When has the NRA allowed guns at its annual meeting?

Factual Questions
21

The fact that the decrease was so much larger than the proportion of gun-owners who attended might suggest that NRA conference attendees aren’t representative of gun owners as a whole, and are more likely to cause injuries. Of course, there are multiple possible explanations for why this might be so: It’s possible that NRA members are less well-trained, for instance, or it’s also possible that they just use their guns more often.

Even if you brought your gun with you to the convention city, there are probably many other attendees for whom that was too much of a hassle (for instance, because they were traveling by air instead of in their own vehicle). And it’s quite possible that your weekend routine would ordinarily involve going down to the range, or varmint-hunting, or some other shooting activity, that you would have foregone in favor of going to the convention instead.

In any event, the result here is just that there is some effect, without saying why there’s such an effect. Cases like yours might be instructive in determining that why, but they don’t negate the fact that the effect exists, and so are beyond the scope of this paper.

22

Authors claim knock-on effects, as gun ranges put signs on their door saying “Gone fishing”. Also there are claims that NRA attendees are more likely to handle their guns than your typical gun owner. [INDENT][INDENT] 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.

…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] Commentary on this is welcome; I opine that it is a puzzling feature of the paper in need of better evidence. That said the authors do report that accidents drop faster in the region where the NRA event is held, as would be expected if they were measuring something real.

For an example of a paper that looks like it is fitting noise, click here. Note though that their statistical methodology is rather different (and more dubious if I understand it correctly).

23

Okay, with you so far, but it still doesn’t answer the question of how a sample size of <1% of firearm owners can correlate to a 20% drop in firearms injuries in such a limited amount of time.

Does the study differentiate between accidental injuries, and injuries sustained while in the commission of criminal activity? If the drop was seen primarily amongst accidental injuries, accidents at the range or while out hunting, then I might be more willing to ascribe a correlation between NRA member being careless with their guns, and a net-positive for gun safety when that <1% is temporarily disarmed while attending the NRA’s Annual Meeting.

If it was a drop in injuries sustained while in the commission of criminal activity, however…would the proponents of the study then argue that the <1% of gun owners attending the NRA’s Annual Meeting actually represent criminals that voluntarily disarm themselves and forego their criminal ways just to attend?

It also seems that the study assumes a priori that all of that <1% would otherwise be out shooting at ranges and shooting-guns-related-stuff on the weekend that they are not* due to attending an NRA Annual Meeting.

If the study can approximate how many of that <1% would be out shooting (as opposed to not)…well that makes even less sense, as your sample size just got even smaller.

*As opposed to, say, cleaning the gutters, painting the house, taking their kids to the zoo, vegging out on the couch and watching TV, or basically any other normal weekend activity other than going out shooting somewhere.

24

And again, this study isn’t to determine the cause or mechanism of the decrease, only to find its magnitude. They’re not assuming anything about what those 1% would be doing, or whether the injuries were accidental or criminal; that’s all just speculation from the facts that they have. Further study would be needed to figure out the mechanism.

25

Do you (or anyone) have any statistics about what percentage of gun owners actually use their guns? I did a quick search but was unsuccessful. For example, in my anecdotal case, I know several gun owners who essentially never use their guns. I have a family member who has a few shotguns in a rack in the basement, and I believe they haven’t been used in decades. I know someone who inherited a handgun who has never used it. If someone decides she’d like a shotgun in the house for protection, it may never get any use at all.

So, while it’s less than 1% of firearm owners, it may be a larger percentage of firearm users. In my state, it’s very difficult to actually use a gun anywhere, so even if you purchase a gun and try it out a few times, it’s likely to stay put after that.

This is moving to IMHO territory, I guess.

26

The people attending the meeting might be the most active gun users and thus the most likely to injure themselves or others. The study also notes that the annual meeting could depress firearm usage even among people who don’t attend because shooting ranges and hunting grounds are closed during NRA annual meetings and because people might like to shoot in groups but all their active shooting buddies are at the meeting during those days.

The Supplementary Appendix says: " There was no significant difference in the proportion of crimes involving a firearm on NRA annual
meeting dates versus control dates (Figure S2)." This surprises me too.

I hope it doesn’t because I would still appreciate an answer.

27

When I was younger, I was a State security guard, and I hung out with some admitted gun-nuts. Yes, we went shooting pretty often maybe once a month, targets, bottles, cans. We had connections to a couple ranchers who loved us to come in and eradicate their ground squirrels. I did go bird hutning a few times, but I didnt care for big game hunting.

