After Sandy Hook Obama issued a number of executive orders aimed at studying and curbing gun violence. One of those ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (pdf) to assess the existing research on gun violence and recommend future studies. The report was released in mid 2013 but didn’t get that much coverage. It was quite long and had a lot of info. Slate did an article on it at the time, and came up with 10 findings they characterized as surprising:
[ol]
[li]The United States has an indisputable gun violence problem.[/li][li]Most indices of crime and gun violence are getting better, not worse.[/li][li]We have 300 million firearms, but only 100 million are handguns.[/li][li]Handguns are the problem.[/li][li]Mass shootings aren’t the problem.[/li][li]Gun suicide is a bigger killer than gun homicide. [/li][li]Guns are used for self-defense often and effectively. [/li][li]Carrying guns for self-defense is an arms race. [/li][li]Denying guns to people under restraining orders saves lives.[/li][li]It isn’t true that most gun acquisitions by criminals can be blamed on a few bad dealers.[/li][/ol]
The article has a brief blurb about each item. I don’t find any of these particularly surprising and tend to agree with each one. This was a review on existing data and something of a meta-analysis.
From # 7 in particular about self defense which is an oft debated subject around here:
(my bold)
For debate -
[ul]
[li]Do you agree with the findings (these are the ones extracted by Slate, not the findings of the report. I don’t think the report makes any specific findings or recommendations)?[/li][li]Do you think any are surprising?[/li][/ul]
My sense is that Slate mischaracterized the report with item #5. That is, one might read that and think that the report suggests mass shootings are not A problem. The report instead sees mass shootings as a large problem, but one that is proportionally smaller than the overall problem with firearm violence.
For example, the report states
I think that Slate should have been more surprised by the efforts that have been undertaken to limit the research needed to answer these questions. The report states:
My sense is that most people don’t realize that researchers have been proactively and explicitly prevented from studying this topic.
I trust the CDC to present a fair and factual report based on correlative data. Slate, not so much. The purpose of the CDC in this instance is to keep people from being killed with guns. The purpose of Slate is to sell magazines (and no, not the kind you put in guns). Although I wouldn’t expect Slate to publish something they know is wrong, I also expect they don’t print the entire truth, or in some case, even bother to find the entire truth. They were given the truth as found by the CDC and went mining for more, and I don’t have as much faith in their ability as I do in the CDC…
Numbers 4 and 7 seem to be partially in conflict. A handgun being used in self-defense is not a problem, but a solution of a problem. If handguns are used disproportionately in self-defense, as a result of “concealed carry” or the like, then reducing the number of handguns is going to increase illegal violence instead of remedying it.
Not if you think about it – #4 says that for the majority of gun violence, handguns are used, while #7 says that guns (including handguns) are used for self-defense often and effectively (which does not necessarily include violence).
Further, Shodan insinuated the concept of handguns being “disproportionately” used for self-defense.
Slate’s interpretation #7 simply acknowledges that defensive gun use occurs; it does not place it into any sort of context relative to illegal or harmful gun use. The actual NAS report indicates that estimates of how often defensive gun uses occur are a controversy in the field, that they vary unreliably, and that more careful study is required.
I’ve seen how NAS reports are made (kind of like sausages and laws), and I have suspicions about how that particular topic was likely handled, given the members involved.
A simple way would be to encourage the use of long guns for self defense.
A more challenging solution is to find ways to reduce the number of handguns in the hands of criminals while not affecting those who are not criminals.
I don’t think either Slate or the official report is trying to say that mass shootings aren’t a problem at all. Placed in context of the overall issue of firearm violence however, these incidents of mass shootings represent a small portion of the total.
With the type of media coverage and attention mass shootings receive one would expect that they represent a larger issue relative to the overall problem. The data shows that’s not the case. For people who follow these types of stories this shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Your quote leaves something out:
(my bold)
I agree that it would likely be surprising to those without a high level of interest in the topic. This cessation of funding of the CDC for this type of research is brought up on this board as a complaint of gun control advocates. However, the part that you omitted, regarding the specific prohibition on the use of funding to advocate or promote gun control, do you think that is the place of the CDC to do so? Gathering data, information, yes. Gun control advocacy is political in nature - and that is activity the CDC should not be engaging in.
Only CDC funded researchers after 1996 (the 2011 restrictions were wider I believe). And only to the extent that gun control advocacy has been restricted. Private sector research of any kind is under no such restrictions.
Is there anything in particular that Slate wrote that you disagree with or find objectionable? They are obviously not posting here, but I am endorsing the views presented for the purposes of this thread. Slate’s article and conclusions are pulled from the CDC funded report. That report didn’t draw any particular conclusions in a nice list format like Slate did, so I linked their article. There have been many more which come to similar conclusions.
