﻿The definitions of “science” and “research” seem to be getting looser and looser these days,
and a new study from Johns Hopkins stretches those words even further. A press release
published by the Bloomberg School of Public Health - which should tell you
something right there - claimed to have found a link between concealed carry and
officer-involved shootings. The way they put it, if you just got rid of concealed carry - as in,
make it illegal, rather than allowing people to exercise their rights freely - we wouldn’t
have anymore police shootings for groups like BLM to get mad about.
Except their “study” was sponsored and paid for by two anti-gun groups,
one formally headed by Obama himself, and used data from
Everytown to guess in their crystal balls what a world without concealed carry might look like.
Which…isn’t exactly objective science. But then again, I’m not a biologist.
That's some dry, emotionless science.
Keep watching for the super sciency details.
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So this press release from Johns Hopkins claims that officer-involved shootings increased by
12.9 percent in 10 states between 2014 and 2020, and the vital link between those states is that
they had “relaxed restrictions” on concealed carry. How did they come to this conclusion?
oh boy, here we go
Well,
“The study, published online in the Journal of Urban Health,
examined the impact of changes to state laws for civilians carrying concealed firearms and,
using statistical modeling, estimated what would have happened if the laws had not changed…
For their analysis, the researchers identified 11 states that adopted
measures allowing individuals to carry concealed firearms without a permit from 2014 to 2020.
The researchers removed one state from their analysis—Oklahoma—because of poor model fit.”
So already we know they didn’t include all the Constitutional Carry states, because
there were more than 11, even in 2020, and they flat out didn’t include Oklahoma. They provide
no explanation other than that it didn’t fit their model - but they also don’t explain what
the model was, and don’t provide a link to the study. They do include the title of the study,
way at the end of the press release, and - well that’s interesting. The title shows it’s
not really a study at all, but an analysis of the Gun Violence Archive - the very same folks
who claimed there were 417 mass shootings in 2019, when the FBI recorded approximately….30.
Well that’s a pretty big discrepancy and clearly they're to be trusted.
The Gun Violence Archive is also backed by Slate, which media bias sites rate as
“very left,” with “emotionally loaded headlines” and “high variation in reliability.” The
Notre Dame Media Bias chart has Slate hovering somewhere just outside of “somewhat unreliable.”
Though it seems the GVA knows this, as any mention of Slate has now been scrubbed from their website.
Excellent purveyors of data.
Like any good junky, I knew how to hide the evidence
Furthermore, the researches compared those 10 constitutional carry states to 26 states
with stricter gun laws, then they turned every constitutional carry state into what they called a
fake, “synthetic” state, to run statistics about what MIGHT happen if a real state adopted
constitutional carry vs what would happen if a fake state didn't adopt constitutional carry.
Tell the truth, that's all. Just tell the truth. It would be much simpler, but much less magical.
They then pooled this data together and estimated - yes, ESTIMATED, not
FOUND - that 4 - so, less than half - of the constitutional carry
states had higher rates of officer involved shootings after passing constitutional carry.
The four states were led by Missouri,
which started constitutional carry in 2017 and these days is famous for…riots.
Clearly it's constitutional carry that caused all those police shootings.
Hail science, hail science, hail science!
The “study” also notes - and sourced from Everytown for Gun Safety - that
the bulk of those were civilians armed with guns. Not lawfully owned guns,
necessarily. Just that the victims were armed.
All in all - and this is buried in their study,
not in the press release itself - the researchers estimated, using population data,
that states with constitutional carry saw an average of 4 extra officer involved shootings
after the passage of constitutional carry and because of that, constitutional carry bad.
Yeah, that checks out.
so by their estimates, four out of the I believe 16 constitutional carry states at the time, showed
an extra 4 officer involved shootings,
Therefore, according to the lead researcher, “The trend of more states allowing civilians to carry
concealed guns without a permit may be influencing the perceived threat of danger faced by law
enforcement. This could contribute to higher rates of fatal and nonfatal officer-involved shootings.”
Which all sounds very definite.
The co-author also claims that constitutional carry doesn’t take criminal history into account,
which demonstrates a clear ignorance of federal law around actually buying a gun,
and also says that constitutional carry allows risky individuals to carry
because, after all, those risky individuals with criminal histories
follow the letter of the law in states that DO require permits.
SCIENCE.
The press release goes on to mention that, while they only studied 10 states,
there are 25 that currently allow permitless carry, and - interestingly enough - there’s
no actual systemic data collection for officer-involved shootings, which is
why they had to use the Gun Violence Archive, which gets the bulk of THEIR numbers from media,
police blotters, and, according to their executive director - Twitter.
That's right, ladies and gentlemen, this study that already used cherrypicked data decided to use
Twitter as one of their sources.
Hail science! Hail...science...
And the funny thing is, the executive director - Mark Bryant - claims that he and the Gun
Violence Archive are completely unbiased - despite writing columns with titles like,
“Stronger gun laws would save lives,” lobbying against 30 round magazines which,
he claims, aren’t covered in the Second Amendment, and speaking out against the NRA.
Finally, a good rule of thumb when examining any research study,
is also examining the money behind it. I mentioned in the intro that it was
sponsored by two anti-gun groups - that is, the New Venture Fund and the Joyce Foundation.
For starters, the Joyce Foundation also funds the Gun Violence Archive, so that’s a cute
little financial and ethical circle jerk. One of the foundation’s stated goals is to reduce gun
deaths by reducing access to guns, and they’ve funded over 100 grants for gun control measures
since 1993. In fact, one Chicago outlet called the foundation, “the anti-NRA.”
As for the New Venture Fund, they’re a nonprofit focusing on race, equity,
diversity, doling out grants to progressive left nonprofits. According to the New York Times,
the New Venture Fund is nothing more than a “dark money” organization that’s used by left leaning
foundations and donors to anonymously funnel money into political causes. It’s also associated with
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Some of the Fund’s pet projects have included abortion access,
free birth control, climate change, and…illegally funding elections in Lousiana. And the 2018
midterms. And the creation of fake news pages that were used to influence the 2020 election.
So we have a couple of biased groups funding a biased study that used biased sources also funded
by one of those biased groups that someone, somewhere, is likely going to point to as
proof we need more gun laws. Sounds about right for political “science.”
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