The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania reports on an insurance and life expectancy "study" due to be published this fall. The study, written by Insurance and Actuarial Science Professor Jean Lemaire, examines gun violence and concludes (surprise) that gun violence costs money and lives.

Lemaire tries to put a dollar value and life expectancy cost on the Second Amendment. Months of research show that men suffer more than women, and minorities (namely young black males) are hardest hit. So far, none of these assertions are really new. But then Lemaire takes a flying leap into gun control la-la land.

To put things in an epidemiological context, Lemaire points out that "among all fatal injuries, only motor vehicle accidents have a stronger effect [than firearm deaths]." Further, the numbers show that "the elimination of all firearm deaths in the U.S. would increase the male life expectancy more than the total eradication of all colon and prostate cancers."

So one impossible dream would have a greater effect than another impossible dream. I think I see where this is going. Notice too that he cleverly compares gun violence to a cherry-picked non-preventable death like colon cancer. If he'd used heart disease or deaths related to obesity the numbers wouldn't have worked in his favor.

Lemaire then absurdly tries to nip the critics in the bud by refuting the substitution effect before anyone even brought it up.

One objection to the idea that reducing firearm deaths would increase life expectancy and reduce insurance costs is the argument that guns are simply a means to an end -- and that people who are intent on violence, either toward themselves or others, will find a way to achieve that objective with whatever tools are available. This is called the substitution effect. "I don't believe that Americans are necessarily more violent than the Japanese or the Europeans," Lemaire says, "and certainly the history of the 20th century shows a lot of violence in other countries. I don't think violence is in the genes of the American people."

Japan "certainly provided more than its share of violence in the 20th century," he continues, "but at the dawn of the 21st century, Japan is among the safest countries in the world: Zero guns in Japan means zero crimes. It bears mention that Japan also has an extremely low rate of thefts, burglaries, etc., a counterweight to the argument by pro-gun people that guns at home reduce burglaries."

Heh. So Japan has zero guns and zero crime. That's probably news to Japan. Even if that was true (it's not) the correlation doesn't mean causation. If that were true, than Switzerland would have extremely high rate of crime to match their extremely high rate of lawful gun ownership. (Machine gun ownership at that.) Instead, Switzerland is an example of more guns less crime. At home in the United States, states with high rates of lawful gun ownership also enjoy less crime. If Lemaire's conclusion were true, Washington D.C., which has been "gun free" since 1976 would be the safest place in America. Instead it's a yearly contender for the murder capital of America. I challenge him to walk through Anacostia after dark.

He also writes as though crime were normally distributed and random. It's not. People who use drugs, prostitutes, or generally hang around areas where crime is concentrated are much more likely to be a victim. And those places usually have a lower concentration of lawfully owned firearms.

Not to be dissuaded, the Professor dives into non sequitur.

He cites a number of studies which show that, in the area of homicides, there is little or no substitution effect. One such study done in 1988 contrasts Seattle, Wa., and Vancouver, British Columbia - two cities nearly identical in terms of climate, population, unemployment level, average income and other demographic characteristics. But as a result of far stricter gun laws in Canada he writes, only 12% of Vancouver's inhabitants own guns, compared to an estimated 41% of Seattle residents.

The study finds "that the two cities essentially experience the same rates of burglary, robbery, homicides and assaults without a gun," Lemaire writes. "However, in Seattle the rate of assault with a firearm is 7 times higher than in Vancouver, and the rate of homicide with a handgun is 4.8 times higher. The authors conclude that the availability of handguns in Seattle increases the assault and homicide rates with a gun, but does not decrease the crime rates without guns, and that restrictive handgun laws reduce the homicide rate in a community."

If there were no substitution effect how does he explain the United Kingdom. After banning handguns, semi-auto rifles, replica guns, toy guns, and pellet guns, Britain has taken to calling for knife control to combat their skyrocketing crime rate.

The assertion that the mere presence of guns correlates to more gun crime is over simplification. To the uneducated, it may seem to make sense. By why then, don't police departments suffer disproportionate gun violence? My own home contains several guns. Why don't the evil mind control rays they emit take hold of me and cause me to go on a shooting spree?

