There's a new gun ownership study published in the journal Injury Prevention by researchers Bindu Kalesan, Marcos Villarreal, and Katherine Keyes of Columbia University (in NYC), and Sandro Galea of Boston University (in Boston), all from the School of Public Health at their respective universities. They did a survey to find out how many Americans own guns, and maybe most importantly, why they own guns. They see this as a public health issue, or at least some are trying to get guns into that context, so they do an end around on the Constitution. It's why Congress has, specifically by law, prohibited the CDC from doing research on guns as related to public health.
The first thing that struck me was they spent time doing research on why Americans would exercise one of their Constitutionally guaranteed rights. You don't see many studies researching how many Americans speak aloud their minds, or why they would do so, or research trying to find out how many Americans worship, or why in the world they would do such a thing. There aren't a lot of studies on how many Americans don't want the police barging into their homes in the middle of the night and searching for whatever they like, much less studies on why people don't want that.
But we've got a new gun study, and it attempts to answer why. And even though in the same paragraph they conclude why, they acknowledge they can't really reach a conclusion, but that doesn't matter with regard to their observations, it's their observations that are more important.
Here's the piece on the report from the Business Insider: Here's where you're most likely to own a gun
And the PDF of the actual study, the title of which will give you a clue here: Gun ownership and social gun culture
The number of gun owners gets reported (in the above pieces and elsewhere) as "1-in-3" or "Nearly one in every three Americans owns a gun," because that sound like more than 33 percent, and certainly more than "nearly 33 out of a 100." It's an old journalism trick. Gotta reduce that denominator as low as you can.
The authors of the paper wrote that they found a "strong association between social gun culture and gun ownership."
From the research paper: "We showed that exposure to social gun culture was robustly associated with gun ownership and to our knowledge, this is the first study to establish empirical evidence of the relation between social gun culture and gun ownership."
(Social gun culture was reporting 'yes' to at least one of the four questions: ‘social circle thinks less of them if they did not own a gun’, ‘family thinks less of them not owning a gun’, ‘social life with family involves guns’ and ‘social life with friends involves guns’. Reference was reporting ‘no’ to all four questions.)
So, they found empirical evidence of a relationship between a particular social culture, and the one thing that that culture was formed around. These researchers are geniuses. That's like finding a strong association between social motorcycle culture and motorcycle ownership. Or between social surfing culture and surfboard ownership. Next they'll find evidence of the relationship between social church groups and religion. It's something a lot of people have suspected for a long time, but maybe we can finally get some empirical evidence to back it up. <snort>
But here's the kicker, from their final paragraph: "Therefore, we cannot infer whether exposure to social gun culture predisposes one to gun ownership or whether the latter increases likelihood of participation in the former. However, this is not particularly germane to the observations being drawn here, suggesting simply that prudent gun policies that aim to reduce gun ownership and gun-related injury might need to actively consider the prevailing social gun culture in the USA. Future studies that aim to inform our understanding of gun ownership may fruitfully explore the determinants of a participation in social gun culture in the USA"
So right up front they admit they cannot determine a cause and effect, yet that doesn't even matter, not germane, because to them, since gun ownership is prevalent in those who participate in social gun culture, it's the participation in that culture that must be closely scrutinized (a.k.a., the freedom to peaceably assemble, another one of the Constitutionally guaranteed rights).
Incidentally, there are only 12 states where gun ownership is less than 25 percent, and 8 that's less than 20 percent (none of the 8 have much hunting in that state, either). 29 states are above 30 percent, most of them are significantly above that. States with low social gun culture also happens to be the states with the lowest amount of hunting, and highest with in the states where hunting is prevalent, If you go hunting with someone else (and you should never go hunting alone), there's your 'yes' answer to social gun culture.
People in the South and the mountain states, where hunting is common and everyone owns a gun, people aren't likely to thunk twice about answering 'yes' to the question of do you own a gun, but a younger people or females in the northeast are likely to answer 'no' even if they go. Gallup proved that 2 years ago in 2 separate polls conducted among the same set of respondents, where direct questions were greatly undercounted and indirect questions about the same subject gave far more accurate results. Gallup showed that it was closer to two thirds of Americans who own guns, and slightly above that when figuring guns per household.
