In which years this century has the NRA allowed attendees to carry guns, whether open or concealed, at its annual meeting?
This Huffington Post article makes it clear that carrying wasn’t allowed at the 2017 convention. NRA Annual Meeting: No Guns Allowed | HuffPost Latest News I’m wondering how long in the recent past that’s been the policy. Thanks.
That article is rather heavily editorialized.
The NRA doesn’t have a policy regarding guns at their annual conventions. Instead, they abide by the rules of whatever facility they are using and whatever local and state laws are present. This often gets reported in the news as THE NRA BANNED GUNS AT ITS OWN CONVENTION!!! because that grabs headlines. It is horribly inaccurate news reporting, though.
The NRA didn’t prohibit guns at the Charlotte Convention Center. The North Carolina Legislature did, and they did it long before the NRA chose to use that as the site for their convention.
It has always been the policy of the NRA to abide by whatever rules and regulations are present in whatever facility they choose for their convention. Most large convention centers prohibit weapons, so the NRA has to comply with those rules.
Good answer, and nice slap down of the Huff Post.
It does lead to the question of why the NRA doesn’t limit their conventions to sites that allow weapons. Of course, the answer may be as simple as no large enough site allows it.
I’m not looking for editorials from Huff Post or others, I’m looking for a factual answer to a question, mostly so I can contextualize another study. It seems engineer_comp_geek would rather editorialize himself rather than answer the question.
Let me rephrase my question: At which NRA annual meetings this century were attendees allowed to carry guns?
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I wasn’t editorializing. You asked “In which years this century has the NRA allowed attendees to carry guns…” The NRA neither allowed nor disallowed this. That’s fact, not editorializing.
You also asked “how long in the recent past that’s been the policy” which implies that there is a single policy involved. There isn’t. Again, this is fact, not editorializing.
Unfortunately, I can’t answer your revised question, which is “At which NRA annual meetings this century were attendees allowed to carry guns?” I tried to google a list of NRA annual conventions but my google skills failed me. In all honesty, I’d be surprised if any large convention center allowed guns just because of the potential liability issues involved and the resulting insurance costs.
This also may be a more complex question than you intended. Many NRA conventions take place with a main convention center, but they also have satellite events at nearby locations, and sometimes those satellite locations will allow guns when the main convention center does not. Do you want to know what conventions had guns prohibited completely, or which events had them allowed at locations other than actually inside the building, or what?
What other study are you referencing and what is the context?
This one: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1712773
It shows gun injury rates drop 20% nationwide when the NRA meeting is taking place. The effect is even stronger in the state where the convention is hosted presumably because more people in the state are participating in the annual meeting.
I’m wondering if there’s a differential effect when members can’t take their guns to the annual meeting versus they can.
My first thought in looking at that study is that, from an engineer’s point of view, the noise in their graph is roughly the same order of magnitude as the supposed effect that they are measuring. You could use that same graph to say that there is a 20 percent increase in gun accidents the week before any NRA meeting as well as a 10 percent decrease two weeks before the event, and those statements would be of similar statistical significance to what is claimed by the article.
I personally wouldn’t put too much faith in those statistics. It looks more like statistical noise than anything else to me. There’s just enough of a statistical anomaly that it might warrant further study, but it’s far short of statistically proving what the article’s author suggests.
The article’s authors also seems to assume correlation equals causation (based on the conclusions at the end of the article). That study’s methodology can’t prove causation. The most it can prove is correlation.
Anyway, I hope you find your statistics. There might be something interesting here.
They have a 95% confidence interval with a lower bound of 6.7% reduction in injuries. It sounds to me like disarming just ~80,000 of the most zealous gun rights advocates for a few days each year makes us all appreciably safer on average but you just keep ignoring any evidence that disagrees with your world view.
I would still appreciate an answer to my question. Thanks again.
Hmph. Your conclusion about my “world view” is about as accurate as the statistical conclusions in that article.
Anyway, like I said, I hope you find your statistics. There might be something interesting here.
I’m sorry if I presumed anything inaccurate about the way your views colored your perception of that study.
One additional fact, guns were allowed open carry or concealed carry at the 2017 NRA Convention, which was held in Atlanta. The 2017 National Meeting, which is the subject of the link in the OP, was held in a site where neither was allowed.
I’m not a statistician, but concerns about noise should be wholly addressed by significance tests. And if I’m reading the statistical appendix properly, the multivariate work has a p-value below .01.
