Pffft. Yeah the NRA has exerted its influence to severely restrict research on firearm violence from the CDC. The NIH is also restricted and while you haven’t provided me with any evidence that this restriction was the result of NRA arm-twisting, lets just say it was. So what? There has been research conducted by other agencies and private organizations without any objection from the NRA.
Errmm. I’ve admitted to error in the past (at least twice in this thread, thanks for fighting my ignorance, I’ve been trying to return the favor but its taking longer than I thought), why would you think that I would be hard headed about admitting to error again? I think you are projecting your inability to admit you might be wrong about something into me.
I honestly don’t care about a ban on gun violence research and I have no interest in defending the NRA. I have no interest in maligning the CDC or just proving myself right on anything. You are reading a LOT into the fact that I misused the phrase peer review (something I copped to a while back).
Because a lot of really important decisions are made based on their work. The work being epidemiology, one must expect that work to be pretty important. If the NRA has reason to believe that they are incompetent or corrupt, it is their civic duty to bring that evidence to our attention.
Have you seen any such evidence? It would pretty much have to be evidence of cooking the books, wouldn’t it? Or is it just the suspicion that they might be so inclined.
So, OK. Total transparency, which was probably going to happen anyway. Publish your methods and approaches in advance, give everybody plenty of time to point out flaws and biases. The NRA has plenty of money, they can easily hire some statistical wizards to give it the fine tooth comb treatment. And if its all kosher, they can then avail themselves of a nice hot cup of shut the fuck up.
Otherwise, they leave the distinct impression that they believe that the study will be factual, relevant and unfavorable to their preferred view. Pretty much my view on it, to be frank, but if they want to change that view, it would be pretty easy for them to do.
Its like I’m listening to a guy bubble over with excitement and joy as he tells me how advanced our culture has become, since so many of us are armed with lethal weapons to protect ourselves from each other.
I dont know that I disagree with anything you say.
Can you explains the intersect of gun violence and epidemiology without referring to suicide? Why is an epidemiologist more qualified to study the correlation between gun ownership and being the victim of homocide than a criminologist?
OK, so you can’t admit that gallup found gun ownership is up sharply in recent years? You just can’t do it?
You just change the subject. Anyway see how your link says “gun deaths” rather than homicides? That because homicides didn’t show the trend and they needed to count suicides. That’s how gun control “researchers” manipulate the simple minded. We all knew guns were needed for gun related suicides. Without them they become hanging, carbon monoxide, or train jumping related suicides.
Somewhere in ages past, Kable erectus (distinguished by the almost imperceptibly steeper slant of his forehead) employs sweeping gestures and animated grunts to express to his tribe his excitement over the burgeoning proliferation of bone-clubs.
Assuming this is correct (and there are just as many studies that claim to show that increased gun ownership leads to fewer crimes overall), could there be a “chicken or egg” effect here? Could regions with low crime and murder rates see little utility in allowing guns and so be more likely to restrict them? ETA: Or in other words, would imposing stricter gun laws on regions that currently have high violence and murder rates actually reduce those rates? Debatable.
Guns are for more than protecting us “from each other”; when gun ownership is widespread enough, collective security becomes decentralized, minimizing dependency on the state for security. I think that’s a good thing.
Yeah, that statistic appears to be bandied about quite a lot on esteemed think tanks like the Free Republic. Not so much the corresponding stats that gun-related suicide and homicide fell (dramatically, in the case of suicide) and there hasn’t been a single mass shooting in more than a decade since the laws were enacted. Nor that rates of gun ownership in Australia were already vanishingly small compared to the U.S. even before the ban, which casts some doubt on the implication that guns were previously a widespread effective deterrent against rape and now the rapists are enjoying a disarmament free-for-all.
But hey, post hoc, ergo propter hoc, right? When it suits, at least.
