, of the murders were performed by permit holders.

Ms. Tice states that Florida had the highest violent-crime rate in the country. That is only if you count states: Washington, D.C., had the highest crime rate, despite a complete ban of handguns! In fact, after the ban, handgun violence increased.

Ms. Tice ignores these facts, because they prove that handgun bans do not work. In addition, 70 percent of ``violent crime'' does not involve guns at all.

If the whole crime report is analyzed, you learn that the total violent-crime rate is 26 percent higher in gun-restrictive states than in less restrictive states. The homicide rate is 49 percent higher in restrictive states, the robbery rate is 58 percent higher, the aggravated assault rate is 15 percent higher. . . . You see my point. In all, Americans use firearms for self-defense more than 2.1 million times per year, while firearms are used only about 579,000 times in violent crimes.

JOSEPH LAFOON

Virginia Beach, July 29, 1995 by CNB