
Science and gun violence: why is the research so weak? - llambda
http://boingboing.net/2013/02/26/firearms-science-and-the-mis.html
======
dwc
Perhaps a better title would have been "Science _versus_ gun violence
research: why would we expect meaningful answers?"

Given someone with critical thinking skills who is well versed in scientific
methods, they would quickly move to asking why _violence_ is a problem. Why
are there so many violent crimes in the U.S. compared to Canada? With a huge
number of guns in Canada, why aren't their gun violence stats similar to the
U.S.? But very few people seem interested in that line of questioning.
Instead, we get pro-gun vs. anti-gun arguments. And of course the media and
the public feed into this as well. It's just so easy to think something as
symbolic as guns must be the problem and/or solution. But this is a much
deeper problem, and one that is in desperate need of more attention.

~~~
reader5000
A concept that gun culture consistently fails to grasp is that a) technology
is an enabler and b) humans, even the homicidal, are lazy. It's true guns
don't kill people; but it's also true guns as an independent factor increase
the probability of people killing people. The size of this effect is very much
in need of empirical analysis. However the nra has behaved in bad faith on
this issue.

Also Canada has less than half the per capita rate of firearm ownership
compared to US.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
so you need empirical evidence but are comfortable asserting what the outcome
will be.

------
cobrausn
_Another thing we don’t have is reliable, long-term data on where the guns
that are actually used in crimes come from. One of the ways we legislate gun
use is through registration programs and systems that limit who can buy a gun
legally. But if we don’t know whether guns used in crimes are purchased
legally, illegally, or purchased legally and then sold or given illegally to a
third party, we have no idea how to craft those laws or even if they make any
difference at all._

I consider this a huge problem. How can you have a well-regulated militia if
you don't know who is in it?

How do we know any of our gun laws have any effect at all?

~~~
sc68cal
Because Republicans and the Gun Lobby have systematically shut down any
attempt to collect and study any data about guns.

 _Over the past two decades, the NRA has not only been able to stop gun
control laws, but even debate on the subject. The Centers for Disease Control
funds research into the causes of death in the United States, including
firearms — or at least it used to. In 1996, after various studies funded by
the agency found that guns can be dangerous, the gun lobby mobilized to punish
the agency. First, Republicans tried to eliminate entirely the National Center
for Injury Prevention and Control, the bureau responsible for the research.
When that failed, Rep. Jay Dickey, a Republican from Arkansas, successfully
pushed through an amendment that stripped $2.6 million from the CDC’s budget
(the amount it had spent on gun research in the previous year) and outlawed
research on gun control with a provision that reads: “None of the funds made
available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”_

<http://www.salon.com/2012/07/25/the_nras_war_on_gun_science/>

~~~
MrMember
The CDC isn't allowed to conduct research into gun violence because they
didn't even try to hide the fact that they were horribly biased. Here's a
quote from Mark Rosenberg, former director of the CDC's National Center for
Injury Prevention and Control and the guy who led a personal crusade against
guns under the guise of 'research':

"We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with
cigarettes. Now it is dirty, deadly, and banned."

He had no interest in conducting unbiased research, he wanted to treat gun
ownership like a disease, and did everything in his power to try and
'eradicate' it.

~~~
sc68cal
>The CDC isn't allowed to conduct research into gun violence because they
didn't even try to hide the fact that they were horribly biased.

So just because the numbers didn't reach the conclusion that you agree with,
they are automatically biased?

>Here's a quote from Mark Rosenberg, former director of the CDC's National
Center for Injury Prevention and Control and the guy who led a personal
crusade against guns under the guise of 'research':

An out of context quote - and an ad hominem attack?

As far as I can tell, your strategy at this point is to try and muddy the
water.

Meanwhile, here are some useful numbers to contemplate.

[http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/pro-gun-myths-
fa...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/pro-gun-myths-fact-check)

------
csense
> Creating a system that allows scientists to gather that data might be
> objectionable to some people who own guns.

Sampling is the answer.

If the federal government is keeping really close tabs on 100% of non-criminal
gun-related happenings, that's Orwellian supersurveillance.

If a randomly selected 1% of gun sales or local police blotter entries or
whatever are selected for a scientific study, that's a lot less invasive of
gun owners' privacy while still giving scientists enough data to work with.

~~~
reader5000
Not really. Gun ownership has externalities, just like car ownership. The
government keeps "close tabs" on 100% of automobile related transactions,
including licensing and insurance requirements. It's not Orwellian to force a
consumer to fully realize the total cost to society of her consumption.

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free652
Because the data doesn't really back up the either side in USA.

USA is really violent for a western civilization

The only correlation is identified that poorer regions have more violence,
regardless of guns.

Guns doesn't really play a big role at all, according to the statistics.

Of course one thing the statistics cannot account for that guns are available
in any state.

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monochromatic
Because partisans are not interested in solid science. They are interested in
getting their way.

