Sunday, June 17, 2012
VerBruggen
Gun Friendly NROnik goes hammer and tongs on Brady Campaign's Daniel Gross. He still takes them seriously even if we gunnies are more oriented toward the depredations of MAIG
He mentions exactly 2 studies where Brady may have a point. These two. Now that intrigues... Possible ACTUAL 2A refutation of some kind. Wait one while I peruse them both and see for my ownself. Open mind and all. BRB.
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Ok. I need more time to digest these.
I read the abstract of the Ayres and Donohue article.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to be another article that confuses correlation with causation. Did violent crime rates go up BECAUSE more people got their LTC's? Or did more people get their LTC's because violent crime rates went up? Either way, the data would be the same. John Lott's work, as valuable as it is, never proved causation to my satisfaction either. I think that the most accurate summary of all of these studies, in the aggregate, is just what the two "macro-studies" in 2001-2003 (CDC? NAS?) found: violent crime goes up and down and gun control laws have no effect on it either way.
+1 on Turk's comment!
ReplyDeleteFirst, I have to admit that I didn't read the studies, and quite frankly don't intend to.
ReplyDeleteSecond, my starting point is that the gun control crowd has poisoned the well, and the history of their frankly stupid, ineffective proposals means that the issue is not whether the studies may actually hold water or not, but whether there's something that a new gun control law might reasonably be able to accomplish.
And that's the debate. Government isn't a scalpel, it's a bludgeon. The chance to implement Really Smart Policy this time is not better than it was last time.