By David Codrea
“A new, huge review of gun research has bad news for the NRA,” a Friday headline on the consistently anti-gun Vox asserts. “The findings, while limited, point in one direction: Gun control can save lives.”
They admit findings are “limited”?
Yet despite those limitations we’re to believe the “research” will put to rest prior findings by criminologists Don B. Kates and Gary Mauser that “In 2004 the US National Academy of Sciences … failed to identify any gun control that reduced violent crime, suicides or gun accidents” derived “from a review of 153 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some original empirical research” and further corroborated “in 2003 by the US Centers for Disease Control”?
Good grief, we’re not going to get into statistics here, are we? Talk about a surefire way to make eyes glaze over unless you’re adept at translating Martian into English. But if we leave those depths to a pro like John Lott, what can we mere laymen do to question arcane conclusions dependent on our ability to navigate numbers and charts?
We can start by remembering the truism about lies, damned lies and statistics. And in this case, the damned lies practically out themselves.
“[A]fter research on gun violence in the 1990s found that firearms do not — contrary to NRA talking points — make people safer, the group backed a federal funding freeze on gun policy research,” the Vox piece claims. Right there they’re performing a bit of sleight of mind.
There’s a difference between “research” and “agenda science.”
“Congress in fact simply directed the CDC to stop promoting gun control,” Timothy Wheeler, MD of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership explained. “To reasonable minds this is not at all controversial. Congress should ignore the tricksters and continue holding the CDC to its mission of objective research, not pushing for gun control.”
Perhaps if CDC honcho Dr. Mark Rosenberg had not been out there bragging to the media that his goal in his official capacity was to manipulate public perception of firearms as “dirty, deadly—and banned,” they would not have had to be reined in. But then again, being against people defending themselves is what such creatures are all about.
Still, the new RAND study is ground-breaking. Honest. Which must be why we see equivocation and excuse-making throughout the Vox piece:
- They’re not making “sweeping declarations.”
- They admit “research is very limited.”
- ‘[I]ts review does seem to point in a direction…”
- “At the very least, there’s enough evidence to suggest…”
- “[M]uch of the research on gun policy is still in its infancy.”
This is “huge”? This is “bad news for the NRA”?
It looks more like wishful thinking peppered with graphics designed to make it look like they’re dealing with facts. And when they get to facts we can check, claims start to fall
