This is a direct quote from the publication "GUNS AND PUBLIC HEALTH: EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE OR PANDEMIC OF PROPAGANDA?"
AN HONEST LOOK AT WHY ANTI-GUN RESEARCHERS SPIN THE FACTS!" (available here: http://www.gunsandcrime.org/epidemic.pdf). I find it ironic that you use a quote from an opinion piece written by gun rights activists to demonstrate that we can't trust research about guns by people who have strong opinions on the matter. Can you explain your logic on that to me? :P
I didn't check my sources as carefully as you did, my mistake. Had I known that was the source I wouldn't have posted it. Clearly that is extremely biased.
edit: I did take a peek at the .pdf, and it appears they cited the claim. Since neither of us has a way to verify it I'll concede it is probably biased. One of the many troubles with discussing things from the 90's.
Mr. O'Carroll was misquoted.
How so?
I don't actually see a smoking gun (if you'll pardon the pun) here. Cigarettes are still legal in the states and used by millions. By using the power of advertising a reduction in smoking rates was achieved to the benefit of public health. It feels like you're really overreaching on this one.
Specifically calling out something dirty, deadly, and banned, and saying that's how guns need to be seems slightly biased considering the lack of a "smoking gun" (liked it so much I stole it) in the available research. Putting the cart before the horse, some might say. If this was the worst that was said, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion, it's just part of the broader picture.
All valid points of concern I suppose.
ure, I'd be a little concerned. I'd want to go over the work that they produce carefully. But you're contending that the personal opinions held/expressed by any of these people prevented them from doing valid work. Given this, are you equally concerned about religious people who work in science? Science is dependent upon observing phenomenon and finding the theory that best fits the available facts. Belief in God is absent proof, and therefore a denial of reason. By your own logic, all religious scientists should have funding removed and the field should be dominated by agnostics.
I'm not arguing that it was the right decision, or that this is the way that everything should be handled. I agree with you that putting a hard stop on research is the wrong call. There's junk science out there for all sorts of things, so it wouldn't exactly be out of place, and theoretically the internet should help water it down (yeah right).
I'm simply explaining that it's a much more complicated situation than "The NRA is afraid of research because they know guns are bad!" which I know you didn't say, but is often the implication when someone brings this point up. It's a complicated issue that is played off as a simple obvious one. It's become a marketing blurb at this point, similar to the law that prevents people from suing gun manufacturers for what their products are used for and spawns articles like this: "We Lost Our Daughter to a Mass Shooter and Now Owe $203,000 to His Ammo Dealer"
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/lonnie-and-sandy-phillips/lucky-gunner-lawsuit_b_8197804.html. That's another law with a fairly complex, and actually very reasonable background that has been turned into a gun regulation marketing tool.
One of the original studies that started all of this determined that someone with a gun was 43 times more likely to have it used against them than on an attacker. Of course the study was debunked by the scientific community, but that didn't stop it from being referenced all over the place. It's STILL used occasionally today. Again, not arguing the merits of the reasoning, just explaining what it was.
And as far as "they should still be able to do the work." Surely you're not that naïve. If someone was a member of the KKK and wrote a book called "The Inferior Race" before even starting their research, would you trust them to do research on crime with regards to race? Would you let an outspoken anti-vaxxer design experiments to test the efficacy of vaccines? Surely they're a scientist so they could be neutral, right?
For most people Christianity deals with questions that can't be answered, so it's much easier for a scientist to compartmentalize it. I would not trust someone who believes the earth to be 4000 years old to be an authority on dinosaurs, but they could probably do great medical research on cancer treatments.
Here's a CDC study from 2015 on gun violence in Delaware. http://dhss.delaware.gov/dhss/dms/files/cdcgunviolencereport10315.pdf
Note how many possible solutions they come up with that have nothing to do with restricting law abiding gun owners. Pages 13-15 have their recommendations.
I'm on board with the recommendations given in this study. They seem sensible. That said, they have nothing to do with "restricting law abiding gun owners" because that option was not considered at any point in the study, not because of any reasoned or justified problem with implementing restrictions.
And yet, they found other things that they think would prove effective. Also of note in the study is that the vast majority of people who commit gun crimes commit other violent crimes first. Perhaps we should work on preventing all of the crimes, rather than just blanket gun restrictions that even in theory only prevent one method of performing a crime.
The quote in full:
Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the exact number remains disputed (Cook and Ludwig, 1996; Kleck, 2001a). Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010). On the other hand, some scholars point to a radically lower estimate of only 108,000 annual defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization Survey (Cook et al., 1997). The variation in these numbers remains a controversy in the field. The estimate of 3 million defensive uses per year is based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys. The former estimate of 108,000 is difficult to interpret because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.
A different issue is whether defensive uses of guns, however numerous or rare they may be, are effective in preventing injury to the gun-wielding crime victim. Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies (Kleck, 1988; Kleck and DeLone, 1993; Southwick, 2000; Tark and Kleck, 2004). Effectiveness of defensive tactics, however, is likely to vary across types of victims, types of offenders, and circumstances of the crime, so further research is needed both to explore these contingencies and to confirm or discount earlier findings.
Even when defensive use of guns is effective in averting death or injury for the gun user in cases of crime, it is still possible that keeping a gun in the home or carrying a gun in public—concealed or open carry—may have a different net effect on the rate of injury. For example, if gun ownership raises the risk of suicide, homicide, or the use of weapons by those who invade the homes of gun owners, this could cancel or outweigh the beneficial effects of defensive gun use (Kellermann et al., 1992, 1993, 1995). Although some early studies were published that relate to this issue, they were not conclusive, and this is a sufficiently important question that it merits additional, careful exploration.
Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a small piece of the larger puzzle, and absolutely should be part of the discussion regarding a path forward to take involving guns.
Agreed. I just felt it prudent to point out this massive study that was conducted, and that it found very little to support restriction of firearms. The issue of violence is extremely complex, and gun control is addressing a symptom using a "maybe it'll help" medicine with side effects when we should be searching for and addressing the root cause.
Back before Australia's relatively intense gun control initiatives took place, they already had 1/5 of the violent crime rate as the United States. I'm interested in what caused THAT discrepancy. I'm less interested in their gun control initiatives that saw their rates drop roughly the same amount as the US over the next 20 years.