Research Told Me Gun Control Was Not The Answer

[mauserme]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-used-to-think-gun-control-was-the-answer-my-research-told-me-otherwise/2017/10/03/d33edca6-a851-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html?utm_term=.facd3c1520bc

Opinions

I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise.

By Leah Libresco October 3 at 3:02 PM

Leah Libresco is a statistician and former newswriter at FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism site. She is the author of “Arriving at Amen.”

Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.

Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.

…

As my co-workers and I kept looking at the data, it seemed less and less clear that one broad gun-control restriction could make a big difference. Two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States every year are suicides. Almost no proposed restriction would make it meaningfully harder for people with guns on hand to use them. I couldn't even answer my most desperate question: If I had a friend who had guns in his home and a history of suicide attempts, was there anything I could do that would help?

However, the next-largest set of gun deaths - 1 in 5 - were young men aged 15 to 34, killed in homicides. These men were most likely to die at the hands of other young men, often related to gang loyalties or other street violence. And the last notable group of similar deaths was the 1,700 women murdered per year, usually as the result of domestic violence. Far more people were killed in these ways than in mass-shooting incidents, but few of the popularly floated policies were tailored to serve them.

By the time we published our project, I didn’t believe in many of the interventions I’d heard politicians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don’t want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can’t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them. Policies that often seem as if they were drafted by people who have encountered guns only as a figure in a briefing book or an image on the news.

…

Even the most data-driven practices, such as New Orleans’ plan to identify gang members for intervention based on previous arrests and weapons seizures, wind up more personal than most policies floated. The young men at risk can be identified by an algorithm, but they have to be disarmed one by one, personally — not en masse as though they were all interchangeable. A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible. We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.

 

[TRJ]

The comments from the rabid under this story on the WaPo site are, well, more of the same you expect from them. You'd think that someone on their side would be able too turn others onto facts. Not possible.

[jrc905]

 

The comments from the rabid under this story on the WaPo site are, well, more of the same you expect from them. You'd think that someone on their side would be able too turn others onto facts. Not possible.

We all know "The Feelz" trump the facts.Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

[solareclipse2]

The comments were just absolutely terrible.

[gregivq]

There's too much delusion in their comments section. Ban all guns...buahahaha!

[TRJ]

There's too much delusion in their comments section. Ban all guns...buahahaha!

They really don't comprehend what collecting a mountain of 400+ million guns and billions of bullets means. It's like trying to empty a beach of it's sand one grain at a time with chopsticks.

 

then there the folks suggesting mandatory insurance premium hikes for Homeowners insurance if there's guns in the house. Mandatory vehicle insurance hikes for people with CCL. Anything to make it difficult and expensive and inconvenient. SMH

[BobPistol]

"If I had a friend who had guns in his home and a history of suicide attempts, was there anything I could do that would help?"

 

 

Yes.

 

Be a friend. Talk to them. See why they're attempting to kill themselves.

[gregivq]

"If I had a friend who had guns in his home and a history of suicide attempts, was there anything I could do that would help?"

 

 

Yes.

 

Be a friend. Talk to them. See why they're attempting to kill themselves.

You're reading this wrong. By asking if there's anything they could do they're actually demanding their local government to do something.