Gun policy analysis thread.

[scottt]

@scottt, my opinion concurs with the studies I have read, not all of which I have posted here. The overall consensus is how I've summarised it though. Your disagreement therefore is not with me, it is with the conclusions derived from those studies. I cannot arrive at an opinion without access to data. The studies provide that data, and also the author's expert interpretation of it.

So, I ask you to explain your comment 'Interesting'.

You are the person putting forth a position that I looked at and pointed out what I believe are some flaws and possibly unintended side effects from proposed laws. If all you are going to do is refer people to the study, you are in essence just a front for the study, without the ability to support or counterquestion someone who does not agree with some of the study.

I find it interesting that you don't put forth any personal thoughts or opinions, leading me to wonder why you even bothered to post?

[scottt]

Gun studies?

I did a search and there are in fact several university programs on gun studies.

I also came on a useful set of studies by the Rand Corporation. Here are some tables.







"Across all of the 18 policies that we examined, only two—child-access prevention laws and stand-your-ground laws—had evidence that we classified as supportive, our highest evidence rating, for an effect on a particular outcome. Specifically, there is supportive evidence that child-access prevention laws reduce firearm self-injuries (including suicides) and unintentional firearm injuries and deaths among children. In addition, we found supportive evidence that stand-your-ground laws increase firearm homicides."

https://www.rand.org/research/gun-po...-policies.html

That is an interesting study and a great find, thanks.

It seems to show a vast majority of gun studies are worthless, given that about 99.6% of the studies did not use valid scientific methods. Finding 123 of 27,900 studies worthy of analysis, and on several of their finding they will use as little as eight studies to show their findings, it is very obvious the studies need to vastly improve their methods.

I did have one question that I could not find the answer to, and that is in the stand your ground laws category, did they class the person standing your ground who killed their attacker as a homicide? I got bogged down reading as it is what, a 400 or so page report? Great find though, very interesting indeed.

[Chip]

One reason for the number of inconclusive results on policy studies is a lack of comprehensive data, in part owing to congressional banning of federal funding for studies on the impact of firearms on public health.

In 2019, Congress Pledged Millions to Study Gun Violence. The Results Are Nearly Here.

After a two-decade freeze on federal funding, the CDC and NIH are backing dozens of studies examining gun use and access. But researchers say that the field has a lot of catching up to do.

By Chip Brownlee
Jun 6, 2022

During his first week as a pediatric trauma surgeon in Chicago, Dr. Chethan Sathya treated a 6-month-old baby with a bullet wound. In the five years since, he has seen dozens of children shot and wounded — and sometimes killed — by firearms.

As he grew up and went to medical school in Toronto, Dr. Sathya occasionally saw gun violence in that city. The number of patients he saw with gunshot wounds multiplied when he became a surgeon in two of America’s biggest cities: first Chicago, and now New York, where he works at Northwell Health’s Cohen Children’s Medical Center. Each time he treats a gunshot wound, the heartbreak lingers. That’s led him to pursue research in recent years.

“We’re tired of having to tell parents over and over again that they lost a loved one to a preventable disease,” said Sathya, who also leads Northwell’s Gun Violence Prevention Center. “We’re tired of not doing much about this.”

After a two-decade freeze on federal funding for gun violence research, Sathya was excited to begin a large study on violence prevention in health care settings in 2020.

In a push to revive funding for gun violence research, Congress allocated $25 million annually to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) starting in 2019. The agencies distributed their first sets of grants to researchers like Sathya in 2020. The researchers are asking questions about school violence, safe storage, and other public health interventions. But it takes time to conduct solid research, so these projects are just now beginning to bear fruit.

Sathya said he expects results in three or four months. And his team’s research will likely be among the first published because of renewed funding. More than two dozen other studies are expected to wrap up in the next few years.

In 1996, Congress passed the Dickey Amendment, which barred the use of federal funds to “advocate or promote gun control.”

Though the amendment didn’t explicitly ban research, that’s how the CDC and researchers came to understand it, combined with Congress’s decision to effectively shift $2.6 million in funding for violence research to research on brain injuries, instead. The CDC wasn’t willing to test the prohibition and avoided funding any studies that could be perceived as anti-gun.

Every year since then, Congress has included the Dickey Amendment in annual appropriations bills. In 2011, Congress even extended the amendment so it applied to the NIH. By 2017, a study found that gun violence was the least researched and the second-least funded of 30 leading causes of death.

