The NY Times thinks that Science can solve the “epidemic of gun violence.” I don’t think they’re going to like the results
Can New Gun Violence Research Find a Path Around the Political Stalemate?
Dr. Bindi J. Naik-Mathuria, a pediatric trauma surgeon at Texas Children’s Hospital who grew tired of seeing toddlers die of gunshot wounds, has a $684,000 federal grant to track every gun-related death and injury in Houston. The goal: identify and address “hot spots†the way public health researchers track and contain the coronavirus.
Dr. Garen J. Wintemute, an emergency room doctor and longtime firearm violence researcher in California, is supervising scientific research on whether community interventions in Detroit and Cleveland — including the greening of vacant spaces and the work of so-called violence interrupters like former gang members — can drive down gun-related deaths and injuries.
And Andrew R. Morral, a behavioral scientist at the RAND Corp., a research group, is using sophisticated modeling tools to estimate rates of gun ownership in every state, with detailed demographic information. The purpose, he said, is to search for patterns in firearm homicides and suicides — a first, basic step in research that could lead to reducing them.
The recent mass shootings in Atlanta and Boulder, Colorado, have once again left Democrats and Republicans in a stalemate over background checks for gun buyers and assault weapons bans. But public health experts say a new round of research could pave the way for gun policies that avoid partisan gridlock — and ultimately save thousands of lives.
The studies by Naik-Mathuria and the others are being paid for by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is once again funding research into gun violence after a nearly 25-year hiatus imposed by Congress. And while they might not reduce the number of massacres, mass shootings account for an extremely small percentage of the roughly 40,000 Americans who die each year from gun violence.
Let’s start with gun ownership: they’re going to find that most shootings are not by people who lawfully own a firearm. Suicide, yes. People could just off themselves a different way. Oh, and this sure seems like it is using privileged government information which is not supposed to be shared.
And then there are “hot spots.” They are really not going to like the results, which will show that the majority of shootings are occurring in areas heavily, if not fully, run by Democrats, and, as the FBI data shows, 50% of the murders are committed by Blacks. That’s not racist, that’s fact. What percent of the shootings are by non-whites? And in urban areas? Once they get that information, what are they going to do with it? It could be so inconvenient in their Narrative that it gets memory-holed. Maybe not by the researchers (though, since they are probably anti-gun, they might spike it), but, certainly by the gun grabbers.
“There’s at least five different gun violence problems in the country and mass shooting is one of them,†said Mr. Morral, who has a Ph.D. in psychology. “There’s also suicide, there’s urban gun violence which mostly affects minority young men, there’s family shootings and there’s police shootings. And they all have different risk factors, they all have very different motives and they often involve different firearms.â€
What will this research actually say? That police sometimes have to shoot Bad People? That people commit suicide? Nothing here is unusual.
Like cancer, there is no single cure for the epidemic of gun violence in the United States. If politicians want to make a difference, experts say, lawmakers need to quit the fruitless fights over whether liberals want to take people’s guns away and start financing — and listening to — research that could inform policies that could address the carnage.
The most interesting thing is that the article really doesn’t mention what any of those policies might be. It’s almost like they’re trying to hide their true intentions.