I had to pull my firearm once on duty to stop a robbery, and once off duty to stop a assault and robbery on a woman. There was another odd occurence with some agressive homeless guys. But no, I never actually fired a round.

I only kept my service wepaon and a .22, and yes, I havent fired them now in years.

28

Come to think of it, I might technically be a gun owner. When my dad died, one of his possessions was an old hunting rifle (that he never used, either: He got it from his dad). Depending on exactly how you interpret the will, that either passed to me, or to me, my mom, and my sister collectively (I’m fine with the latter interpretation). I know that we sold off most of his possessions and just split the money, but I’m not certain if we found a buyer for the gun: It might still be in Mom’s attic.

But needless to say, I’m not what people think about when they hear the term “gun owner”, and neither is my mom.

29

IANAL but I think gifting a firearm to a family member without going through an FFL might be illegal. If the giver and the receiver live in different states, it’s definitely illegal. If they live in the same state, it depends on which state.

30

That doesn’t surprise me. I’d be pretty confident that gun owners who can afford to go to meetings like this have a lower rate of crime involving guns than gun owners who cannot.

I would be interested in seeing if there was a drop in the suicide rate during the meetings.

31

While the study looks publishable to me, poking at its conclusions aids the fight against ignorance, IMHO.

I say that while the plausibility of this claim has been established, I’m less clear whether it’s likely. Anyway, the authors’ reasoning has been given. Independent research of firearm usage among firearm owners is needed for a fuller assessment.

The intent of the article was to address accidental injuries, not criminal ones. From the first paragraph: [INDENT][INDENT][INDENT] Despite high rates of unintentional firearm injuries,1-3 and recognition by the National Rifle Association (NRA) that firearm education is important,4 it is often said that firearm injuries occur primarily among inexperienced users and that firearm safety comes with experience and training. To investigate this contention, we conducted a study in which we hypothesized that firearm use would decline during the dates of NRA meetings — which attract tens of thousands of members from across the United States,5 including firearm owners and owners of venues where firearms are used (e.g., firing ranges and hunting grounds) — and that firearm injuries would also decline even among experienced users. [/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT] Also, their dataset might be proprietary: I’m not sure. Emphasis added: [INDENT][INDENT] We identified emergency department visits and hospitalizations for firearm injuries during NRA convention dates and during identical days in the 3 weeks before and 3 weeks after NRA conventions** in a national database of privately insured patients** during 2007 through 2015. [/INDENT][/INDENT] That doesn’t sound like a publicly available dataset, which might partly explain the small sample size. Not sure. Some of their data at least comes from the CDC: I might be off base.

A little bit of background. Some of the accidental firearm death rates have been shown to be underestimated due to reporting problems. I don’t know about the injury data. The point being that the authors might have had good reason to work with insurance data.

32

Oh yeah, the OP.

I see that gun shows are regularly held in convention centers such as the Arizona State Fairgrounds, the Cow Palace (capacity over 10,000), the Reno-Sparks Convention Center (seating 20,000 - 36,000), the Florida State Fairgrounds and the Atlanta Expo Centers.

Cite: https://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/vprp/pdf/IGS/IGS2web.pdf

None of those come close to handling 81,000 people, AFAICT.

Back in 2009, the crowds were estimated at 55,000 - 65,000: still large. In 2000 they held their convention in Charlotte, which has a huge convention center. Here are the sites of some of their conventions:

Year Host City/State
2000 Charlotte, NC
2001 Kansas City, MO
2002 Reno, NV
2003 Orlando, FL
2004 Pittsburgh, PA
2005 Houston, TX
2006 Milwaukee, WI
2007 St. Louis, MO
2008 Louisville, KY
2009 Phoenix, AZ

** NRA held its 1995 Annual Meetings & Exhibits in Phoenix, AZ.

TL;DR: Yes, evidence indicates that the NRA meetings are of sufficient size to run into weapons policy restrictions and have been that way for a while.

33

Sorry for the delay in getting back; RL stuff left me with too little time/energy for internet stuff.

Another nit to pick with the study is that I know of no ranges that shut down in the St.Louis area during either the 2007 or 2012 Annual Meeting; while I didn’t poll every range in the greater metro that I know of, asking, “Hey, you guys gonna be open this weekend?” the ranges I do frequent (one outdoor, three indoor) would be the sort to post notices if they were going to be shut down, for any reason short of some sort of natural catastrophe.

I would find it very difficult to believe that an Annual Meeting would draw sufficient numbers from any given locale (short of an extremely exclusive gun club w/private range of some sort, and, IME*, those are very rare).