“It really limited knowledge development in the field, and it really restricted people’s interest in working in the field,” said Andrew Morral, the director of the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research, which has provided millions in grants for gun violence research in the absence of federal funding.

The freeze also sent a message that gun violence research wasn’t a viable career path. When Charles Branas, a researcher at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, was in graduate school, he said, higher-ups asked students to remove the “f-word” — firearms — from research proposals, grant applications, and manuscripts. “It would risk that proposal and the manuscript,” he said, “but it might also risk the research funding for an entire unit at a university.” Many researchers turned to private foundations, state funding, and even their own salaries to pay for their work. But academic salaries and small grants couldn’t support major data collection, experiments, or clinical trials.

In 2019, Congress approved $25 million in annual appropriations — $12.5 million each for the NIH and the CDC — specifically for gun violence research. Each year since, Congress has maintained the $25 million in funding. Though the Dickey Amendment remains, Congress clarified that it doesn’t prohibit federal funding for gun violence research.

President Joe Biden asked Congress to double the amount last year, but funding remained level. In his fiscal year 2023 budget request, Biden asked for $60 million.

But even with renewed funding, the effects of the freeze persist, those still working in the field said. “The funding will slowly start to develop a deeper bench of junior researchers and people … who are active and probably more innovative in this field,” said Rosanna Smart, an economist at the RAND Corporation. But because resources were so scarce for so long, firearms research is similar to studying a new disease. Many questions remain unanswered.

https://www.thetrace.org/2022/06/gun...c-nih-funding/

[scottt]

I find it interesting that you don't seem to accept that my personal thoughts and opinions on this matter actually align with the studies. Bit bizarre considering I've told you precisely that.

I think you are missing the point. I certainly accept your thoughts align with the studies. It is the lack of comment when I question points of the studies that I find interesting.

[scottt]

It seems there was the thought of biased research being turned into an instrument for lobbying.

Quite frankly, if everything is bias-free, I'm all for research. Let's get some answers.

[dneal]

Interesting that Chip discovered the Rand Corporation's work on gun policy when I've been citing it for months, to include mentioning it again in this very thread. If anything, it simply confirms that he (among others) is only here to spew his Blue-Anon kook-aide, rather than fairly consider the totality of an issue. I suspect that's why he picked this particular piece from Rand, because he thinks it 'proves' something. Of course scottt already pointed out the problems Rand acknowledged, that Chip missed or ignored. We are talking about the same guy who googled for links to prove Kant was responsible for Nazis, but didn't read them nor discover that his links argued against his point, after all.

But to revisit, this post notes Rand's essay on the problems with Gun Policy Science.

Throughout the course of the Gun Policy in America project, we consistently found inadequate evidence for the likely effects of different gun policies on a wide range of outcomes. This does not, of course, mean that the policies have no effects, but instead reflects the relatively scarce attention that has been focused on better understanding these effects. This is partly because, for the past two decades, the U.S. government has been reluctant to sponsor work in this area at levels comparable to its investment in other areas of public safety and health, such as transportation safety. But even among private research sponsors, research examining the effects of gun policies on officer-involved shootings, defensive gun use, and hunting and recreation—outcomes of interest to many stakeholders in the gun policy debate—is virtually nonexistent. Furthermore, data that would help researchers examine the effects of gun policies are often either not collected or not shared. Here, we review some of these challenges to the scientific study of gun policies and recommend ways to improve this body of research.

Acknowledgement that we really don't know as much as we think we do might be a good starting point before folks go running off to the internet to find studies that appear to prove their point. Anyone who has spent any time looking at this topic critically will quickly find the counter argument to any given study (if one taks J.S. Mill to heart and sees the value in understanding the other side's position - instead of the straw man version they've heard or invented).

Here's a study you have ignored for years (and continue to), EoC. You want to make the argument from authority, evidenced by your "While you're at it perhaps also dash off a quick message to the editors of Nature, Scientific American, and the American Journal of Medicine to ask them why they continue to publish such low-level research." comment. The study in my link was coordinated by the CDC (which is claimed to be infallible when it comes to science). The National Academies were enlisted (National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council). My appeal to authority trumps yours, it seems. Nature? puh-leeze. Yeah, let's not play that game.

