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Why gun violence research has been shut down for 20 years

#1
Magical Realist Offline
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk...412aa70281

"The political positions taken up after the Las Vegas massacre are too familiar.

Democratic leaders, such as U.S. senators Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), immediately called for new gun control measures. They say they want, at the very least, to close loopholes in the national firearm background check system.

And most Republicans, from statehouses right through to the White House, say they don't want new gun control laws. Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin seemed to distill this view with a tweet noting, “You can't regulate evil.”

This playing-out of political roles seems to happen after every mass shooting, like it's part of the program. It has occurred after incidents in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn., and San Bernardino, Calif., and Orlando. On and on.

But one reason the positions are so intractable is that no one really knows what works to prevent gun deaths. Gun-control research in the United States essentially came to a standstill in 1996.


After 21 years, the science is stale.

“In the area of what works to prevent shootings, we know almost nothing,” Mark Rosenberg, who, in the mid-1990s, led the CDC's gun-violence research efforts, said shortly after the San Bernardino shooting in 2015.

In 1996, the Republican-majority Congress threatened to strip funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unless it stopped funding research into firearm injuries and deaths. The National Rifle Association accused the CDC of promoting gun control. As a result, the CDC stopped funding gun-control research — which had a chilling effect far beyond the agency, drying up money for almost all public health studies of the issue nationwide.

The National Institute of Justice, an arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, funded 32 gun-related studies from 1993 to 1999, but none from 2009 to 2012, according to Mayors Against Illegal Guns. The institute then resumed funding in 2013, in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting the year before. Researchers in search of private funding say they know to avoid the word “gun” or “firearm” in the titles of violence-prevention studies to avoid blowback.


That hasn't stopped the rallying cry for “common-sense gun control.” But, as Rosenberg pointed out, we don't know what that looks like. Maybe background checks are not the answer. Maybe allowing guns on college campuses makes those places safer. Maybe there is a way to stop a single gunman from killing and wounding hundreds of people at a concert in Las Vegas.

But, many advocates say, it's impossible to have an honest debate about preventing gun violence when we can't study the issue.

Everyone agrees the Las Vegas shooting was a tragedy. But no one knows what might work to prevent the next one.

“If we get better data, we could get a lot of traction on this,” said Jennifer Doleac, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Virginia, who has used gunfire-detection technology deployed in many cities to study how often guns are fired. “It's just so political.”

Jay Dickey was a Republican congressman from Arkansas who, in the mid-1990s, led the effort to stop the CDC's gun violence research. The Dickey Amendment, as it's known, has been reauthorized every year by Congress. He and Rosenberg, the former CDC official, were once sworn enemies. But the two men later became friends. And Dickey, before he died earlier this year, changed his thinking. After the successive waves of mass shootings, he saw that something needed to be done. Dickey said he changed his mind: Gun violence needed to be studied by the CDC. He wanted solutions — ones that, he said, also protected gun rights. It might be possible.


“We need to turn this over to science and take it away from politics,” Dickey said.

All he wanted to do was find out."
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#2
Syne Offline
Notice they only mention up until 2012. That's because in 2013 Obama gave the CDC $10 million to study gun violence. The reason they don't want to mention this? The results of that study don't help pushes for gun control. Among them:

Armed citizens are less likely to be injured by an attacker.
Defensive uses of guns are very common (more than violent crime involving guns).
Mass shootings and accidental deaths are a small and declining fraction.
Gun control attempts have had, at best, "mixed" results.
Gun buyback programs are "ineffective" at reducing crime.
Stolen and retail or gun show purchased guns account for very little crime.
The huge majority of gun deaths are suicides.
https://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/1#ix

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#3
Magical Realist Offline
(Feb 19, 2018 08:41 PM)Syne Wrote: Notice they only mention up until 2012. That's because in 2013 Obama gave the CDC $10 million to study gun violence. The reason they don't want to mention this? The results of that study don't help pushes for gun control. Among them:

Armed citizens are less likely to be injured by an attacker.
Defensive uses of guns are very common (more than violent crime involving guns).
Mass shootings and accidental deaths are a small and declining fraction.
Gun control attempts have had, at best, "mixed" results.
Gun buyback programs are "ineffective" at reducing crime.
Stolen and retail or gun show purchased guns account for very little crime.
The huge majority of gun deaths are suicides.
https://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/1#ix



Where did you get those conclusions from? I can't find them on the page you linked to.

