Unbiased firearms research. Sounds good doesn’t it? Does it
exist? Will it ever?
I exchanged messages with a friend recently about the biased
nature of reporting on the divisive issue of gun control. We both acknowledged
that it’s very difficult to know who or what to trust. The spin is dizzying.
Being a gun rights advocate, I can easily spot a lot of the anti-gun agenda
spin, rhetoric, lies, misinformation, etc. But most, including me, don’t recognize
all of it. The opposition will cite their ‘facts’ and criticism equally quickly
and strongly. As Senator Dianne Feinstein said not long ago – ‘they (the NRA?)
have their facts, I have mine’ (may be paraphrased).
As the gun control debate rages on in our country, NBC News published
this “Experts lay out plan for comprehensive gun research” article earlier this
week. At first glance it sounded good. It’s another of those things that’s hard
to argue against – “comprehensive research” from “experts” at the “Institute of
Medicine” with “no political agenda.” Sounds great. All reasonable people
should be supportive of this as long as it’s not cost prohibitive, right?
But something didn’t feel quite right. It felt ‘too good to
be true’ so I let the article sit for a few days before commenting on it. I
read it again earlier today and found both ‘feel good’ stuff and red flags in
it.
Here’s an excerpt from the very first paragraph of the
article. “…data is needed on who owns guns, where they keep them, how likely a
gun is to be used to hurt someone else, whether having a gun keeps you safer,
and whether there are ways to make guns any safer.” And the problems
appear immediately. What are they? It boils down to trust. Can the researchers
be trusted? Can the results be trusted? Can the lawmakers be trusted with the
information? Can the government administration be trusted with the information?
While accurate, unbiased data and research shouldn’t be a threat, every one of
the phrases in that quoted sentence is problematic to gun owners.
“Who owns guns” can be read as gun registration. For
research purposes maybe data in the aggregate is private and ‘safe’ but do we
trust it to be kept so? They even mention later in the article “Anonymous data
is fine, and it might reassure gun owners if they know their names, addresses
and other personal information would not be collected.” But many firearms
owners have a basic, deep and justified distrust of anyone else’s knowledge of
their firearms, especially the government’s! Recent history in other western
countries shows us that firearms registration leads to confiscation. While some
politicians and gun control advocates openly state that they respect the 2nd Amendment
and aren’t coming to take anyone’s guns away, other gun control advocates have
said and done those very things. The article says “Basic information about gun
possession, acquisition, and storage is lacking. No single database captures
the total number, locations, and types of firearms and firearm owners in the
United States.” Doesn’t that sound a lot like gun registration – a “single
database” of “number, locations, and types of firearms and firearm owners”? In
the first few months of 2013 there were at least 2 major breaches of firearms
owners’ confidentiality, in New York and Missouri. This year in New York and
California, firearms registration and licensing data has led to firearms
confiscations from law abiding gun owners. So the fear, skepticism and distrust
are very justified. Understanding that, one must also understand that no study
will be accurate in its data gathering about firearms ownership simply because
many people will refuse to answer the questions or will respond with lies,
mostly claiming they don’t own firearms when they do, in order to deny the government
that information. This is already happening and I believe the number of people
doing this is statistically significant to the accuracy of the studies and
surveys. Those recent polls about the decline of gun ownership in American
households are probably accurate in finding a downward trend but not in the
percentages.
“Where they keep them” can be responded to with ‘none of
your damn business’. Yes, improper
firearms storage can lead to negligent death and injury. That’s factual and
tragic when it occurs. But it’s a personal choice and freedom in how we store
our firearms that comes with responsibility and consequences. There are no laws
governing using your vehicle’s parking brake in your driveway or locking your
doors and windows to prevent accidental (negligent) injury, death, or property
damage or loss. We make those choices for ourselves and our families and need
that freedom with our firearms too. Laws requiring firearms storage under lock
and key, in vaults, unloaded or disassembled mean that if you need that firearm
to protect yourself, others or your property that they’ll be inaccessible or
unserviceable in time for their justifiable, defensive uses.
