A study that gets it wrong because they are hacks.

March 8, 2013 9:56 am

The other day CNN amongst a trove of other LSM gun grabbing agenda pushers where touting the idiotically flawed study by a partisan gun grabbing bunch of hacks as proof that more gun laws result in fewer deaths. Of course the problem is that the study was rigged to find those preordained conclusions.

For example, the study portends to look at all 50 states but conveniently ignores the District of Columbia. That’s not a flaw, that’s by design. DC has the nations most draconian laws, and yet, the highest per capita fire arm violence rates possible, and would have by itself all but invalidated the idiotic conclusion by these hacks. Liberals keep ignoring the fact that the places with most gun violence in this nation are the ones with the most restrictive gun control laws, or making excuses for the fact this is the case. The facts prove that gun control do not reduce crime, but enhance criminal activity overall. Practically every study that says the contrary does so by focusing heavily on gun suicide and/or gun crime that reduces in deaths only, while ignoring crime statistics overall. I personally would rather put up with more of these gun deaths that the morons use as an excuse to justify disarming law abiding citizens, and consequently less crime in general, than fewer gun deaths accompanied by a drastic jump in all kinds of criminal activity and a population unable to defend itself and at the mercy of their government. Take a look at DC, NYC, LA, Chicago, and Detroit, all places with stupid gun control laws and horrible crime and murder rates. That’s the blue model in a nut shell. Its not coincidental that DC was dropped from the study, because it would by itself invalidate all the findings.

But there is more wrong with this study. It focuses to near exclusion on fatalities caused by gun suicide to reach this idiotic conclusion that more laws means fewer deaths. It is absolutely logical that with fewer gun owners we get fewer gun suicides, but that statistic is horribly misleading. First of all, people that want to off themselves will do so regardless of any laws, just like criminals are totally unperturbed by any gun laws. If guns are not available legally, criminals and people that want to commit suicide find ways around it. Criminals, as we see in DC, Detroit, NYC, LA, and Chicago, all have no problem getting firearms. And contrary to the idiotic assertion that they can only do this because the gun bans are not uniformly applied everywhere, we can point to criminal organizations in countries with complete gun bans to show that criminals will, unlike the law abiding citizens, have fire arms. Those that want to commit suicide will similarly find or use something else to do the deed. Allowing suicide numbers to be used to justify gun grabbing is a terrible thing.

There are of course quiet a few other problms with this study that was specifically set up to reach the conclusions the authors wanted from the start, but I am not going to bother with more of them after these 2 blatantly obvious ones show the study is faulty. If you really want to look at the statistics correctly and reach conclusions that are sensible, not just poltiical hackery attempts at gun grabbing, what you do is compare criminal activity, in general, in either scenario. The right statistics should look at how much crime, of all kinds, we have in societies that prevent law abiding citizens from protecting themselves, vs. crime in societies that allow self defense. And suicides should never be counted in that statistic, because the issue is crime. Focusing on gun deaths instead of crime is a mistake that favors the gun grabbers’ false argument. In the end the real motivation of the gun grabbers is a combination of fear of firearms leading to them not wanting others to have them and a want by government of a population that is easily pacified and controlled. The prototypical leftist tyrannical motives, you know.

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Tags: Crime, Failures of Social Engineering leftist policies, Gun politics, Law/Crime

9 comments

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Hal_10000 says:

March 8, 2013 10:35 am at 10:35 am (UTC -4)

I addressed a lot of the in my recent Mother Jones debunking. DC is a difficult data point because it’s a city. All cities have much higher gun violence rates regardless of gun control laws.

You are right that they are only looking at firearm deaths. When you include all violent deaths no matter what the method there is a correlation between gun ownership and violent deaths, but it’s not very strong (R^2 of .13). I find gun ownership rates more useful than their arbitrary gun law strength index.

There is some evidence that gun ownership does spike suicide rate because people who use guns in suicide attempts are more successful. When the IDF, for example, forbad soldiers from taking guns home, the suicide rate plunged.