~~~
CamperBob2
Exactly. No one on the pro-gun control side looks too closely at the
statistics because they don't like what they see. Namely that the odds of
someone who isn't suicidal and who isn't involved in criminal activity dying
from a gunshot wound are about the same as the odds of being hit by a wayward
meteor.

~~~
necubi
Come on now. The odds of being hit by a meteor (actually meteorite) are
effectively nil [0]. Are you claiming that the 88 people shot in mass shooting
last year [1] were all suicidal or criminals?

And really, while mass shootings get all the news attention, they are only a
tiny part of the problem. The real tragedy is the way easy access to handguns
has transformed communities like the South Side of Chicago, where kids are
gunned down every week. This American Life recently did a remarkable report
[3] on the conditions in and around one Chicago high school where in the past
year _29_ current and former students were shot. That reporting could have
just as easily been done in Oakland, or Detroit.

This is not about ideology. People are dying every day, innocent people going
about their lives, and our current strategy of doing nothing, of burying our
heads in the sand, is accomplishing...nothing.

[0]
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/10/12/in...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/10/12/insurance-
from-the-skies/#.UTPRKl5QCTM)

[1] [http://www.thenation.com/blog/171774/fifteen-us-mass-
shootin...](http://www.thenation.com/blog/171774/fifteen-us-mass-shootings-
happened-2012-84-dead)

[3] [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/487/h...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/487/harper-high-school-part-one)

~~~
CamperBob2
_The real tragedy is the way easy access to handguns has transformed
communities like the South Side of Chicago, where kids are gunned down every
week._

Do you have any idea how many laws are already being broken when that happens?
How are more laws going to help?

More to the point, how is registering my guns (in preparation for future
confiscation, it's safe to say, because that's what's happened elsewhere)
going to protect those kids?

~~~
necubi
The problem is, as I said, _easy_ access to handguns. While Chicago has
stringent gun laws, one need only step over into Indiana where gun shows or
private "collectors" can sell unlimited numbers of guns to just about anybody.
Effectively, there is no gun control in this country right now. Every step of
this transaction is legal, until the guns are brought onto the street.

~~~
CamperBob2
But oddly enough, I don't hear of the same thing happening in Indiana, at
least not to the extent I hear about violence in Chicago.

Must not be the guns. Must be something else.

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adammil
I am extremely pro-science. However, I am angry about attempts to
scientifically study gun ownership because I know the only reason is to try
and violate my rights by restricting or banning ownership. It's just as
offensive to me as a scientific study to decide if we should restrict or ban
free speech. Unless you honestly think they undertake these studies to expand
our firearm rights or strictly for scientific curiosity?

~~~
gensym
I don't think "pro-science" means what you think it means.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
He's anti-scientism. Providing a scientific veneer of legitimacy to political
claims. Are you claiming this doesn't happen all the time?

~~~
gensym
Nope.

Being against scientific studies because what they uncover may lead to
measures you dislike is not anti-scientism. It's anti-science. Science, done
correctly, inconveniently disregards your values and preferences, so it's
perfectly rational to oppose its use in certain situations, but doing so is
absolutely anti-science.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
unless choice of hypothesis is a hell of a lot more impartial and rigorous and
null-results and replications actually get reported on NO science is not value
free.

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vanderZwan
_If you were studying gun use, and you wanted to know how often guns were used
in self-defense, how would you categorize Charles Wellford’s experience?_

Preemptive gun use. Bam, done. Any other categorisations required?

~~~
brazzy
Preempting what, exactly? Seems to me like objectively, in the given situation
the only effect of the gun being present vs. not being present was to increase
the likelihood of a tragic accident.

~~~
vanderZwan
You are probably referring to the way the word is used in a computer
programming context. I was talking about this:

"A preemptive war is a war that is commenced in an attempt to repel or defeat
a perceived offensive or invasion, or to gain a strategic advantage in an
impending (allegedly unavoidable) war before that threat materializes."

~~~
brazzy
And I was talking about the fact that in the example the gun was brought in
preparation to an imagined but unspecific and actually not existing threat.

------
nazgulnarsil
>For instance, because of those differences in the definition of “defensive
gun use” some researchers will tell you that Americans use a gun to defend
themselves something like 1.5 million times every year. Others say it happens
maybe 200,000 times annually.

That kind of variability does not create an environment where it is easy to
craft evidence-based policy

fuck you, yes it clearly does, it just isn't the answer you want. Author has
clearly written the bottom line first in this article. 20k deaths occur
annually from gun violence discounting suicides. The lowest estimate for
defensive uses of guns (which came from a study which only counted actual
police reports) was the aforementioned 200k. This is an order of magnitude
difference. Criminals in our country are going to have guns for a long time
and no law is going to change that.

~~~
ams6110
Presumably the 200K "defensive uses of guns" includes uses that didn't result
in a death.

------
1123581321
It's largely because the United States has as part of its constitution that
citizens be armed. Even if guns are determined to be harmful, they're unlikely
to go away. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of promising categories of research,
including sociological and criminal areas, in which, if effective means of
improvement are found, changes may actually be implemented. The more strident
of a utilitarian (the school of thought that favors less violence versus
following the Constitution) a researcher is, the more the researcher will
pursue the avenue that will do the most good and avoid a principled death on
the hill of gun ownership and proliferation.