But if anyone actually read the Obama-ordered study, they might find that there aren't any firm conclusions. The pro side ran with that hard, and the anti-side ignores it. I don't find it conclusive (other than generally dispelling myths propagated by the anti side). Like Rand (and the CDC study) identifies, the problem is too intertwined with politics to draw any substantive conclusions.

By all means though, continue the googling for studies. You could save yourself a lot of time and read John Lott's More Guns, Less Crime; simply to examine his county-level data and methodology. There's a lot of "debunking" of him, consisting of all sorts of ad hominem. Don't waste your time (even though you will). I'll help you out though - start with John Donohue. At least he attempted to make an argument regarding the data and methodology.

[Chip]

Sorry you hate me so much. I seem to have invaded your thoughts.

Not a place I want to be.

[dneal]

Chip - Why would I hate you? Just because you lefties thrive on hate doesn't mean everyone else does. Just another example of your penchant for projection. Truth is, you simply don't matter enough to me to hate, or really care about at all. You are ridiculous enough to mock though, and you're thin skinned (go on, tell me how you're going to ignore me again...).

I see you want to play the picture game again. I've got some good cowboy ones, but we can start with this. Seems appropriate for you.

"I wrote a book!!!" (thanks Chuck)
"Look at me, I'm a cowboy!!! YeeeeeeeeeeHaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!"
"I'm a big mean hombre. Hear me roar!!!"
"I once camped out in the snow!!!"


Cockalorum.png

[dneal]

ok, that was funny. Well played.

[Chip]

Clearly, it upsets you that I did things you would scarcely dare dream of.

Instead of hunching over your keyboard being malignant, you should get out and take on something you always wanted to do.

[dneal]

Clearly, it upsets you that I did things you would scarcely dare dream of.

Just another exhibit demonstrating the case of your narcissism and ignorance. What exactly would I "scarcely dare dream of"? Riding a horse? Hiking in the mountains? Paddling a small boat on a river? Visiting another country? Tending cattle?

Next you'll be telling us about that one time you killed a gopher with a stick.

Cockalorum seems to be more and more fitting every time you post.

Instead of hunching over your keyboard being malignant, you should get out and take on something you always wanted to do.

The irony is delicious.

[Chuck Naill]

I have to agree with you @dneal. I've heard it called "little man syndrome", but "cockalorum" has a better ring to it...LOL!! Don't discount small boats on rivers...

[dneal]

Chuck, you better fix your spelling of cockalorum, or Chip will demolish your argument by pedantically pointing out an error.

I suppose you could leave it as is and let him do it, because he’s petty and spelling is his ego’s last defense.

[Chuck Naill]

Chuck, you better fix your spelling of cockalorum, or Chip will demolish your argument by pedantically pointing out an error.

I suppose you could leave it as is and let him do it, because he’s petty and spelling is his ego’s last defense.

Whew!! Thanks @dneal.

I'll just say this, livestock and camping in the snow is overrated. It also requires a reliable source of income.

[Chuck Naill]

True, but not if you suppose other's lives are less for not doing stuff for which you derive pleasure and enjoyment. For example, lets say I posted something about running a class 4-5 river, then suggested to someone they were hunched over there computer wishing they had had the same experience.

[Chip]

I'll just say this, livestock and camping in the snow is overrated. It also requires a reliable source of income.

Those were two sources of my income. I also got paid for rowing a raft in a national park.



Sure beats pushing a desk.

[Chuck Naill]

I'll just say this, livestock and camping in the snow is overrated. It also requires a reliable source of income.

Those were two sources of my income. I also got paid for rowing a raft in a national park.



Sure beats pushing a desk.

If that is what you wanted to do, I am happy for you. Raft guides are needed at time. I have my own Aire Puma and ten other white water boats.

There are things you do because you need a pay check. There are things you do because it is what you love to do. As a wise man said to me one day, don't mix business and pleasure. While I love to paddle white water and hike, I would not want to have to do it.

I grew to hate tending cattle and horses. They are time consuming and expensive, but I was a child and had no options.

[Chuck Naill]

I've rafted a grade 5 (British Canoe Union grading) river, the Zambezi below Victoria Falls. Lots of fun for me but won't be for everyone. I don't disparage those for whom this may not be a thrill. There's plenty of things I wouldn't like to do (even though I may force myself just for the experience).

It doesn't appear you are understanding the context. No matter, carry on.

[Chuck Naill]

Lol!! Okay, my bad.

[Chuck Naill]

This is applicable to a few here, not me of course.
“If you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room.”