BULLET POINT: Gun Crimes Dropping Despite Public Perception

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  Gun crimes are down - but public perception of them is up. (AP)AP

A spate of high-profile shootings has left Americans with the perception that gun crimes are on the rise, but a new study shows the opposite appears to be true, according to a study.

A Pew Research poll released this week found that 56 percent of adults believe that gun crime is more common now than 20 years ago. But a report by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics seems to show that crime involving firearms has fallen dramatically over the last 20 years, with the rate of homicides committed with guns cut in half since 1993. The rate of the violent crimes fell even more, and is now just a quarter of what it was.

“When people respond in opinion polls, it’s shaped from what they’re getting through the network news, the New York Times, the Washington Post."

- Alan Gottlieb, The Second Amendment Foundation

In the Pew poll of 924 adults, just 12 percent correctly answered that gun crime fell over the last 20 years. Gun rights advocates say media coverage of gun violence has distorted the public perception.

“This doesn’t surprise me in the least,” Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation told FoxNews.com. “When people respond in opinion polls, it’s shaped from what they’re getting through the network news, The New York Times, The Washington Post. And for them, ‘if it bleeds it leads’ – if there’s a tragedy, that becomes the lead story.”

But supporters of tighter gun control laws say it is modern medicine, not a more peaceable public, that is behind the numbers.

“More people are being shot in America, but fewer people are dying,” Erika Soto Lamb, the communications director for Mayors Against Illegal Guns, told FoxNews.com. She cited CDC data which show that, since data has been kept in 2001, the rate of people being assaulted and shot during the assault has risen 25 percent.

In other words, the data since 2001 tell a slightly more complex story: Fewer people are being attacked with guns, but slightly more people are being shot with guns – yet at the same time, fewer people are being killed with guns.

“A number of factors are believed to have contributed to this, but mostly, improved medical care is helping to save more lives,” Soto Lamb said. “The latest studies should not be taken as proof that this country does not have a gun violence epidemic. We do.”

Still, the biggest trend over the last 20 years is the reduction in gun-related attacks and killings, and Gottlieb blames the media for ignoring that story.

“The Second Amendment Foundation has been tracking the data year-in and year-out, and each year, we put out a news release about how gun crime is down. But the media just doesn’t want to hear it if it doesn’t further their anti-gun agenda,” Gottlieb said.

The idea that public perceptions don't match up with the numbers is hardly surprising, said Bryan Caplan, an economist at George Mason University who researches public opinion.

“The public perceives rising crime in general… [so] I don't think anti-gun bias is a good explanation,” Caplan told FoxNews.com.

Gallup polls show that Americans overestimate crime in general. In 15 out of 16 Gallup polls conducted in the past 20 years, Americans incorrectly said that crime had risen compared to the previous year.

While gun crime fell dramatically over the last 20 years, crimes committed without guns fell just as fast.

Gottlieb had an explanation for that.

“All crime has basically been going down. And that’s because more people have firearms to protect themselves,” he said.

While firearm ownership rates have been relatively flat according to survey data, many more people now have licenses to carry guns on their person. The number of states with laws that give people a right to carry handguns outside of the home – known as “shall-issue concealed-carry laws” -- has increased dramatically over the last 20 years, going from 16 states in 1993 to 43 now.

Estimates show that guns are used in self-defense between 100,000 and 2 million times each year. Overlooking that, Gottlieb said, is the media’s biggest error.

“You never hear about defensive gun uses. Every time there’s a tragedy, there’s a call for gun control. But every time a gun is used in self defense – usually it doesn’t make the news, and you never hear a call for relaxing the gun laws so more people can defend themselves.”

Contact the author at maxim.lott@foxnews.com or on twitter at @maximlott

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Doctors: Despite severity of events, patients' outlook is 'high'

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Two patients are still in critical condition at Boston Medical Center, and 10 are in serious condition, said one doctor.

Dr. Peter Burke, chief of trauma surgery at the South End hospital, said Wednesday that his hospital still has a total of 19 patients. Eight of them will be operated on today.

“We are looking to discharge one or two of these patients as well today,” he said.

According to the Boston Globe, a 5-year-old boy is one of the two in critical condition, while the other is a man in his 60s.

Burke said initially, the hospital had 10 or 11 critical condition patients – and now there are only two.

“Most patients are making good progress, moving through the process,” he said.

Burke said the hospital’s next steps are to re-evaluate patients’ wounds.

“Because of the capricious nature of the trauma, you can’t tell exactly all the damage that may have happened, and you need to look at things over time,” he said. “So time is a really important concept here in terms of wounds and what happens to them.”