“How likely a gun is to be used to hurt someone else” is entirely
subjective. There is no litmus test or assurance that a firearm will or won’t
be used to hurt someone – negligently or intentionally. The problem is not with
the firearm but with its user. Firearms can and have been used for violent
purposes by people other than their lawful owners. A person’s psychological,
mental and emotional state can change radically multiple times within their
lifetime. Not all mental illness equates to violence or intention to harm
themselves or others. Even the same illness manifests itself differently with
different people. We have convicted felons who have lost their 2nd Amendment
rights for non-violent crimes that are no more likely to use a firearm to
commit violent crime than any other person. We have law enforcement officers,
trusted with the responsibility and use of firearms for their professional
duties, who have murdered people. Some anit-gun advocates have argued that
there is no legitimate use of a gun in the hands of non-law enforcement or
non-military. But how many of them have been in real life or death situations?
Self-preservation is a very powerful, natural and healthy motivator. Many
circumstances contribute to and change the ‘likelihood of a gun being used to
hurt someone else’.
“Whether having a gun keeps you safer” is another subjective
argument. There’s no doubt we’d all be safer if firearms didn’t exist or if we
travelled in an environment in which there was no firearm within a 10-mile
radius of us but neither of those conditions reflects reality. There is some
statistical probability then that each of us, any one of us, can be hurt with a
firearm. But the opposite is also true. We are all also safer if there is one
or more firearms within our immediate vicinity. Assuming that the 1st firearm
is used to threaten you, the 2nd, whether it’s yours or someone else’s, may be the
one that saves your life or brings a criminal to justice for hurting or
murdering you. The article says “What needs to be sorted out is whether this is
actually true (“that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as
offensive uses by criminals” from the previous paragraph), and whether
accidental deaths, murders by gun owners, and suicides outweigh any lives saved
by gun owners protecting themselves, the committee said.” This is
another instance where the data will never be accurate. As I mentioned to my
friend recently, many defensive uses of firearms are never reported to law
enforcement and, again, I believe the number to be statistically significant.
Reporting an event may or may not do anything to bring a criminal to justice or
prevent a future crime but it will definitely start a legal, bureaucratic or
administrative process that many firearms owners don’t want to be a part of.
Even victims of violent crime like assault and rape don’t always report. In
this highly toxic, political, ideological environment, lawful firearms owners don’t
want to put themselves at risk of close scrutiny even when they believe they’d
acted lawfully. At a minimum, your name and firearms use gets reported into a
database and public record that you have no control over. The negatives can
quickly outweigh the benefits of self-reporting. And speaking of “outweighing”
the article questions whether deaths with guns “outweigh” lives saved with
guns. The very question challenges the “right” provided by our Constitution’s 2nd
Amendment. Rights are not put on scales and this is not a “majority rules”
issue.
“Whether there are ways to make guns any safer” is
another hot spot. Yes, there is interesting technology in this area. The main problems
are intrusiveness, cost and reliability. Mandatory installation of GPS devices
in firearms, as some have said they’d like to see, will never be acceptable!
That level of intrusion and invasion of privacy is ridiculous. No other right
has anything approaching it. Cost is also a problem. What might be considered affordable
to some is burdensome to others and unattainable for others. This fits squarely
into one of the well-known attempts by gun control advocates to make firearms
and their use too expensive for many to exercise their rights. Firearms are
already relatively expensive to purchase and operate (cost of ammunition in
this environment). Any additional manufacturing cost will be passed on to
consumers. Technology also fails. All of it does eventually whether mechanical
or electronic. It may also not adapt well to the environments in which it may
be needed – heat, humidity, cold, heavy or light use, storage environments,
etc. No one wants to risk depending upon unnecessary layers of possible points
of failure when they need a firearm for defensive purposes – keys,
combinations, PINS, biometrics, battery power, etc. There’s a place for all of
the various technology solutions being explored – as options available to
consumers. Making any of them mandatory is typical gun control overreach. I
think backup cameras on vehicles is a good, technically innovative solution to
making automobiles safer but I don’t want one on my vehicle. I don’t want to
pay any extra amount for it, I think I’m at low risk of backing over a child,
and I believe it should be my choice to purchase a vehicle with one or not. But
some politicians and advocates want to make them mandatory in new vehicles –
adding to the cost of vehicle purchases and maintenance if any of their
multiple components fail. I also don’t want a family member or friend prevented
from using a firearm to protect themselves or others because of some gun
control law and a circumstance where the firearm isn’t configured for their
use. For those who would feel safer having a firearm in their home with a
technology safety solution, that’s fine – for them. I also wouldn’t want
firearms becoming paperweights when their owners die without transferring the
technology solution key to the hereditary owners.
