Overwhelming Majority Of Studies Find That Gun Control Policies Don’t Work

[smilesammich 10,727]

Just now, Bill & Katya said:

Thoughts and prayers?

 'opposed to'

read before you post.

[Dashinka 24,778]

Just now, smilesammich said:

 'opposed to'

read before you post.

I did read your post and the links you provided earlier.  Makes little sense, but as I have been told by many, biased sources are always questionable.

[smilesammich 10,727]

13 minutes ago, Bill & Katya said:

I did read your post and the links you provided earlier.  Makes little sense, but as I have been told by many, biased sources are always questionable.

you didn't read the post i was responding to or else you just post random quips with no basis. i'm sorry open secrets makes no sense to you.

[Dashinka 24,778]

18 minutes ago, smilesammich said:

you didn't read the post i was responding to or else you just post random quips with no basis. i'm sorry open secrets makes no sense to you.

Didn't say open secrets didn't make sense, I believe I said it was biased.  Many smart people have said to beware of bias sources.

[smilesammich 10,727]

4 minutes ago, Bill & Katya said:

Didn't say open secrets didn't make sense, I believe I said it was biased.  Many smart people have said to beware of bias sources.

Quote

Makes little sense, but as I have been told by many, biased sources are always questionable.

so what makes little sense to you?

[Dashinka 24,778]

Just now, smilesammich said:

so what makes little sense to you?

The site claims that the NRA is against the following:

 

The National Rifle Association goes to great lengths (and spends a huge sum of money) to defend the right to bear arms. It is opposed to virtually every form of gun regulation, including restrictions on owning assault weapons, retention of databases of gun purchases, background checks on purchasers at gun shows and changes in the registration of firearms.

 

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=d000000082

 

As the first response said, this is simply untrue, but that doesn't matter since they, the NRA, killed a bunch of kids/teachers in Florida as the MDL tell us.

[smilesammich 10,727]

5 minutes ago, Bill & Katya said:

The site claims that the NRA is against the following:

 

The National Rifle Association goes to great lengths (and spends a huge sum of money) to defend the right to bear arms. It is opposed to virtually every form of gun regulation, including restrictions on owning assault weapons, retention of databases of gun purchases, background checks on purchasers at gun shows and changes in the registration of firearms.

 

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=d000000082

 

As the first response said, this is simply untrue, but that doesn't matter since they, the NRA, killed a bunch of kids/teachers in Florida as the MDL tell us.

um, i'd love to see your proof that this statement is untrue. you guys seems to be omitting the two words "virtually every". all of those possible restrictions/registrations have been shot down here by nra supporters.

[Ban Hammer 13,519]

12 hours ago, Steeleballz said:

 

   In the links provided 2 posts after the one you made. 

yet nothing in those links support your claim of
 

Quote

I asked for an example of a lobby that influences every policy maker.

 

[Voice of Reason 10,298]

3 hours ago, smilesammich said:

not really, try reading the whole sentence comprehensively instead of picking out two words.

I read the whole page.  But when your first paragraph is comprised of mostly false statements, it’s hard to put much faith in the rest of it.

[bcking 3,157]

Back to the original topic of this thread (The RAND study) - For those who are actually interested, here is the full report from RAND - https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2088.html

 

The Daily Caller's article is so poorly written and so badly summarizes the actual study it is quite embarrassing. The author has absolutely no understanding of how these studies work. Let's look at just the first sentence of the article, which attempts to "summarize" the RAND study for readers:

 

"An analysis of thousands of gun control studies claims that just 63 of those studies found connections between more stringent gun control laws violent crime and suicide reductions."

 

This is pretty much all wrong.

 

- The analysis was not on 'thousands of gun control studies'. The authors searched several scientific databases for studies on a number of "gun control outcomes". The search strategy is always incredibly broad at the beginning, so that you don't miss studies. You then review each study's title and abstract only to see if it even closely resembles the topic you are actually studying. Then you decide based on title/abstract which ones should be reviewed fully for inclusion. 

- For example - For "suicide" as an outcome, their search strategy was "guns" (or a number of similar terms) AND "ownership" (or similar terms) AND suicide. Fairly broad and it would have included many articles that wouldn't necessarily be considered "gun control studies". It could include editorial pieces, opinion pieces, case reports where "gun" and "suicide" are both mentioned etc...

 

As for their inclusion/exclusion criteria (Taken from the actual study, link is above) -

 

Inclusion - "In all cases, a study was included if it met the following: any empirical study that demonstrated a relationship between a firearm-related public policy and the relevant outcome OR any empirical study that demonstrated a relationship between firearm ownership and access and a relevant outcome (including proxy measures for gun ownership)."

 

Exclusion - "Studies were excluded if they were case studies, systematic reviews, dissertations, commentaries or conceptual discussions, descriptive studies, studies in which key variables were assumed rather than measured (e.g., a region was assumed to have higher rates of gun ownership), studies that did not concern one of the eight outcomes we selected, studies that did not concern one of the 13 policies we selected (or gun ownership), or studies that duplicated the analyses and results of other included studies."

 

So a better statement would be that their study identified 63 gun control studies that empirically examined the relationship between 13 specific types of gun control policies and 8 specific outcomes. 

 

This is just the issues with one sentence from the Daily Caller article. If I were to break apart the entire article it would take pages. That person has no business writing articles about scientific research. He is clearly clueless.

 

Edited March 6, 2018 by bcking

[Dashinka 24,778]

6 minutes ago, IDWAF said:

I read the whole page.  But when your first paragraph is comprised of mostly false statements, it’s hard to put much faith in the rest of it.

You forget, this comes from Open Secrets, it must be true!

