Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control

[SecularMotion]

Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions

Given the importance of guns and gun-control to US public health, and the urgent need for appropriate policy to reduce gun-related harms, it is vital to examine the psychological and sociocultural reasons for the paradoxical attitudes of many US citizens and politicians to gun-control. US whites have twice the rate of gun ownership of blacks, oppose gun control to much greater extent than blacks, but are considerably more likely to kill themselves with those guns, than be killed by others or blacks. While the literature suggests that racism in whites shapes fear of black violence and support for policies that disadvantage blacks, no research has examined whether racism is related to gun ownership and attitudes to gun-control in US whites. This study investigated whether racism is related to gun ownership and opposition to gun control in US whites. We hypothesized that, after accounting for known confounders (i.e., age, gender, education, income, location, conservatism, political identification, anti-government sentiment), anti-black racism would be associated with having a gun in the home, and opposition to gun controls.

- - -

There remains considerable resistance in the US to even cursory gun controls, and the reasons for owning a gun and opposing gun reform (i.e., self-protection, safety, fear of crime) [4], [5], are not supported by the evidence on gun-related harms. Clearly, other motives and attitudes must be driving such paradoxical views on guns. Future research needs to examine other less obvious, yet influential, sociocultural and psychological influences on gun ownership and control, as this evidence is sparse. Evidence on the psychological and sociocultural drivers of gun ownership and resistance to strong controls will in turn help inform educational campaigns (e.g., social marketing) that may aid public acceptance of appropriate policies in the interest of the US public’s health, and/or allow policy makers to implement good public health policy. The reinstatement of funding for research on gun control in the US should assist in these research endeavours.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0077552#s4

[rrneck]

1. ...

http://www.plosone.org/static/information;jsessionid=CE764A40D91E6ED562190174E594EE00
To provide open access, PLOS journals use a business model in which our expenses—including those of peer review, journal production, and online hosting and archiving—are recovered in part by charging a publication fee to the authors or research sponsors for each article they publish. The fees vary by journal.

[SecularMotion]

2. Did you miss this part?

Rigorous Peer-Review

Too often a journal's decision to publish a paper is dominated by what the Editor/s think is interesting and will gain greater readership — both of which are subjective judgments and lead to decisions which are frustrating and delay the publication of your work. PLOS ONE will rigorously peer-review your submissions and publish all papers that are judged to be technically sound. Judgments about the importance of any particular paper are then made after publication by the readership (who are the most qualified to determine what is of interest to them).

[rrneck]

4. Money talks and bullshit walks.

Rigorous peer review is not really possible with a financial incentive.

But maybe I'm wrong. Why don't you read, digest, and summarize the findings of the study for us?

[gejohnston]

3. oh please

it is a hypothesis based on stereotypes and false assumptions. It is advocacy research (which is really a nice way of saying shill study) at its worst. First how did they come to the conclusion of what is racist? Why did non white gun owners, including blacks, get the same "racist" score?
It makes one obvious error

The reinstatement of funding for research on gun control in the US should assist in these research endeavours.

That in fact is not true. The DoJ continues to get funding for studies on the issue. What was removed was CDC lobbying and funding non peer review shill studies.

[rrneck]

5. The whole thing is based on the concept

of "symbolic racism" but after a cursory read I see no quantification of it. Lotsa charts and numbers, but still based on the "researchers" perception of how somebody else feels and wrapped up in a bunch of correlation.

Pffft.

[SecularMotion]

6. Gun research is allowed again. So what will we find out?

Back in 1996, Congress worked with the National Rifle Association to enact a law banning CDC funding for any research to "advocate or promote gun control." Technically speaking, that wasn't a ban on all gun research, but the law was vague enough that the centers shied away from the topic altogether. Funding for gun-violence research by the Centers for Disease Control dropped from $2.5 million per year in the early 1990s to a mere $100,000 per year today.

Since federal funding was the primary source of support for gun-violence research, the entire field withered as a result. Gun studies as a percentage of peer-reviewed research dropped 60 percent since 1996. Right now, there are only about a dozen researchers in the country whose primary focus is on preventing gun violence — despite the fact that more than 30,000 Americans were killed by guns in 2011.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/17/gun-research-is-allowed-again-so-what-will-we-find-out/

[gejohnston]

7. it never ended

the CDC was giving money to ER docs who were writing shill studies with a pre determined outcome. National Institute for Justice, the research arm of the DoJ, continued to fund research. Problem was, that money was going to criminologists doing actual science and the results wasn't what gun control advocates liked including the one done by Gary Kleck.
In 2004 the National Academy of Science
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2004/12/17/naspanel/
Last year's CDC study, which hasn't made the gun control advocates reading list:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm

So what will we find out? That crusading ER doctors can have some undergrad walk around a gun show and count how many straw purchases he thinks he sees; Do the "2.7 times more often" several times without releasing data for peer review.

[SecularMotion]

9. What will we find out? Here's some unanswered questions

9 Questions About Gun Violence That We May Now Be Able to Answer

1. How many guns are there? There is plenty of good data on the number of gun incidents per year at the city, state and national scales. But we don't have a number for how many guns exist. Most current estimates peg the number nationally at about 300 million, but this is hardly a reliable count. We'd also be curious to know how gun figures differ by city and region.