But with this study, the media will report nearly 1-in-3 Americans own a gun, and that the evilness of the social gun culture, or simply "gun culture" is responsible. You have to demonize your enemy before you can justify fighting them, and using "gun culture" as a pejorative is certainly one way to do that.
The first thing that struck me was they spent time doing research on why Americans would exercise one of their Constitutionally guaranteed rights. You don't see many studies researching how many Americans speak aloud their minds, or why they would do so, or research trying to find out how many Americans worship, or why in the world they would do such a thing. There aren't a lot of studies on how many Americans don't want the police barging into their homes in the middle of the night and searching for whatever they like, much less studies on why people don't want that.
But we've got a new gun study, and it attempts to answer why. And even though in the same paragraph they conclude why, they acknowledge they can't really reach a conclusion, but that doesn't matter with regard to their observations, it's their observations that are more important.
Here's the piece on the report from the Business Insider: Here's where you're most likely to own a gun
And the PDF of the actual study, the title of which will give you a clue here: Gun ownership and social gun culture
The number of gun owners gets reported (in the above pieces and elsewhere) as "1-in-3" or "Nearly one in every three Americans owns a gun," because that sound like more than 33 percent, and certainly more than "nearly 33 out of a 100." It's an old journalism trick. Gotta reduce that denominator as low as you can.
The authors of the paper wrote that they found a "strong association between social gun culture and gun ownership."
From the research paper: "We showed that exposure to social gun culture was robustly associated with gun ownership and to our knowledge, this is the first study to establish empirical evidence of the relation between social gun culture and gun ownership."
(Social gun culture was reporting 'yes' to at least one of the four questions: ‘social circle thinks less of them if they did not own a gun’, ‘family thinks less of them not owning a gun’, ‘social life with family involves guns’ and ‘social life with friends involves guns’. Reference was reporting ‘no’ to all four questions.)
So, they found empirical evidence of a relationship between a particular social culture, and the one thing that that culture was formed around. These researchers are geniuses. That's like finding a strong association between social motorcycle culture and motorcycle ownership. Or between social surfing culture and surfboard ownership. Next they'll find evidence of the relationship between social church groups and religion. It's something a lot of people have suspected for a long time, but maybe we can finally get some empirical evidence to back it up. <snort>
But here's the kicker, from their final paragraph: "Therefore, we cannot infer whether exposure to social gun culture predisposes one to gun ownership or whether the latter increases likelihood of participation in the former. However, this is not particularly germane to the observations being drawn here, suggesting simply that prudent gun policies that aim to reduce gun ownership and gun-related injury might need to actively consider the prevailing social gun culture in the USA. Future studies that aim to inform our understanding of gun ownership may fruitfully explore the determinants of a participation in social gun culture in the USA"
So right up front they admit they cannot determine a cause and effect, yet that doesn't even matter, not germane, because to them, since gun ownership is prevalent in those who participate in social gun culture, it's the participation in that culture that must be closely scrutinized (a.k.a., the freedom to peaceably assemble, another one of the Constitutionally guaranteed rights).
Incidentally, there are only 12 states where gun ownership is less than 25 percent, and 8 that's less than 20 percent (none of the 8 have much hunting in that state, either). 29 states are above 30 percent, most of them are significantly above that. States with low social gun culture also happens to be the states with the lowest amount of hunting, and highest with in the states where hunting is prevalent, If you go hunting with someone else (and you should never go hunting alone), there's your 'yes' answer to social gun culture.
People in the South and the mountain states, where hunting is common and everyone owns a gun, people aren't likely to thunk twice about answering 'yes' to the question of do you own a gun, but a younger people or females in the northeast are likely to answer 'no' even if they go. Gallup proved that 2 years ago in 2 separate polls conducted among the same set of respondents, where direct questions were greatly undercounted and indirect questions about the same subject gave far more accurate results. Gallup showed that it was closer to two thirds of Americans who own guns, and slightly above that when figuring guns per household.
But with this study, the media will report nearly 1-in-3 Americans own a gun, and that the evilness of the social gun culture, or simply "gun culture" is responsible. You have to demonize your enemy before you can justify fighting them, and using "gun culture" as a pejorative is certainly one way to do that.