*In a previous job spanning 1994-2001, I worked/lived in the following areas, for an average of 90-180 days at a time, and became familiar with the shooting ranges/gun clubs in these areas:

St. Louis, MO (+greater metro area)
El Paso, TX
Leesville/Alexandria, LA
Colorado Springs, CO
Junction City/Manhattan, KS
Dallas/FW, TX
Little Rock, AR
Petersburg, VA
Fayettville, NC
Columbia, SC
Atlanta, GA
Heidelberg, Germany
Schweinfurt, Germany
Bamberg, Germany

So I think I can safely say that my “sample size” of gun cultures/gun clubs/shooting ranges is sufficiently broad to draw the reasonable conclusion that no one range will have so many NRA members leaving for its Annual Meeting such that those ranges would close down for the weekend of, much less the week before and after, an NRA Annual Meeting.

So, in other words, the study’s purported correlation (not causation; heaven knows they aren’t going to be so bold as to make such an extravagant claim! It’s sufficient in the minds of plenty to simply make an insinuation) that ~80,000 NRA Members, coming from all over the country, is sufficient to disrupt the normal shooting activities, the recreational target shooting at ranges, the hunting trips and such, to see a statistically significant drop in accidental injuries…well, just IME and IMO, it strains credulity, to be polite.

34

No, their correlation does not (or at least, should not) strain credulity. It is what they measured it to be. One of their hypothesized reasons for the correlation might strain credulity, but that’s not what the paper is about.

EDIT: By way of analogy, suppose that someone pointed a spectrometer at the clear sky, and found that the light from the sky peaked in the region of 400-something nanometers. They then write a paper about it, saying that, by their measurement, the sky is blue. In the paper, they briefly discuss possible reasons for this, and suggest the possibility that there’s some sort of blue pigment in air.

This possibility can in fact be fairly easily ruled out, by the fact that sunsets are red. So, if you point that out, have you rendered absurd the notion that the sky is blue?

35

They totally ignored two other aspects.

  1. A large number of licensed firearms carriers are removed from the general public and concentrated in a small area. That means that those individuals were not available in their original area with the ability to provide armed response in self-defense situations. Ergo, the number of gun injuries is bound to drop.

  2. While those carriers were concentrated in that small area, did the number of gun injuries increase in that area? Their hypothesis would tend to indicate this, but they didn’t bother to look at it.

From the article:

From reality:

These findings are biased and erroneous. Their results suggest that this was a study performed by anti-gun people searching for skewed facts to support a flawed hypothesis.

36

From reality, there’s a decrease in the amount of gun injuries during the NRA meeting. Discuss, if you want, why that happens, but for whatever reason, it does happen.

If “self-defense” increases the number of injuries, then you’re doing it wrong.

37

What’s to discuss? How stupid the premise is? You’re seriously going to suggest this is a statistical correlation? 3 days in a year? Are you sure it’s not linked to global warming or Philadelphia Eagles away games or Trump tweets? Should we apply this new found scientific fact and have NRA meetings in schools 5 days a week every week?

38

Yes, of course, because that’s what the data says.

39

Data doesn’t talk.

40

To extend the analogy, consider that the authors posed their explanations in the conditional and gave no evidence of this blue pigment.

Thanks to ExTank for probing that dubious explanation.

The authors provided a 2nd conditional explanation (again without evidence). I’ll quote it again: [indent][indent]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. [/indent][/indent] I suppose another hypothesis would be that NRA members are especially prone to accidental injury (working off of a very low background base). All of that really should be modelled mathematically to see whether the results as presented beggar belief.

To clarify, injury reduction is enjoyed among the population of insured people. Because that’s the dataset the authors work off of. I think it’s reasonable to say that criminal gunshot victims are under-represented among the population of privately insured patients.

Yes.
Yes.
Global warming hasn’t been shown to change during NRA meetings.
Philadelphia Eagles away games have not been shown to be strongly correlated with NRA meetings, across the 7 years sampled.
Trump was not President during the era sampled.
No, we should not have NRA meetings in schools. We should apply this scientific fact to shed light on the first two sentences of the article: [indent][indent]Despite high rates of unintentional firearm injuries,1-3 and recognition by the National Rifle Association (NRA) that firearm education is important,4 it is often said that firearm injuries occur primarily among inexperienced users and that firearm safety comes with experience and training.[/indent][/indent] Experience with firearms doesn’t insulate one from accidental shootings, at least given current gun curricula, which has been amply criticized on this message board in other forums.