{"id":38474,"date":"2013-09-19T12:53:05","date_gmt":"2013-09-19T17:53:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=38474"},"modified":"2014-12-12T14:52:53","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T20:52:53","slug":"junk-science-junk-journalism-platinum-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=38474","title":{"rendered":"Junk Science, Junk Journalism, Platinum Funding"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0The MinnPost<\/em> – a non-profit-run institutional blog established the the intention to get a jump on the next wave of institutional journalism – gets a whole bunch of money from the Joyce Foundation<\/a>.\u00a0 Joyce also bankrolls Minnesota’s “largest” gun grabber group<\/a>, “Protect Minnesota”, and Michael Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns”, <\/a>as well as paying academics to deliver the conclusions they want<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Is that financial relationship related to the fact that the MinnPost <\/em>has, whenever the subject of guns and the Second Amendment is at hand, turned itself into a risible propaganda organ for the gun-grabbing extreme left?<\/p>\n

From Eric Black’s recycling long-obscure legal theories <\/a>about the origins of the Second Amendment to Doug Grow’s naked puff-piecemongering in support of Heather Martens’ checkbook advocacy <\/a>group, the MinnPost <\/em>would seem to be working hard to earn the $50K or so they got from Joyce.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The latest?\u00a0 Susan Perry, a “Health” reporter who has pulled her weight <\/a>in the past on theMinnPost’santi-gun beat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Confederate soldiers! With guns! Defending slavery! This is what the MinnPost think you, the law-abiding gun owner, genuflect to.<\/p><\/div>\n

Yesterday came this piece, entitled…<\/a><\/p>\n

Well, no.\u00a0 We’ll get to the title in a bit.\u00a0 But I’m going to pull a quote from the end of the story first.\u00a0 I’ll add emphasis for weasel words and a particularly dim strawman:<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough correlation is not synonymous with causation,\u201d write Bangalore and Messerli, \u201cit seems conceivable<\/strong> that abundant gun availability facilitates firearm-related deaths. Conversely, high crime rates may<\/strong> instigate widespread anxiety and fear, thereby motivating people to arm themselves and give rise to increased gun ownership, which, in turn, increases availability. The resulting vicious cycle could, bit-by-bit<\/strong>, lead to the polarized status<\/strong> that is now the case with the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRegardless of exact cause and effect, however,\u201d they add, \u201cthe current study debunks the widely quoted hypothesis purporting to show that countries with the higher gun ownership are safer than those with low gun ownership<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So – seventeen paragraphs into a nineteen paragraph article, we hear that the reasearchers aren’t actually drawing conclusions (in attacking a “widely quoted hypothesis” that nobody quotes at all).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Which is a bit of a letdown for a story whose headline…:<\/p>\n

“Idea that ‘guns make a nation safer’ is debunked in study”<\/strong><\/p>\n

…fairly screams “We’ve got a big big big conclusion here!”<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Rhetorical Slalom Between The Strawmen<\/strong>:\u00a0I’ll throw this out to the shooters in the audience.\u00a0 Was this premise…:<\/p>\n

The idea that \u201cguns make a nation safer\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…as new to you as it was to me?<\/p>\n

Anyway – the “premise”…<\/p>\n

…is not true, according to a study published today in The American Journal of Medicine.<\/p>\n

In fact, the study found just the opposite: Countries with a low rate of gun ownership have significantly fewer gun-related deaths than those with a high rate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Right.\u00a0 In the same way that areas where couples marry have higher divorce rates than areas where they just shack up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The study – and Perry’s piece – are honest, in a very dishonest sense; they scrupulously point out that gun <\/strong>death rates are,\u00a0mirabile dictu, <\/em>lower in places fewer guns.\u00a0 But the “study” is equally scrupulous in avoiding apples to apples comparisons, or correlating their conclusions to any data that doesn’t fit inside their razor-thin premise…<\/p>\n

…which is to attack a case (“Nations with few guns have higher gun crime rates!”) that, for the life of me, I’ve never heard a single credible person make – about nations, anyway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cherry-Picked<\/strong>:\u00a0 Perry notes that…<\/p>\n

The U.S. leads in gun ownership \u2014 and gun deaths<\/p>\n

The analysis found that the United States has far and away the highest rate of gun ownership, with 88.8 privately owned guns for every 100 people (\u201calmost as many guns as it has people,\u201d Bangalore and Messerli note)…The United States also has the highest firearm-related death rate: 10.2 deaths per 100,000 residents…At the other end of the spectrum are Japan and the Netherlands. Japan has a gun-ownership rate of 0.6 guns per 100 people, while the Netherlands\u2019 rate is 3.9.<\/p>\n