Those error bars show 95% confidence intervals (.025 each side) or approximately 4 standard deviations (2 on each side).
Statistical significance that’s 10 times higher wouldn’t prove it either: correlation, causality and all that you know. But the authors believe there are theoretic reasons that support their hypothesis: [INDENT][INDENT]Our study was observational and therefore we cannot conclude that reductions in population-level firearm injuries observed during dates of NRA annual meetings were directly due to reductions in overall firearm use by gun owners during these meetings. Several factors support this hypothesis, however. First, NRA annual meetings are large and attract attendees from across the U.S., making it plausible that such an effect might be identifiable in large, national data. In 2017, for instance, 81,000 NRA members attended the NRA annual meeting, with 60% of those attending traveling from more than 200 miles away.13 Importantly, reductions in firearm injuries during NRA annual meeting dates need not necessarily stem from gun owners themselves attending NRA conventions.9 For instance, if some venues of firearm use (e.g., ranges or hunting grounds) are closed during dates of NRA annual meetings, reductions in overall firearm injuries during meeting dates could also be observed. Similarly, if individuals are more likely to engage in recreational firearm use in groups, then the absence of some group members due to NRA meeting attendance may reduce the likelihood of remaining group members to use firearms during the dates of NRA meetings. Second, we accounted for seasonal factors that might spuriously lead to lower firearm injury rates on the specific dates of NRA annual meetings. Third, reductions in firearm injuries during dates of NRA annual meetings were only observed among men, which would be expected given that men account for nearly 85% of meeting attendees.13 Fourth, reductions in firearm injuries during dates of NRA annual meetings were largest in areas where gun ownership is highest. If attendees of NRA annual meetings disproportionately live in areas with high gun ownership, we would expect reductions in firearm injuries during dates of NRA annual meetings to be largest in these areas if meeting attendance leads to a transient reduction in firearm use locally. Fifth, we demonstrated that overall reductions in firearm injury rates during NRA annual meeting dates were larger for individuals residing in the same state where the annual convention was held in a given year. If individuals are more likely to attend NRA annual meetings when meetings are closer to home, we would expect larger reductions in firearm injuries during dates of meetings that occur locally. Sixth, an implication of our findings is that even among experienced gun owners – who might be more likely to attend NRA annual conventions – the rate of firearm injury directly relates to the amount of firearm use. This is consistent with prior evidence that firearm training is inconsistently received by firearm owners and that the length of firearm training or how recently it was conducted bears little relationship with firearm storage practices, one measure of firearm safety.23 [/INDENT][/INDENT]
See preceding. Those who believe they have hypotheses that fit the observed facts better are encouraged to present them. I maintain that the noise hypothesis is wanting.
I’m an engineer, not a statistician, so forgive me if my terminology is a bit off.
The problem, as I see it, is that their sample size is far too small. All of that complex math is really just quantifying something that is really obvious just from looking at the graph. The zero week value is lower than the rest. And if you assume that the other values are the “normal” variance of the rate, the zero week value is significantly lower, statistically.
But you only have 7 samples in total. And this is why the math is total crap.
The rate in the graph varies from about 1.3 to about 1.6, and with only one exception, the change in rate from one week to the next is at least 0.1 or greater. From week to week, the changes are (roughly):
week -3 to -2: 0.2
week -2 to -1: 0.3
week 1 to 2: 0.0
week 2 to 3: 0.15
That is a pretty wide variation in rate from one week to the next.
Within this data set, the zero week is statistically deviated from the others. I have absolutely no problem with that. I think that is exactly what all of that statistical analysis proves. The problem I have with it is that the normal variance of the rate is so large. Because the data set is so small (only 7 samples), I would be very surprised if the data captured actually shows the full range of the normal week to week variations in the rate. It’s not that unreasonable to assume that the normal variations of the rate might easily be 0.1 further out from the minimum and maximum in that tiny data set, and this puts that 0.2 outlier within the range of what could be the normal week to week variations in the rate.
Graph out 3 more weeks in either direction and I think you’ll have enough data to properly characterize the normal variations in the rate. Then, if the statistical analysis still shows it to be an anomaly, then I’ll believe that they are onto something. With that tiny data set, I don’t think there’s anywhere near enough data to prove that the zero week value is actually an anomaly. The rate just varies too much from week to week.