“Although violent crime rates have declined in recent years,
the U.S. rate of firearm-related deaths is the highest among industrialized
countries.” At least people are starting to acknowledge the fact of the
crime rate’s reduction. But it’s been happening for more than what many people
would consider “recent years”. It’s been happening for two decades. That’s one
of those “inconvenient truths” to gun control advocates who want people to
believe that guns = crime and more guns = more crime. Firearms in circulation
have gone steadily up while crime has gone down for 20 years. The part about
the US crime rate being higher than other industrialized countries is basically
true too. But of all the other industrialized countries in the world, how many
of them have a 2nd Amendment? None. Our culture is different. Our rights are
different and are guaranteed to us by our Founding Fathers and the documents
they left behind. Our country, still very young by world history standards, was
born of the gun – not just defended with it, as virtually any country could
claim, but born with it. We can draw various comparisons of the US to other
friendly or similar countries but none of those comparisons is or ever will be
apples to apples.
The statement “We don’t want to be wasting money on
ineffective programs” is almost laughable since that is precisely what many gun
control advocates do. They spend uncountable millions of dollars in pursuit of
pushing their agenda and ideology on others – attacking the wrong things and
people instead of identifying and focusing on the real problems – criminals.
The article mentions these 7 areas needing study. I can
answer some of them right now and it won’t cost taxpayers anything.
* Whether programs that aim to stop illegal use
of firearms actually work – No. Unless you can eliminate all guns, an
impossibility, you cannot “stop” them from being used for illegal purposes.
* Whether preventing criminals from getting hold
of legally purchased guns reduces violence – No. Hasn’t worked in the UK
(Britain and Wales) or Australia.
* Whether it’s possible to keep violent people
from getting guns – No. They can commit violence in order to obtain guns
illegally and then use those for their following acts.
* Whether childhood education programs reduce
firearm violence later – Yes. But there’s a whole cascading line of thought
that needs to follow here. The ‘education’, indoctrination and ‘brain washing’
(Eric Holder’s term) that’s going on in our schools today is fundamentally
wrong. Teaching fear, misunderstanding, untruths about Constitutional rights
and the so-called “zero tolerance” policies are not just morally and ethically
wrong but also harmful. The right education needs to be provided but some of it
would be unacceptable gun control advocates.
* Whether technology can help make gun use safer
– Yes. But it can also put people in jeopardy when it fails.
* Whether people who have guns are safer than
people who don’t – Yes. If you don’t have a gun then you will be a victim 100%
of the time if a criminal with a deadly weapon targets you. If you do have a
gun you may or may not be a victim of that crime. Yes, on rare occasions,
including those with law enforcement officers, your own firearm may be used
against you. It’s a personal choice to arm yourself and accept that risk or
not.
* Whether media violence affects real-life
violence – Yes. This is obvious because several mass murderers have planned
their activities or set goals for themselves based upon previous mass murders.
Violence in the media, which in those cases is also real violence, has ‘affected
real-life violence’. I think this has also been determined to be so by those
performing studies for military and law enforcement uses where simulators are
used to train and condition people for confronting violence and controlling
their own violent response to it.
Having answered these, can I send a $10 million invoice to
President Obama who wanted to allocate that much toward the study of gun
violence?
I love these statements – “This has nothing to do with
whether people should or shouldn’t have guns. This is about finding scientific
evidence that can be used by policy makers.” This is either idealistic
or a lie. It’s all about whether people should or shouldn’t have guns because
that’s precisely what lawmakers are going to argue and decide about. And that
argument should have been over the first, and every, time it’s ever been
brought up – by a recitation of our 2nd Amendment – “A well regulated Militia,
being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to
keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” – “...right of the people...shall not be infringed”.
I found this to be very interesting – “About 1 percent of
irresponsible dealers are reponsible for 60 percent of guns used in crimes.”