[smilesammich 10,727]

9 minutes ago, IDWAF said:

I read the whole page.  But when your first paragraph is comprised of mostly false statements, it’s hard to put much faith in the rest of it.

got any proof they're mostly false statements?

[Voice of Reason 10,298]

2 hours ago, Bill & Katya said:

The site claims that the NRA is against the following:

 

The National Rifle Association goes to great lengths (and spends a huge sum of money) to defend the right to bear arms. It is opposed to virtually every form of gun regulation, including restrictions on owning assault weapons, retention of databases of gun purchases, background checks on purchasers at gun shows and changes in the registration of firearms.

 

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=d000000082

 

As the first response said, this is simply untrue, but that doesn't matter since they, the NRA, killed a bunch of kids/teachers in Florida as the MDL tell us.

 

2 hours ago, smilesammich said:

um, i'd love to see your proof that this statement is untrue. you guys seems to be omitting the two words "virtually every". all of those possible restrictions/registrations have been shot down here by nra supporters.

The NRA doesn’t do anything to oppose assault weapon restrictions; the Firearms Owners Protection Act has been in place since 1986, and severely restricts such.

 

Databases are maintained of people who buy guns from a FFL and requires registration of them.

 

Background checks are required to be conducted by ALL FFL holders who sell guns, whether in a brick and mortar store, online, or at a gun show.  

 

These things have been in place for years.

 

The GCA68 was added to by the FOPA of 86, and again by the Brady Act in 93.  Here’s an excerpt from the Brady one:

 

Quote

It shall be unlawful for any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person— (1) is under indictment for, or has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year; (2) is a fugitive from justice; (3) is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802)); (4) has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution; (5) who, being an alien— (A) is illegally or unlawfully in the United States; or (B) except as provided in subsection (y)(2), has been admitted to the United States under a nonimmigrant visa (as that term is defined in section 101(a)(26) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101 (a)(26))); (6) who [2] has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions; (7) who, having been a citizen of the United States, has renounced his citizenship; (8) is subject to a court order that restrains such person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner of such person or child of such intimate partner or person, or engaging in other conduct that would place an intimate partner in reasonable fear of bodily injury to the partner or child, except that this paragraph shall only apply to a court order that— (A) was issued after a hearing of which such person received actual notice, and at which such person had the opportunity to participate; and (B) (i) includes a finding that such person represents a credible threat to the physical safety of such intimate partner or child; or (ii) by its terms explicitly prohibits the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against such intimate partner or child that would reasonably be expected to cause bodily injury; or (9) has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.

 

 

[smilesammich 10,727]

1 minute ago, IDWAF said:

 

The NRA doesn’t do anything to oppose assault weapon restrictions; the Firearms Owners Protection Act has been in place since 1986, and severely restricts such.

 

Databases are maintained of people who buy guns from a FFL and requires registration of them.

 

Background checks are required to be conducted by ALL FFL holders who sell guns, whether in a brick and mortar store, online, or at a gun show.  

 

These things have been in place for years.

 

The GCA68 was added to by the FOPA of 86, and again by the Brady Act in 93.  Here’s an excerpt from the Brady one:

 

 

 

i have never read of the nra supporting any additional gun control measures. currently. from what i hear, the nra used to be a very different organization than they are today.

[bcking 3,157]

One like one of their summary passages (https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/essays/what-science-tells-us-about-the-effects-of-gun-policies.html)

----------------------------

Does Weak Evidence Mean Gun Laws Don’t Work?

With a few exceptions, there is a surprisingly limited base of rigorous scientific evidence concerning the effects of many commonly discussed gun policies. This does not mean that these policies are ineffective; they might well be quite effective. Instead, it partly reflects shortcomings in the contributions that science has made to policy debates. It also partly reflects the policies we chose to investigate, all of which have been implemented in some U.S. states and so have proven to be politically and legally feasible (at least in some jurisdictions). This decision meant that none of the policies we examined would dramatically increase or decrease the stock of guns or gun ownership rates in ways that would produce more readily detectable effects on public safety, health, and industry outcomes.

Furthermore, the United States has a large stock of privately owned guns in circulation—estimated by Philip Cook and Kristin Goss of Duke University in 2014 to be somewhere between 200 million and 300 million firearms. Laws designed to change who may buy new weapons, which weapons they may buy, or where and how they can use guns will predictably have only a small effect on, for example, homicide rates or participation in sport shooting, which are affected much more by the existing stock of firearms. But although small effects are especially difficult to identify with the statistical methods common in this field, they may be important. Even a 1-percent reduction in homicides corresponds to more than 1,500 fewer deaths over a decade.

By highlighting where scientific evidence is accumulating, we hope to build consensus around a shared set of facts that have been established through a transparent, nonpartisan, and impartial review process. In so doing, we also mean to highlight areas where more and better information could make important contributions to establishing fair and effective gun policies.

------------------------

The point of a systematic review is to identify what is currently known in the scientific literature, and to establish topics and questions that warrant further research. A number of policy/outcome dyads had ZERO published studies on the topic, and many of the ones that did have studies had 1 or 2. The best conclusions you can draw from this massive study is that we need to more data to actually determine which policies impact each outcome and to what extent. The dyads with the strongest evidence were:

 

1. Child-access prevention laws decrease self-injuries and unintentional injuries and death (support evidence)

2. Background checks decrease suicides and firearm homicides (moderate evidence)

3. Prohibitions associated with mental illness decrease violent care (moderate evidence)

4. Stand your ground laws increase homicides (moderate evidence)

 

Those would be a great place to start - Further studies showing consistent results with what is already published would help increase the quality of evidence. Many of the other dyads just need more studies in general to make any assessment of impact (if any).