Tufts Medical Center has treated 14 patients with injuries relating to the marathon, and so far, seven of them have been discharged. Seven patients remain hospitalized at Tufts, but none of them are in critical condition, nor do they have amputations, according to a hospital spokesperson.

On Tuesday, doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital said they were confident no further lives would be lost.

Two bombs exploded within seconds of each other near the Boylston Street finish line Monday, killing three people and injuring 176. Many injuries occurred from a variety of sharp objects lodged in the body – ranging from shrapnel and metallic fragments to pellets and nails.

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VA still prescribing tranquilizers to veterans with PTSD, despite warnings

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Veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are still being prescribed tranquilizers – such as Valium and Xanax – by doctors from the Department of Veterans Affairs, Stars and Stripes reported.  

This practice, however, is in direct contrast to VA guidelines, which advise against tranquilizer use for this purpose. According to Dr. Nancy Bernardy, a psychologist for the VA’s National Center for PTSD, the number of veterans being treated by the VA for PTSD has increased three-fold over the past decade, up to around 500,000 patients in 2009.

Bernardy and her colleagues have co-authored a soon-to-be-published study, which analyzed the VA prescription records of veterans with PTSD from 2009 to 2012.

The findings revealed that nearly a third of these veterans with PTSD are being given benzodiazepines – sedatives most often used to treat insomnia, anxiety, seizures and other disorders.  While benzodiazepine prescriptions for veteran PTSD patients have declined from 37 percent to 30 percent up until 2009, prescriptions have remained at 30 percent through 2012.

Current clinical guidelines, co-authored by the VA and Department of Defense, advise physicians against using benzodiazepines, citing a lack of efficacy data and growing concern for risk of harm, Stars and Stripes said.

Benzodiazepines replaced barbiturates in the 1960s as the sedative of choice for PTSD treatment, because it was they were shown to help control anxiety and insomnia.  However, there is a lack of evidence that these sedatives actually treat “core” symptoms of PTSD – such as avoidance, hyperarousal, numbing and dissociation, and many feel that the drugs actually hinder other effective PTSD treatments.

The DOD/VA guidelines also caution against prescribing benzodiazepines to veterans with substance abuse problems or mild traumatic brain injuries

“Once initiated, benzodiazepines can be very difficult, if not impossible, to discontinue due to significant withdrawal symptoms compounded by the underlying PTSD symptoms,” the VA/DOD guidelines state.

Most of the benzodiazepines being prescribed for PTSD veterans are coming from mental health providers – not primary care physicians, Stars and Stripes reported.  Bernardy and researchers hope to do more researcher to determine whether the discrepancy has to do with ignorance of VA guidelines.

Click for more from Stars and Stripes.

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MAKING IT HURT: Students feel cuts' burn despite inaction on fraud

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  Students walk on the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) campus in this file photo.REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

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  Students receiving federal financial aid recently received this letter informing them of an increase due to Sequester-related budget cuts.

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The effects of the sequester have spread to the hallowed halls of education.

Both graduate students and the parents of undergrads have been quietly receiving letters from the federal Department of Education. The letters say the fees on their Direct PLUS loans from the government are being raised as a direct result of the automatic budget cuts that kicked in this month because Congress and the White House couldn't come to a fiscal agreement.

“On August 2, 2011, Congress passed the Budget Control Act of 2011, which put into place automatic federal budget cuts, known as the 'sequester.' While this law does not otherwise change the amount or terms or conditions of your Direct Loan, it does raise loan fees on Direct PLUS Loans first disbursed after March 1, 2013,” reads a copy of the letter obtained by FoxNews.com.

“If I managed our budget like Washington did, my family would be out on the street.”

- Kansas resident Russell Schroeder

“Specifically, the fee on your loan will increase from 4.0 percent of your loan amount to 4.204 percent. For example, the fee on a $10,000 PLUS loan will increase by $20.40 from $400.00 to $420.40,” the letter continues.

While the increase is slight, many families will still have to tighten belts on already strained budgets, and some feel that they are being punished for a stalemate between Democrats and Republicans in Washington.

“The lack of action on both sides is an atrocity,” Kansas resident Russell Schroeder, who currently has two daughters in college and received the letter, told FoxNews.com. “Everyone talks about bipartisanship, but no one gives an inch. ...

“If I managed our budget like Washington did, my family would be out on the street.”

Critics of the recent cutbacks across the country as a result of the sequester say that the cuts could have been avoided by cutting back on wasteful spending.

A recent congressional report suggests that federal agencies could have saved over $65 billion in 2012 had they listened to the audit recommendations of their respective inspectors general.