They are only in conflict if the underlying data isn’t presented (which I omitted for the purposes of copyright and board rules). #4 is saying that when looking at the makeup of firearms between handguns and long guns, the vast majority of violent crime is committed with handguns. Therefore, if you were to focus on one or the other, then handguns are the problem, not long guns. Implicit in this is also the fact that long guns are not the problem. The population here is firearms as a whole.
#7 is saying that guns are used in self defense. The population here is victims of violent crime, and whether or not they used a firearm. #7 says they do, often.
The CDC have a legitimate interest in reducing gun violence. Stopping them form doing that because it impinges on your love of lethal weaponry is the political intervention.
Something like twice as many Americans die by suicide with their own guns as are shot by other people. Put together those shot with their own weapons which have been stolen or taken from them by criminals and clearly possessing a gun is a recklessly dangerous thing to do.
Yes, that’s precisely what ellipses signify - that something has been omitted. The bit I left out I honestly omitted because I did not think it mattered and I had to retype it because my cut and paste wasn’t working from the document.
The idea that the research was about “advocating or promoting gun control” is a piece of partisan bullshit. Gun advocates think that all research promotes gun control because all research ends up showing that guns are the base problem of our gun violence problem and that having a gun in the home is associated with a greater risk for the death or injury of someone in the home.
Pretending that the CDC or that researchers are partisan on this is just political manipulation intended to serve the goals of the NRA, who were the ones pressuring for research to be stymied.
Give me an example of how private sector research would be motivated to examine gun violence. If the institutions that serve the public are prevented from studying a particular issue related to public health, there will be no research on the subject. There’s no pharmacological intervention to be marketed here.
I think I understand. Were there any data on the proportion of handguns that were used in self-defense, as opposed to shotguns or rifles?
The question of how often handguns are used in self-defense is also going to impact discussions on the effect of concealed carry on crime, and even to a lesser extent any kind of carry. It is obviously easier to carry a hand gun concealed, and few people routinely carry a long gun openly.
Further on #4 versus #7, recent research shows that higher population levels of firearm ownership are associated with higher rates of firearm homicide. For each percentage increase in a particular community’s firearm ownership, there is an increase of 0.9% in firearms homicides.
One might contend that people in the community are arming themselves in defense of higher rates of community violence, but not only did controlling for community level violence not account for the relationship between the prevalence of firearms and the rate of firearm homicide, but the prevalence of firearm ownership was not significantly associated with non-firearm homicide. Further on that point, when the data were lagged, so that the relationship being tested was the prevalence of firearms in one year and the rate of firearm homicide in the next, the relationship still held.
So, again, over and above the effects of SES, poverty, urbanicity, nonviolent crime and violent crime (excluding homicide) community prevalence of gun ownership is associated with higher gun homicides.
Siegel, M., Ross, C. S., & King III, C. (2013). The relationship between gun ownership and firearm homicide rates in the United States, 1981–2010. American journal of public health, 103(11), 2098-2105.
The problem with #7 is that DGU figures are always going to be suspect. First, they rely on self-reporting pretty much by definition. Second (and IMHO more importantly), they assume that the use was legal.
Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you must know what the words “private sector research” meant.
See, the Brady Campaign doesn’t have the means to fund research of the scale that is needed here.
Most private sector research organizations are not going to be interested in committing the funding needed, since the outcome really would serve them only indirectly.
That’s why cutting off federal public funding for this research ended up, as the NAS report in question stated, “[t]he net result was an overall reduction in firearm violence research (Kellerman and Rivara, 2013). As a result, the past 20 years have witnessed diminished progress in understanding the causes and effects of firearm violence.”
It’s not just that the data itself is suspect, which it is, it’s that DGU figures themselves tell us nothing about the effectiveness of the firearm in preventing injury or death – simply that it was present. If there were 10,000 muggings in a neighborhood, and half of the victims drew their concealed weapons and chased off the bad guys before filing police reports, we’d have a solid 5,000 legal and documented cases of DGU. But what if the other 5,000 unarmed victims just handed over their cash and walked away unscathed? What conclusion can we draw other than carrying a concealed weapon has no affect on one’s personal safety?
On top of that, let’s say that a 5 of those victims with CCW licenses are later killed in gun accidents, or shot by their spouses in a fit of rage, or kill themselves due to unrelated depression. The 5,000 unarmed victims suffer no such violent fates. What conclusion, then, can we draw except that owning a gun is a net negative in terms of personal safety? And we come to this undeniable conclusion in the face of a staggering 5,000 uses of guns for self defense.