Those two countries also had two of the lowest death-by-gun rates: 0.06\/100,000 for Japan and 0.46\/100,000 for the Netherlands.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But neither Japan nor the Netherlands is fighting a “Drug War”; neither nation has policies that have turned their inner cities into shooting galleries, controlled by people who have nothing to lose by resorting to violence to protect their markets, using entry-level employees who grow up in a culture that glorifies violence and ignores consequences.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Neither Japan nor the Netherlands has a major geographical region dominated by a culture that was practicing duelling and honor-killing and treating violence as a way of life long before there was a United States – a culture whose crime rates are, at worst, on par with the worst of the inner cities<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Indeed, both Japan and the Netherlands are extremely homogenous countries; homogenous societies tend to be pretty placid – until they have to flirt with heterodoxy (ask the Koreans and the Ainu in Japan, or the Indonesians in the Netherlands).<\/p>\n

Indeed, Perry’s article points – unwittingly – at the truth:<\/p>\n

The only country that was a bit of an outlier was South Africa. It had a relatively low gun ownership rate of 12.5\/100, but a high (the second-highest, just below the U.S.) gun-related death rate of 9.41\/100,000.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And of the countries on the list, South Africa is the only one with a significantly – indeed, pivotally – heterodox society.\u00a0 One with massive urban dysfunction, to boot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Which might lead the rational observer to conclude – or see a correlation, anyway – that guns don’t kill people; societal dysfunction does.<\/p>\n

Math Is Hard, And Psychiatry Is Harder<\/strong>:\u00a0 But let’s look at the “gun death” numbers Perry actually does deign to report – the relative gun murder rates in the US, the Netherlands, Japan and…:<\/p>\n

[…the]\u00a0United Kingdom also ranked low on both lists. It has a gun-ownership rate of 6.2 per 100 people and a gun-death rate of 0.25 per 100,000.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But fully half <\/em>of the US “gun death rate” is suicides.\u00a0 And the suicide rate in the US (12\/100,000)\u00a0is half of Japans (21.7\/100,000), and equal to the UK’s (11.8), and both the US and UK are 50% higher \u00a0than the Dutch, at 8.8\/100,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We’re not sure if the “study” concluded that guns and depressed, mentally-ill or chemically-addled people don’t mix, or not.\u00a0 Perhaps the Joyce Foundation will write a grant to study that?<\/p>\n

No?<\/p>\n

Is This A Strawman, Or A Begged Question?: <\/strong>Perry’s piece continues:<\/p>\n

Their conclusion: \u201cThere was no significant correlation between guns per capita per country and crime rate, arguing against the notion of more guns translating into less crime.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is the third time in Perry’s piece the “notion” that anyone is comparing national gun rates to crime – at least in nations with working legal and law-enforcement systems, which is what the “study” is limited to.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And for the record, I’m at a complete loss as to a single credible pro-gun advocate who’s made that claim – between nations.\u00a0 The variables – societal heterodoxy, cultural conditions, criminal justice issues, different judicial systems – are far too complex to make such a case in an intelligent way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But when you start eliminating variables?\u00a0\u00a0 By just considering different firearms ownership rates in the US?\u00a0 It’s not rocket surgery – even I can do it<\/a>, even though I don’t have to because John Lott et al already did.\u00a0 At worst, in the United States<\/em>, places with higher legal gun ownership are <\/em>very generally safer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And that’s just a correlation.\u00a0 I’m not ascribing causation.<\/p>\n

And unlike Susan Perry, I’ll admit that without any obfuscation.<\/p>\n

So Let’s Summarize<\/strong>:\u00a0 Susan Perry’s article reports on a non-comprehensive study\u00a0whose own authors admit it’s a non-“debunk”-ment,\u00a0that reached no\u00a0meaningful conclusion about a premise that nobody advanced.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Follow The Money<\/strong>:\u00a0 We mentioned the Joyce Foundation – which bankrolls both the MinnPost <\/em>and the state’s “largest” gun control group.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One might ask – is it possible to expect honest “journalism” from a publication that has a financial interest in reporting an organization’s slant on the news?\u00a0<\/p>\n

I’ll ask – because as Perry’s article notes in its heading, in addition to the Joycers…<\/p>\n

This content is made possible by the generous sponsorship support of UCare.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So not only is the MinnPost <\/em>an organ of an anti-gun extremist group, it’s also on the payroll of…<\/p>\n

…the State of Minnesota.<\/p>\n

Edward R. Murrow would vomit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0The MinnPost – a non-profit-run institutional blog established the the intention to get a jump on the next wave of institutional journalism – gets a whole bunch of money from the Joyce Foundation.\u00a0 Joyce also bankrolls Minnesota’s “largest” gun grabber group, “Protect Minnesota”, and Michael Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns”, as well as paying academics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[326,130,263,49,22],"tags":[272],"class_list":["post-38474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-alt-media","category-tc-media-bias","category-narrative-for-sale","category-science","category-victim-disarmament","tag-joyce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38474"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49852,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38474\/revisions\/49852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}