In an oversight committee meeting last week, the Department of Education’s inspector general, Kathleen Tighe, testified that there were “longstanding challenges” in the department’s response to audits, which have identified nearly $200 million in federal student aid fraud since 2009.

And the unnecessary spending seems to be across the board. In spring 2012, the Government Accountability Office released a series of reports that pointed out programs with excessive costs that could be cut and, in turn, enhance revenue in the billions.

Schroeder says that even the little increase on an already high loan will make staying within a family budget tough.

“With inflation, this adds up. Five years ago, $25 bought you four bags of groceries," he said. "Now, you’re lucky if it will buy you one bag. ...

“We are getting into a desperate time. Every penny we have to spend on something is precious.”

The sequester-related loan fee hike comes at a time when student loan debt has become a hefty strain on family households. It has surpassed credit card debt in 2010, with Americans owing about $1 trillion and 13 percent of borrowers defaulting on their loans.

And the cuts could affect students even more in the coming academic year, with a 5 percent cut on funding for federal work study and supplemental education programs.

“The cut will come from the overall pool of funding, so many schools will receive less funding and many of them are going to be given a smaller piece of the pot,” Megan McCleare, director of policy and federal relations for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, told FoxNews.com. “Schools are sending out award letters to students saying they have been accepted, but the number will be lower by the time they start. ...

“Students are making decisions now with figures that will be less at the start of the next academic year.”

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MAKING IT HURT: WH Staffers Raking in Big Bucks Despite Cuts

After closing the doors to public tours in an effort to save money, White House officials haven't yet said if sequester cuts will result in furloughs or layoffs for its senior staffers -- as is happening with rank-and-file in other executive branch agencies. 

But there are dozens of senior employees and other presidential "assistants" to choose from if the administration were to look at cutting the six-figure salaries from its payroll. 

In the field of energy and climate change alone, President Obama in 2012 employed three advisers making at least $100,000 -- though one has since left. 

The president kept on staff a "deputy assistant" for energy and climate change, Heather Zichal, making $140,000; a "special assistant" for energy and environment, Nathaniel Keohane; and a "deputy director" for energy and climate change, Dan Utech. 

Together, their salaries totaled over $370,000 last year, according to White House records. 

Climate blogger Steven Goddard said it's unlikely the administration will scale back its circle of advisers, at least on this issue. 

"It's a very important point to his political base," Goddard said. "Whether he believes it or not himself, he has to make the effort to appear that he's working on controlling the climate." 

Zichal, who previously worked in the 2008 Obama campaign, during the president's first term helped craft administration policy on fuel economy standards and mercury pollution regulations. Keohane worked via his post on the White House Domestic Policy Council. Keohane left the White House last year to join the Environmental Defense Fund. 

The White House is being scrutinized after a decision -- driven in large part by Secret Service staffing considerations -- to end public tours of the "people's house." That decision took effect this past weekend, outraging lawmakers and spurned tourists alike. 

While that decision freed up money in the Secret Service budget, some are waiting to see what the White House will do to show sacrifice on its end. 

The latest 2012 salary figures released by the White House show 20 staffers were making the maximum $172,200. Many of them are well-known President Obama aides, including Press Secretary Jay Carney and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. Most carry the title of "assistant to the president." 

But underneath them are dozens of "deputy" assistants and "special" assistants to the president, most making six-figure salaries -- like the climate change advisers. A review of the 2012 salaries by FoxNews.com shows 139 White House staffers making $100,000 or more. 

The White House often attracts top-tier lawyers, bankers, security experts and others who were making far more in the private sector. Any administration wants to offer good money in order to lure the right people into -- or back into -- public service. 

But the payroll under the Obama White House has expanded since the Bush administration. The payroll went from $33 million in 2008 to $39 million in 2009. Since then, the Obama administration has scaled back its White House staff expenses, but the payroll was still at $37.8 million in 2012. 

There are two more employees making the maximum salary now than in the final year of the Bush administration. Two ethics advisers each make close to $140,000. 

The chief calligrapher makes $96,725. Another calligrapher makes over $94,000, while another makes close to $86,000. 

On Friday, White House Deputy Press Secretary John Earnest said the White House will be affected by the sequester much like other agencies -- and in some capacity will impose furloughs. 

"We're also faced with making some tough decisions when it comes to ongoing projects, when it comes to purchasing equipment and supplies. But we're also a pretty personnel-heavy agency, if you will. So that means ... there will be employees of components who work here at the White House that will be facing pay cuts, that will be facing furloughs," he said.

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