Anti-Gun Propaganda

[LorDiego01]

WOW!! JUST WOW!!!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American states where more people own guns have higher murder rates, including murders of children, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health reported on Thursday.
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The study, certain to provoke arguments in a country where gun ownership is an important political issue, found that about one in three U.S. households reported firearm ownership.

"Our findings suggest that in the United States, household firearms may be an important source of guns used to kill children, women and men, both on the street and in their homes," said Matthew Miller, assistant professor of health policy and injury prevention, who led the study.

His team used data from a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey of 200,000 people in all 50 states.

After dividing the states into four groups based on how many households had guns, the researchers found the states in the highest quartile of firearm ownership had overall homicide rates 60 percent higher than states in the lowest quartile.

In states with the most guns, firearm homicide rates were 114 percent higher, the researchers reported in the February issue of Social Science and Medicine.

More than 200 million guns are privately owned in the United States, according to the Justice Department.

In September, the
FBI released 2005 figures showing violent crime had risen 2.3 percent nationally -- the first increase in four years.

[LorDiego01]

How can this utter BS be printed??

And how come NY, CA and Camden NJ are not the safest areas in the country???

I feel like grabbing a pitchfork and a torch and going over to wherever this study was made.

[ChamberedRound]

His team used data from a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey of 200,000 people in all 50 states.

Gee, I didn't realize the CDC specialized in gathering firearms statistics. I wonder where they got information about firearms from? Hmmm, I don't know, maybe the idiotic doctors out there who turn their practices into disguised polling centers? Glad to know my federal tax dollars are being misused by the CDC for this purpose.

To everyone out there, DON'T ANSWER the retarded "Do you have any weapons in your home?" question the next time you take your child to the doctor, because this is where the CDC is most likely getting their data from.

For those interested, I started a thread awhile back on this topic:
http://www.pafoa.org/forum/general-2...t-weapons.html

In addition, most anti-gun polls that gather statistics still count self-defense killings as a homicide, even though they're legally justifiable. IMHO, a self-defense killing isn't a homicide, it's a patriotic citizen exercising his right to protect his family.

[LorDiego01]

Good point CR, also..

we all know that when they refer to "deaths of children", they mean children as a legal term, which is 21 years of age and under. Gangbangers and whatnot are considered "children" by these people.

[LorDiego01]

OH.. I forgot the link

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/guns_murders_dc

[looperrun]

Harvard School of Public Health???? If they are associated with Harvard, they are a bunch of leftist libs who would have no problem fixing the results. Funny, seems all other studies show just the opposite.

[GunLawyer001]

Most car accident deaths involve vehicles with seat belts and brakes.

Does that have any significance? No, but it's statistically provable.

If you lived in a State with a high murder rate, wouldn't that make you more likely to purchase a firearm to protect yourself? Of course. There IS a cause and effect relationship, but it's not "gun ownership cause crime", it's "crime causes gun purchases".

I'd bet that the same areas with high murder rates also have high levels of arson, theft, burglaries, prostitution, drug use and drug sales. Do they argue that gun ownership causes prostitution, just because there's a strong statistical correlation?

Furthermore, there are very high per capita levels of gun ownership in the midwest, and in Alaska, yet crime is relatively rare in those areas. Do they deal with that phenomenon in their study?

It really is pure propaganda, paid for with tax dollars.

[wewo]

I got it, lets ban the sale of hypodermic needles in areas with high intravenous drug usage, that will stem drug use even if it means a few people with diabetes die as a result (sarcasm should be obvious).

[whoshisface]

Gee, I didn't realize the CDC specialized in gathering firearms statistics. I wonder where they got information about firearms from? Hmmm, I don't know, maybe the idiotic doctors out there who turn their practices into disguised polling centers? Glad to know my federal tax dollars are being misused by the CDC for this purpose.

To everyone out there, DON'T ANSWER the retarded "Do you have any weapons in your home?" question the next time you take your child to the doctor, because this is where the CDC is most likely getting their data from.

For those interested, I started a thread awhile back on this topic:
http://www.pafoa.org/forum/general-2...t-weapons.html

In addition, most anti-gun polls that gather statistics still count self-defense killings as a homicide, even though they're legally justifiable. IMHO, a self-defense killing isn't a homicide, it's a patriotic citizen exercising his right to protect his family.

I'm in pharmaceutical marketing research, been doing it for 8+ years. I specifically create interfaces for statistical models and create my own stat models along with other data analysis. You're perfectly fine answering that question, while I can't say that some doctors couldn't report that information in aggregate, they most certainly can not turn that information over to anyone with your personal identifiable information. Personally I say that everyone should say it 100 times to their doctor. That way if anyone does get the information the stats might actually end up being correct. My guess is that nearly everyone answers no even if they have a gun, which would indicate why the numbers aren't accurate, patients are lying.

The CDC supplies reasons for death. That is probably the only bit of information this study obtained from the CDC. Also they probably only included handguns and not firearms. Because if you did nearly every Midwestern state would throw the whole theory on its head. Ha Vermont alone should've killed the results. There sample sizes were without a doubt too small to be representative of the states. It is very easy to make stats lie!

[whoshisface]

Most car accident deaths involve vehicles with seat belts and brakes.

Does that have any significance? No, but it's statistically provable.

If you lived in a State with a high murder rate, wouldn't that make you more likely to purchase a firearm to protect yourself? Of course. There IS a cause and effect relationship, but it's not "gun ownership cause crime", it's "crime causes gun purchases".

I'd bet that the same areas with high murder rates also have high levels of arson, theft, burglaries, prostitution, drug use and drug sales. Do they argue that gun ownership causes prostitution, just because there's a strong statistical correlation?

Furthermore, there are very high per capita levels of gun ownership in the midwest, and in Alaska, yet crime is relatively rare in those areas. Do they deal with that phenomenon in their study?

It really is pure propaganda, paid for with tax dollars.

Looking at the these simple data there is no way to draw a qualitative conclusion of causation. IE..There IS a cause and effect relationship, but it's not "gun ownership cause crime", it's "crime causes gun purchases". It could be none of the above. It could just be a state where guns are a way of society and the area could still have low crime.

You cannot empirically prove motivation with these data. You could devise a study to determine motivation, however, typically these types of studies don't ask the questions in a non-bias way but rather in such a way as to influence the answer, and even worse those data might be analyzed in such a way as to infer something other than the question asked. IE... Do you like your stove? 60% say no, then the write up is "60% of Americans hate baking". That's a wrong conclusion 60% of those surveyed say "they do not like their stoves" Just because I dislike my stove doesn't mean I don't like to bake 24/7/365 or that I don't actually bake 24/7/365. IF you wanted to know if people hated to bake you'd ask the question to you hate to bake? Unfortunately both asking the right questions and reporting the results as they were collected seems to elude most researchers and reporters!