What's more, Vancouver further north than Seattle. Maybe the changes in latitudes makes people more prone to violence. Yeah, it's a loony assertion, but then so is saying that the mere presence of guns causes crime.

The major differences between Seattle and Vancouver is that one is in America and one is in Canada. And America has a much more aggressive "War on Drugs" than does Canada. Seattle is like a mecca for American drug users, and in the 1980s President Reagan was busy escalating the war on drugs. Canada, on the other hand, sets up needle exchange programs where drug users can get fresh paraphernalia and use drugs without fear of arrest or prosecution. The program was born in (guess where) Vancouver in the 1980s. The American war on drugs translates into higher costs for drug users and fatter profits for drug pushers. That violent crime increases in response to a strict temperance movement was proven in the 1930s, and the 1988 crime rates no doubt reflect that.

The Professor doesn't call for an outright ban on guns, however. He's smarter than that. Instead he calls for prejudicial discrimination not unlike the ostracism that smokers face today.

He does see potential opportunities, however, in the area of how insurance companies can better price, and perhaps more equitably distribute the cost of, the risks associated with guns. "There is some evidence," Lemaire says, "including evidence from the Penn School of Medicine, that just owning a gun significantly increases your chance of dying -- even when you control for variables like neighborhood, education, and so on."

Silly me, I thought the chance of dying was already 100%. You could take his suggestion a couple of ways. Either charge higher prices to the young black men who are more likely to be caught up in violent crime, or charge law-abiding gun owners. Since this is probably not a call for insurance companies to discriminate based on race, he is no doubt suggesting that insurance companies push for a national gun registry, and charge higher rates for registered gun owners. It's nothing more than back-door gun control. Make it more expensive to lawfully own a gun, and you decrease the number of legally owned guns (which is the ultimate goal). That such a suggestion discriminates against the poor and minorities who may not be able to afford the cost of compliance seems to escape the Professor.

One logical thread to pursue concerns the risk calculations that insurance companies make in pricing life insurance policies. Demographics and lifestyle choices are the bread and butter of those kinds of calculations, but -- given recent personal experience -- Lemaire is a bit puzzled by the questions asked of policy applicants. "I just applied for life insurance last week," he says. "I am a scuba diver. [The insurance company] asked me 25 questions about my scuba diving habits. This is a sport that kills 100 people annually worldwide. Nobody asked me whether I have a gun in my house, yet guns kill 30,000 people every year just in the U.S. It is bizarre that no one thought to ask that question."

Gee, no anti-gun violence showing through there. Perhaps insurance companies don't ask because the two aren't related. (You can bet that if they could save money by asking, they would.) According to the CDC, 16,926 people died from falls compared to 11,599 murdered with firearms (2003 figures). Perhaps insurance companies should ask people whether or not they have bath-mats or how many stairs they have to climb each day.

And of course, there is the typical call for more funding and research.

He also sees room for further work in this area, both in academia and also within the insurance industry.

Sounds like another case of the research being tailored to fit predetermined results. I'm sure he's counting on grant money and ass-kissing from the gun grabbers and usual suspects in the media. (If you really want to get rich quick just write an anti-gun study and then wait for the anti-gunners to throw money at you with a bulldozer.)

In all of this, something that the Professor doesn't even consider is all of the lives saved by firearms. Americans didn't liberate Europe (twice) by pushing Germans out of windows. We used guns. And before we used guns we sent our guns to the British so that they could use guns.

At home, our police officers carry guns. Our soldiers carry guns. Our law-abiding citizens carry guns. And they use those guns to enforce the law. They use those guns to deter criminals who would just as soon cut your throat for the five dollars in your pocket. The criminals will always be armed, and if you aren't armed yourself you are a sitting duck (which, by the way, just happens to be policeman's slang for a convenience store clerk).

Over the past decade, the lawful carry of firearms has been encouraged nearly nationwide, and crime rates have been falling ever since. Guns save countless lives each day, most times without even firing a shot. A disarmed populace only emboldens criminals.

And those unreported, uncatalogued, self-defense numbers are what is missing from the statistics that Lemaire twists to push his beliefs. If he likes Japan so much, perhaps he should move there and quit treading on our Constitution.