research | The Zelman Partisans

I ran across this story: Former CDC Doc: You Can Reduce Gun Deaths Without Restricting Guns. I was going to watch the video, but after reading the intro..

Why bother?

“More people die from gun deaths than from car accidents every year in the United States.”

Not according to the CDC’s WISQARS.

Year	MVA	Firearms
2016	40,528	38,658
2015	38,022	36,252
2014	35,647	33,594
2013	35,612	33,636
2012	36,654	33,563

“However, while research-based policies have reduced motor vehicle deaths, federal research on firearm deaths is nearly non-existent.”

“Nearly” is such a useful term when you want to lie without… quite lying. The federal government does fund research into firearms-related deaths. It’s difficult to find a summary of such funding, but from checking individual papers (just where the funding is explicitly listed) it appears that the feds fund it to the tune of several hundred thousands of dollar per year. At least.

“That’s due to the Dickey Amendment, which says Centers for Disease Control funding cannot be used to promote gun control.”

The Dickey Amendment only addressed CDC operations, because it was caught diverting research funds to gun control advocacy; i.e.- they weren’t researching. Other organizations like the NIH have been free to study firearms, and do.

“Soledad O’Brien sits down with Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who formerly oversaw gun violence research at the CDC”

In fact, Rosenberg was the victim-disarming gun control promoter at the CDC who caused the passage of the Dickey Amendment, largely with this statement: “We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like we did with cigarettes. Now it [sic] is dirty, deadly and banned.”

That’s right; he’s the one who was diverting money away from real research, and to — very likely illegal — political activism.

I did try to watch the video, though. And stopped when O’Brien flat out stated that the Dickey Amendment was passed to stop research.

Don’t bother; it’s just biased media lying to push its agenda again. Still. Constantly.

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Oh, look. Another Johns Hopkins study examining the effects of recognizing human/civil rights.

Changes in state policies impact fatal and non-fatal assaults of law enforcement officers
The researchers looked at the relationship between assault data involving law enforcement officers and changes in three policies at the state level: three-strikes laws, which impose mandatory decades-long sentences when a criminal is convicted of a third crime; right-to-carry or concealed-carry laws, which reduce restrictions for individuals to carry concealed firearms in public; and permit-to-purchase measures, which require prospective handgun purchasers to obtain a permit or license after passing a background check.

And what did they find?

The authors found that three-strikes laws were associated with a 33 percent increase in the risk of fatal assaults of law enforcement officers and a 62 percent increase in fatal non-handgun assaults.
[…]
“In the case of three-strikes laws, it appears that chronic offenders may be killing officers to evade capture and possible life imprisonment,” Crifasi says.

Surprise, surprise. Back when I was a peace officer, we predicted exactly that.

What about right to carry/concealed carry?

Previous research has examined the link between right-to-carry or concealed-carry gun laws on fatal assaults in the general population. The Bloomberg School study is believed to be the first to examine the effects of these laws on both fatal and non-fatal assaults of law enforcement officers and found no associations between the laws and either type of assault against officers.

Probably because lawful carriers are usually the type…

Oh. Wait.

“Many of those most likely to commit firearm violence are prohibited from possessing firearms and therefore unable to obtain a permit to carry a concealed handgun.”

Who’d a thunk it? People who go to all the trouble of background checks and licenses don’t attack cops.

And permits to purchase?

The number of officers who died in Missouri is too small to make any conclusions about fatal assaults.
[…]
[Connecticut’s] association was also not statistically significant due to the rarity of these deaths.

Again, the folks prone to shooting cops (see above re:three strikes) don’t bother with permits they couldn’t get anyway. Now, if they’d been honest and tried to correlate straw purchase prosecutions with officer attacks, they might’ve seen something. But probably “not statistically significant.”

For the anti-gun Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, even allowing for the spin, that’s an amazing admission. They can’t possibly leave it at that, right?

Right.

Although the rates of fatal assaults on law enforcement officers have declined over the past several decades, their homicide rates are consistently higher than that of the general population and higher compared with other public service occupations. Most of the fatal assaults against law enforcement officers are committed by firearm.

In fact, the civilian homicide rate for 2013 was 4.6 per 100K. The cops? 5.3 per 100K. As Reason notes, 3.3/100K if you exclude two accidental shootings. For 2014, the CDC says the overall homicide rate in the US was 5.19 per 100K. Frankly, any difference between civilian and LEO homicide rates is “not statistically significant.”

If Johns Hopkins was honest, that press release would have been titled,“Most changes in state policies DON’T impact fatal and non-fatal assaults of law enforcement officers.” But being Johns Hopkins, they had to lump in restrictions on honest folk to demonize gun owners by association.

Your tax dollars at work.