Here's some interesting conclusions from many more studies:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/...ngton-post

"Last year, researchers from around the country reviewed more than 130 studies from 10 countries on gun control for Epidemiologic Reviews. This is, for now, the most current, extensive review of the research on the effects of gun control. The findings were clear: “The simultaneous implementation of laws targeting multiple firearms restrictions is associated with reductions in firearm deaths.”

The study did not look at one specific intervention, but rather a variety of kinds of gun control, from licensing measures to buyback programs. Time and time again, they found the same line of evidence: Reducing access to guns was followed by a drop in deaths related to guns. And while non-gun homicides also decreased, the drop wasn’t as quick as the one seen in gun-related homicides — indicating that access to guns was a potential causal factor..."
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#4
Syne Offline
(Feb 19, 2018 09:57 PM)Magical Realist Wrote:
(Feb 19, 2018 08:41 PM)Syne Wrote: Notice they only mention up until 2012. That's because in 2013 Obama gave the CDC $10 million to study gun violence. The reason they don't want to mention this? The results of that study don't help pushes for gun control. Among them:

Armed citizens are less likely to be injured by an attacker.
Defensive uses of guns are very common (more than violent crime involving guns).
Mass shootings and accidental deaths are a small and declining fraction.
Gun control attempts have had, at best, "mixed" results.
Gun buyback programs are "ineffective" at reducing crime.
Stolen and retail or gun show purchased guns account for very little crime.
The huge majority of gun deaths are suicides.
https://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/1#ix



Where did you get those conclusions from? I can't find them on the page you linked to.
Because that page is an index to the CDC findings. If you had bothered to look further, you'd have found that info.
Quote:Here's some interesting conclusions from many more studies:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/...ngton-post

"Last year, researchers from around the country reviewed more than 130 studies from 10 countries on gun control for Epidemiologic Reviews. This is, for now, the most current, extensive review of the research on the effects of gun control. The findings were clear: “The simultaneous implementation of laws targeting multiple firearms restrictions is associated with reductions in firearm deaths.”

The study did not look at one specific intervention, but rather a variety of kinds of gun control, from licensing measures to buyback programs. Time and time again, they found the same line of evidence: Reducing access to guns was followed by a drop in deaths related to guns. And while non-gun homicides also decreased, the drop wasn’t as quick as the one seen in gun-related homicides — indicating that access to guns was a potential causal factor..."

US murder rate has dropped the same amount as Australia's over the same period.
Firearm deaths are never compared to murder rates in these studies, and they never account for the differences in population size and makeup.
Murder rates have been declining in most Western countries for decades.
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#5
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:Because that page is an index to the CDC findings. If you had bothered to look further, you'd have found that info

I noticed you didn't put those conclusions in quotation marks. Why is that? Did you just make them up? Show me where you got them from.
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#6
C C Offline
(Feb 19, 2018 03:47 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk...412aa70281

[...] But one reason the positions are so intractable is that no one really knows what works to prevent gun deaths. Gun-control research in the United States essentially came to a standstill in 1996. After 21 years, the science is stale. [...] In 1996, the Republican-majority Congress threatened to strip funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unless it stopped funding research into firearm injuries and deaths. The National Rifle Association accused the CDC of promoting gun control. As a result, the CDC stopped funding gun-control research — which had a chilling effect far beyond the agency, drying up money for almost all public health studies of the issue nationwide. [...]


Without a genuine god's eye view for this world, who knows... Firearm supporting organizations might even be only the tip of a more complex iceberg that spills into other markets of society. Which -- in addition to lobbying politicians and recruiting / buying experts, these related but quarreling special interests take turns trying to throw each other under the bus to dodge focus and responsibility being directed at their own specific enterprises.

In January of 2013, Obama released his national plan for addressing gun violence. It contained a proposal about conducting research on the causes and prevention of gun violence that included "links between video games, media images and violence".
Like weapons, these are pretty popular passions or "expected to be available aspects of entertainment" among vast segments of the population.
(Fact sheet abstracted from it PDF)

Video games and various types of media violence were suggested as contributing culprits after the Florida high school shootings. But representatives of those industries cited their own studies and propaganda that dismissed any connection to such engendering shooter aggression. It seems that any special interest group can variously finance their own investigations, cherry-pick data and interpretations of statistics, assemble a coterie of like-minded or funded scholars to issue statements, and critique the standards and methodology of investigations outputting results counter to their own pursuits.