2. How do guns get into the hands of people who use them to commit crimes? More specifically, do most criminals obtain those guns illegally? Through loopholes? Were the people who obtained them subjected to background checks? Also, many guns are used in more than one crime, explains Jeffrey Fagan, a law professor at Columbia Law School, and often by more than one person. How do guns move through neighborhoods and social networks?

3. Who should be excluded from owning a gun? Media reports often make the assumption that the mentally ill in particular should be screened from gun access. But there is no real research, for instance, on the link between schizophrenia and the likelihood of committing gun violence.

4. Do magazine limits actually work? New York state passed a law just this week limiting the number of bullets legally allowed in a magazine to seven, and President Obama has proposed federal legislation setting that number at 10. Will such policies have an impact, particularly in the cases of incidents involving a lone, active shooter?

5. Why do people own guns? This seems like an obvious question, but we'd love to know more: For most people, is it a question of personal safety? Hunting? Politics? Are there policies we could implement that would reduce the need many people feel to keep firearms handy? Do people own guns in cities for different reasons than they own guns in rural areas?

6. Is there a relationship between levels of gun ownership and levels of crime? The NRA says we can only stop bad people with guns by deploying more good people with guns. But surely we could develop research to actually answer this question. Does gun violence generally rise as gun ownership does in a given community, or is the opposite true?

7. What percentage of the entire universe of gun owners commits gun crimes? We're guessing this is a pretty small number, and that most moderate gun owners would like to have the answer out there in the public domain.

8. How are gun crimes and gun ownership spatially distributed? Within cities, do gun owners cluster? Why are some neighborhoods hotbeds for gun violence, and what distinguishes those places from others?

9. How do guns move from producer to consumer? Where are people legally buying guns? And how do guns leak into the black market? How many guns go missing and what are the implications?

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/01/9-questions-researchers-may-now-be-able-answer-about-urban-gun-violence/4418/

[gejohnston]

10. Actually those studies have already been done

some of them date back to the 1980s. Just because she doesn't know, doesn't mean nobody else does.

1. How many guns are there? http://usliberals.about.com/od/Election2012Factors/a/Gun-Owners-As-Percentage-Of-Each-States-Population.htm You might be surprised to find that Florida has a gun ownership rate equal or lower than Canada and many European countries.

2. How do guns get into the hands of people who use them to commit crimes? According to the study by James Wright and Robert Rossi in the 1980s, they get them from fences, drug dealers, "friends", ultimately through theft. Very few from gun shops and nil from gun shows. In the 19th century, many urban gangs and criminals used "community guns", there is evidence that gangs still do.

3. Who should be excluded from owning a gun? Let me rephrase that. But there is no real research, for instance, on the link between schizophrenia and violence in general.

4. Do magazine limits actually work? As the recent CDC study found, no.

5. Why do people own guns? This seems like an obvious question, but we'd love to know more: For most people, is it a question of personal safety? Hunting? Politics? Are there policies we could implement that would reduce the need many people feel to keep firearms handy? Do people own guns in cities for different reasons than they own guns in rural areas? Actually it is an obvious question.

6. Is there a relationship between levels of gun ownership and levels of crime? The 2004 NAS studied this. The answer is no.

7. What percentage of the entire universe of gun owners commits gun crimes? We're guessing this is a pretty small number, and that most moderate gun owners would like to have the answer out there in the public domain. try microscopic

8. How are gun crimes and gun ownership spatially distributed? Within cities, do gun owners cluster? Why are some neighborhoods hotbeds for gun violence, and what distinguishes those places from others? I don't know the importance of the first two questions, but it is more common in rural areas. Those areas also tend to have less crime. The last question is poverty, gangs, no jobs and look for gang markings.

9. How do guns move from producer to consumer? Where are people legally buying guns? Is that a serious question?
And how do guns leak into the black market? generally by theft.
How many guns go missing and what are the implications? Former NRA lobbyist Richard Feldman says 500K are stolen each year. Some of them from police departments. I think the implications are pretty obvious.

The fourth comment down by drewkitty does a pretty good job of answering those questions.

[friendly_iconoclast]

11. The OP has labeled us undebateable 'zealots' who post bullshit...

...and compared to creationists, to boot- I'm reposting
in case they try to put it down the Memory Hole:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12625693#post10

SecularMotion (4,069 posts) Response to CTyankee (Reply #7)

Thu Feb 6, 2014, 08:43 PM
10. It's like debating a creationist. You can't debate them, they're zealots.

You can only counter their bullshit with reality.

Apparently, we're also deemed too stupid to notice things posted at the prohibitionists'
hangout...

[sarisataka]

8. Yet the result that doctors are more racist the those who oppose gun control

The implicit association test is also a conceptually difficult task for some to learn, and particularly the brief race-IAT used in the ANES which restricts training on this computerized measure [41]. Given the mean D score for the ANES race-IAT (.17) is more than twice as small as from any other studies, including one in medical doctors

is written off

possible that participants may not have completed this complex computerized task correctly

Logically if racism is a major factor, whites would overwhelmingly support a 'may issue' environment where blacks could be more readily excluded from gun ownership.

[Lasher]

12. Then these guys must have been racists.