I don’t know where that statistic comes from and I’ve not seen it before. If it’s
true then there’s finally a 1% that is worth chasing by gun control advocates and
the rest of us, instead of the firearms used in ~1% of crimes or the ~1% of
firearms that are obtained by criminals from gun shows.
Near the end of the NBC News article it says “The NRA did
not answer requests for interviews for this story.” Ironically, as I sat
down today to finally comment on this article myself, I had already started
when I received a Tweet from the NRA with their comments. Guess what. They’re
not favorable.
“In April, anti-gun public health researchers who spent
millions conducting junk science gun control advocacy research in the 1990s,
until Congress prohibited the use of federal funds for that purpose, assembled
in Washington, D.C. The forum was a panel convened by the Institute of
Medicine, on behalf of the CDC, to develop an agenda for gun-related issues the
CDC would like to "study" on the taxpayers' dime.
This week, the researchers--including many of the same
people who performed the research in the 1990s--made the resulting agenda public. And
what an agenda it is, consisting of a whopping 14 "priorities" and
more than 50 subordinate topics, including collecting data about gun ownership,
acquisition, and use; issues related to prohibiting private firearm sales;
issues related to mandatory storage requirements; and the potential for
mandating that guns possess "smart gun" technology --though,
to its credit, the agenda recognizes that many gun owners would disable
"smart" technology in the interest of improving their firearms'
reliability. (Also to the panel's credit, the report recognizes that defensive
gun uses are common and worthy of further study, as urged by an NRA
representative at the meeting.)
How $10 million would cover the vast amount of research proposed remains to be seen. Daniel Webster of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, one of the most prolific anti-gun researchers in the public health field over the last decade, lamented to the New York Times, "given that we are in very lean budget times, the CDC will be faced with difficult decisions about setting priorities.”
How $10 million would cover the vast amount of research proposed remains to be seen. Daniel Webster of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, one of the most prolific anti-gun researchers in the public health field over the last decade, lamented to the New York Times, "given that we are in very lean budget times, the CDC will be faced with difficult decisions about setting priorities.”
Many gun control advocates will roll their eyes at this criticism
and say ‘of course the NRA doesn’t want the issues studied, they’re afraid of
what it might reveal’. I don’t see it that way. The NRA has made good use of
data to support their arguments. Some is sponsored by them but much of it is
not. I’ve looked at a lot of data, analysis, studies, etc. over the past
several months and believe that most of it does support gun-rights arguments.
The NRA seems confident in this. If they’re afraid of anything, it’s how the
data, research, analysis and results will be manipulated and twisted into
something less than truthful. Think back to Feinstein’s comment – ‘they have their
data and I have mine’. Feinstein, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others are known,
influential, anti-gun, ideological, agenda pushers and aggressive manipulators.
From their comments, it’s clear that the NRA does not recognize the credibility,
objectivity or unbiased nature of these so-called “experts”.
Here’s the actual “Priorities for Research to Reduce the
Threat of Firearm-Related Violence” paper from the Institute of Medicine: http://www.iom.edu/~/media/Files/Report%20Files/2013/Firearm-Violence/FirearmViolence_Insert.pdf
The debate, argument or fight will not live or die as a
result of this potential study or any others. It will outlive us all. We can
only hope that it won’t continue as aggressively, persistently or at such cost
for the rest of our lives – that it will be reduced to a more normal level of noise mostly hidden in private
conversations and meeting rooms. It will go on because it is grounded in our
Constitution and an ideology on one side and an equivalently strong but
opposite ideology on the other. It will go on because even when the facts don’t
support their arguments, gun control advocates will misrepresent those facts in
pursuit of their goals and gun-rights advocates will keep pointing to their supportive
facts and to that 200-year old document that is the foundation for all our
personal liberties. It will go on because the liberal media advocates for gun
control at an 8:1 ratio, as analyzed earlier this year. NBC News, the publisher
of this article is not unbiased. They presented their readers with an “expert”
panel of researchers. There was no mention of their past “junk science”. MSNBC
is about as bad as CNN for its advocacy of gun control. I’m not sure how much
separation there is between it and NBC News.
An unbiased study would be nice, if it could ever be
achieved, and it might answer some questions, but it won’t end the debate.
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