The modern era is overflowing with expertise, but these diverse schools of authority don't always converge into an uncontested consensus or objective view (or at least one that is above cynicism / suspicion, unpaid, not the result of reputation intimidation, without fraternity and fellowship allegiances, etc).

- - -
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#7
Syne Offline
(Feb 19, 2018 11:04 PM)Magical Realist Wrote:
Quote:Because that page is an index to the CDC findings. If you had bothered to look further, you'd have found that info

I noticed you didn't put those conclusions in quotation marks. Why is that? Did you just make them up? Show me where you got them from.

Already gave you the source. Don't believe it? Prove me wrong.
That is your usual level of intellectual honesty, right?

(Feb 19, 2018 11:16 PM)C C Wrote: The modern era is overflowing with expertise, but these diverse schools of authority don't always converge into an uncontested consensus or objective view (or at least one that is above cynicism / suspicion, unpaid, not the result of reputation intimidation, without fraternity and fellowship allegiances, etc).

Except there's little reason to doubt an Obama-funded CDC report.
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#8
stryder Offline
Gun control is heavily controlled here in the UK, while indeed gun related crimes are reduced there are still crimes done with knives and vehicular manslaughter and when either of those fails there is just all out brutality using whatever brickbats are available. Therefore controlling guns just controls gun related crime figures, not the crimes themselves. Albeit that being said, the decision for a person to act in retaliation for a crime or a misspoken word having less chance of having a weapon available does reduce homicide.

The main problem is though that weapons are tools, they don't instigate confrontation or commit acts that escalate into violence that's entirely upon the individuals involved and to some extents a reflection of the state of society.

What problems cause shootings is a can of worms when it comes to trying to put anything at fault since there is so much dynamics involved, what exists in one shooting might not in another, one might have heard voices telling them to do it another might of just disliked and never connected with those around them, another still might of shot complete strangers. There has been multiple directions of finger pointing from the gun control, to the mental health systems and of course the foster system. In all cases though its down to human interaction either the lack of it, or too much negative enforcement through it and then there is the insidious nature of social networking with it's trolls and gargoyles.
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#9
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:Already gave you the source. Don't believe it? Prove me wrong.

IOW I caught you in a lie. Those conclusions aren't in that study at all are they? You would have quoted them if they were and linked them to the page where they can be found.

Quote:The main problem is though that weapons are tools, they don't instigate confrontation or commit acts that escalate into violence that's entirely upon the individuals involved and to some extents a reflection of the state of society.

A man carrying a knife eventually finds things that need to be cut or stabbed. A man carrying a hammer eventually finds things that need to be pounded. And a man carrying a gun eventually finds things that need to be shot. We are predisposed towards actions that enable us to use the weapon we are carrying. And the best deterrent to using a weapon is simply not having that weapon in the first place.
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#10
Syne Offline
(Feb 20, 2018 12:32 AM)Magical Realist Wrote:
Quote:Already gave you the source. Don't believe it? Prove me wrong.

IOW I caught you in a lie. Those conclusions aren't in that study at all are they? You would have quoted them if they were and linked them to the page where they can be found.
And if I show you the exact pages, with quotes, will you apologize for calling me a liar, admit you know nothing about guns and gun crime, and stop prattling on about equally ignorant partisan talking points?
Quote:
Quote:The main problem is though that weapons are tools, they don't instigate confrontation or commit acts that escalate into violence that's entirely upon the individuals involved and to some extents a reflection of the state of society.

A man carrying a knife eventually finds things that need to be cut or stabbed. A man carrying a hammer eventually finds things that need to be pounded. And a man carrying a gun eventually finds things that need to be shot. We are predisposed towards actions that enable us to use the weapon we are carrying. And the best deterrent to using a weapon is simply not having that weapon in the first place.

In the US, more people are murdered with fists and feet than rifles or shotguns. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1953...apon-used/
Yeah, everyone with fists eventually finds something to punch and punch until dead. Rolleyes
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