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AlexInCT says:

March 8, 2013 12:11 pm at 12:11 pm (UTC -4)

There is some evidence that gun ownership does spike suicide rate because people who use guns in suicide attempts are more successful.

Hal, I am sure that you agree with me that just because something allows people committing suicde to be more successful doesn’t make it a bad ting. People that jump off high bridges or hig buildings have 100% success rates too, but we are not looking to ban either of those.

When the IDF, for example, forbad soldiers from taking guns home, the suicide rate plunged.

So basically we prove that most people that commit suicide are either too lazy to get it done in the absence of firearms, or not creative enough to figure out another way to do it? Don’t get me wrong, suicide by gun is not a minor thing, but why should law abiding citizens be punished because of the actions of people that have no respect for their own lives?

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Argive says:

March 8, 2013 1:14 pm at 1:14 pm (UTC -4)

So basically we prove that most people that commit suicide are either too lazy to get it done in the absence of firearms, or not creative enough to figure out another way to do it?

Mental illness (and depression in particular) affects people in many different ways. Suicide can be a surprisingly impulsive act. A lot of people who commit suicide don’t do so as a result of prolonged, deep mental illness, but rather due to an acute moment of pain in their lives.

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Hal_10000 says:

March 8, 2013 1:40 pm at 1:40 pm (UTC -4)

Mental illness (and depression in particular) affects people in many different ways. Suicide can be a surprisingly impulsive act. A lot of people who commit suicide don’t do so as a result of prolonged, deep mental illness, but rather due to an acute moment of pain in their lives.

This is true. I recently read an article about people who commit suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. A lot of them ponder it for a long time. And many can be talked out of it. Indeed, this is why suicide hotlines are a good thing because a lot of potential victims just need a little while to back away from the abyss.

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AlexInCT says:

March 8, 2013 2:32 pm at 2:32 pm (UTC -4)

Mental illness (and depression in particular) affects people in many different ways. Suicide can be a surprisingly impulsive act. A lot of people who commit suicide don’t do so as a result of prolonged, deep mental illness, but rather due to an acute moment of pain in their lives.

I still don’t get why that should either affect the ability of law abinding citizens to own firearms orgive government cover to confiscate them and disarm the people. I am sympathetic to people that hurt badly, but I do not see how that justifies either suicide statistics orsuicides to be used for gun grabbing.

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CM says:

March 9, 2013 4:03 am at 4:03 am (UTC -4)

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199112053252305

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balthazar says:

March 9, 2013 7:36 am at 7:36 am (UTC -4)

Hey CM, that trend COMPLETLY COINCIDES with the general reduction in murder rates over the whole country, regardless of method. WOW, but yeah it was the gun bans. Not.

I love how they use the deceptive median line with a clear demarcation so it puts emphasis on their false conclusion. And add suicides in as per the general libtard focus on inflating numbers.

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Iconoclast says:

March 9, 2013 11:37 am at 11:37 am (UTC -4)

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199112053252305

Two can play this game:

http://gunowners.org/sk0601.htm

From the link:

In 1991 there was a study published in the New England Journal Of Medicine by four authors one of whom was at the time at the University of Maryland.

The study, titled “Effects of Restrictive Licensing of Handguns on Homicide and Suicide in the District of Columbia,” purported to show the 1976 DC gun ban law decreased murders.

But, this study has been exposed as a methodological mess and a fraud. In a review of this study, Dr. Edgar A. Suter, chairman of Doctors For Integrity In Research And Public Policy, notes the following:

* The study’s claimed apparent, temporary and miniscule homicide drop occurred two years before the DC gun ban law took effect.

* The study used raw numbers rather than population-corrected rates exaggerating the authors’ misinterpretations.

* The study conveniently stopped as Washington DC’s overall homicide rate skyrocketed to eight times the national average and the black, male, teen homicide rate skyrocketed to 22 times the national average.

Gene Healy, an attorney and senior editor at the CATO Institute, says the murder rate in Washington DC is 55 percent higher than before the DC gun ban laws went into effect.

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CM says:

March 10, 2013 4:16 am at 4:16 am (UTC -4)

Nice!

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