If there is no other video on Gun Control you take the time to watch, watch this one from Reason.
Why?
Because it took a looks at a study that studied nearly 28,000 studies on gun control and determined… it’s bunk. The laws trying to control firearms are effectively useless. Why? ‘Gun Violence’ in its nebulous definition is an overall statistically rare event. It is also a complex event. Various motives, methodologies, means, and desired outcomes are fall under this broad category and that makes trying to build simple policies to complex issues nearly impossible.
Out of the 28,000 studies only 123, that’s .4% had data methodology that RAND found solid enough to even look at as being useful. In that sampling they didn’t even find the proper amount of random error for or against gun control policies (5%).
What do I mean? I mean that in deep and meaningful data analysis we should be seeing 5% data correlation both for and against gun control that is absolutely randomly generated nonsense. They didn’t.
What’s more intriguing is the near total lack of negative results being shown as significant in the data. The results were worse in the suspect studies.
The conclusion is obvious, data suggesting Gun Control is harmful is willfully suppressed by the researchers because we should at least be getting about a 5% random amount that says it is harmful. We aren’t there was one, one result that suggested harm. Based on the data there should have been roughly 36 to hit the statistical average for random results. There was only one.
Now the news isn’t all pro-gun glory.
Why?
There is no conclusive evidence saying firearms are particularly beneficial either. Why? For the same reasons. Lack of data, too few trackable incidents with definable variables, sheer amount of other random factors in the trackable incidents.
What do I mean?
Say you have two home invasions, one where the home owner is harmed or killed and the other where the home owner drives off or kills the intruder. Both home owners are gun owners. That is one negative result and one positive result. But the positive result came from a prepared and practiced gun owner who happened to be carrying their firearm like they usually do, while the negative result came from someone who just bought the gun and locked it in a gun safe.
Now take and change any of the variables around, we can drastically change how the positive or negative results were arrived at without actually changing the result from one good and one bad. There’s the problem. All the data on how the result was achieved is what matters. That vast series of variables, decisions, and successful and unsuccessful actions between the two opposing parties in the fight are what achieved the result. The gun was a single inanimate variable. There are plenty of scenario variations where the gun played no part, but the study would conclude either gun owner plus positive result or gun owner plus negative result in its crude use of the data.
So whether or not Gun Control is beneficial is not scientifically supported in any way. All of our available data is neutral or majority inconclusive/insufficient on the subject. So in the absence of strong substantiated correlations and causations on the subject, Gun Control becomes entirely moralistic in arguments for its implementation while the same people disregard its real world negative societal impacts. The argument becomes a debate based upon someone’s ascribed rhetoric, not on science. How they personally view weapons and their proper use shape their policy position, not data. The data we have is scarce and largely inconclusive.
So in the absence of being able to say we can move the needle when the odds are against it, do we try gun control and accept the negative effects as moralistically justified? I personally say no. We don’t. We do not compromise and make criminals out of people on the off chance we might catch and prevent a small indeterminant portion of negative outcomes. To hold such a purview you must either be ignorant of or disregard positive outcomes of pro-gun policy and/or be ignorant of or disregard the negative outcomes of gun control.
Guns alone don’t make us safer. Guns alone don’t make our lives more dangerous. They’re just guns, inanimate metal, plastic, and wood. The presence of an oven doesn’t make you more or less safe, the existence one in ones home, doesn’t tilt the needle one way or another. An oven’s safe use and routine maintenance will very likely prevent a fire or other dangerous event while its careless use and neglect increases the likelihood of a negative event. But the oven itself is just a thing. More data needed.
TL;DR or don’t have the time to watch,
Out of nearly 28,000 studies on Gun Control, well over 99.6% of them were built on bullshit data.
Of the 123 studies that had data methodologies solid enough to pay attention to, no positive or negative efficacy could be found from gun control policies. Policies didn’t do anything. Lack of policy existence didn’t do anything either. Anyone saying otherwise is citing one of the flawed and rejected studies. Politicians and gun control advocates were most likely to cite the most flawed studies in their rhetoric.
Additionally, looking at the data, there was a lack of negative results that should have been there, which suggests studies suppressed negative results to reach the conclusions they wanted.
Politicians and politically motivated researchers lying? Imagine that.