While doing this statistical analysis, bear in mind this is a one sided data set (you cannot have negative unintentional firearm injuries).
On the other hand, the more weeks you look at on either side, the more seasonal variation you’re going to capture, unrelated to the NRA meeting. And there’s certain to be some seasonal variation: A lot of firearm use is outside, and so you’ll get more of it in the summer and when the weather is good, and a lot of firearm use is for hunting various sorts of game, which have set seasons.
In 2008 and 2016 when their meeting was held in Louisville, Kentucky. I was there. Attended all 3 days each year. Carried openly some days, concealed others. Firearm carry was permitted and welcomed.
Thanks pkbites. I’ll put together a little table and yours will be my first data points.
Thank you UncleBill. The study I’m curious about looked at the dates of the annual meeting, which I understand has tens of thousands of attendees each year. That’s what I’m asking about. I didn’t know there was a separate annual convention and I used the terms “annual meeting” and “convention” interchangeably. That was my mistake and I’m sorry for the confusion.
It looks like the convention is a much smaller affair with attendance in the hundreds (see, this list of the roughly 300 attendees of the 2017 annual convention: http://convention.nationalrenderers.org/attendees/name/). I’m not interested in the details of the convention since it wasn’t addressed in the study that I looked at and it’s way too small to have had the same measurable effects on gun injuries.
I say that when you have a graph showing your point, multivariate work with a p-value less that 1/2 of 1%, and there’s no obviously detectable p-hacking, then you very well might have a publishable result. I think we’re a couple of miles beyond, “Suggestive evidence”.
That said, I feel a need to backpedal a little. Without further study, I can’t tell whether I would want to characterize this as a firm result. I’m not quite beyond reasonable doubt. This is just 1 study. I’m not sure why they limited the sample to 7 consecutive years, as they are working with publicly available data. Maybe they just wanted to pull together a quick letter to the editor - but in that case, did their study really receive peer review? I then start to wonder about crossed t’s and dotted i’s with regards to their use of time series data.
That said, I think engineer_comp_geek understates the letter’s quality:
Well, not quite: you really do want to throw in some control variables to address confounding effects. The graphs provide a starting point.
It’s not quite that bad. You have 7 years of data, with 7 weeks each year. That’s a sample size of 49. That’s the dataset that the multivariate analysis would work with: the charts are basically summary measures.
Not a large sample. But it’s not unusually low for a medical study. OTOH, it’s a little odd that they didn’t expand it out to 5 or 6 weeks before and after - that would give them 77 or 91 observations. Or - we can dream - add 2 or 3 years. If we had a sample topping 100, we might worry less about additional seasonals as they could be mapped, addressing Chronos’ concern. They used publicly available data - I’m guessing the data stretches pretty far back. Was the problem that they couldn’t confirm the NRA venue’s gun policies 8 or 9 years ago? (Possible answer: this site says minimum time period necessary to estimate seasonals with standard methods runs to only 4 years. Huh. I thought it was longer. Maybe the researchers thought they had done enough - again their sample was low for a social science paper, but not for a medical one.)
One nice thing about the paper is that they conceded that the absolute magnitudes involved were small. That’s a reassuring sign of candor. The also noted that the relative magnitudes were substantial though.
But though the p-values were fairly strong, on reflection I’m a little concerned about the narrow sample frame. OTOH, the authors mentioned a few regularities regarding gender and they did attempt to control for seasonal factors. I’m not sensing a hatchet job, but I would be more comfortable if the analysis was expanded a bit.
I, and I’m certain I’m not alone in this, carried-while-travelling (in my vehicle) while driving to attend an NRA Annual Meeting on three separate occasions.
While I did NOT carry in the Convention Center, I did carry in my vehicle to-and-from my hotel. My handgun was also available (though not “ready-to-hand”) while in my hotel room.
I also concealed carry while dining out (in establishments that didn’t specifically ban concealed carry).
So, for the five days (a day’s travel to, a day’s travel from, and three days in-town), I was effectively armed just about as much as I would be back in my home town (I don’t carry in my place of work; I didn’t carry while in the Convention Center hosting the Annual Meeting).
With an estimated 100 million gun owners in the U.S.A. would the few tens-of-thousands (someone upthread said ~ 80,000 for a meeting) statistically amount to much? If my math is right, that’s like .08% of gun owners. Would that swing a 20% nationwide drop?