Erich Pratt of Gun Owners of America writes in USA Today:
“We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes. … Now (smoking) is dirty, deadly and banned.”
Those words — uttered in 1994 by Dr. Mark Rosenberg, then head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control — have epitomized a problem endemic to taxpayer-funded research on guns.
Howdy Gamecock
I actually mean to insult the irresponsible. Poverty and family failure are closely linked, so it’s hard to know which influence operates in what way. Still, the sons and daughters of rich failed families tend to do drugs and drive into things rather than run drugs and shoot each other.
You insult the poor.
Actually, no, GC. Poverty is the primary indicator.
Employment is another factor. The son of a ditchdigger is much more likely to grow up decently than the son of a welfare queen.
Race is a minor factor once those are taken into indication. “Blacks Killing Blacks” is also due to our highly seggregated urban areas, so the poor welfare people are all grouped together in de-facto seggregated public housing. Let’s not pull race cards when there are actual things to blame.
“Poor families with poor structure breed violence”
Liberal tripe.
Howdy Gamecock
My understanding is that disparities among racial/ethnic groups become much smaller when one groups by socio-economic status. Poor families with poor structure breed violence, or at least it seems so. Alas, that demographic is disproportionately black and Hispanic.
Most crime is neighborhood crime; it’s not that people who are black are choosing black people as targets because they’re black, but poor black people tend to be near other poor black people, so they become targets of opportunity. A lot of the killing is gang/drug related as well, fighting over turf.
I wonder what the ethnic breakdown of violence is in LA, specifically between black and Hispanic men involved in gang and drug activities.
Why do people always focus on the “gun” part and not the “violence” part? Also including accidents, suicides, and police shootings in the “gun violence” stats really distort them. Until we all look rationally and carefully at these types of issues we will really never get a good handle on them.
Real research also shows it’s blacks killing blacks.
Or let’s ban cars from having guns. Or let’s ban guns from driving cars. It’s morally urgent, like closing Gitmo.
It’s strange how we don’t use the same paradigm for cars. Cars kill right, so cars should be banned?
Hang on a minute: ban cars….but it’s people that kill, not cars!
Let’s ban guns. There. Problem solved.
We get enough faux stats on “gun violence” (violence using guns?) without adding them from another federal agency.
Real research on gun violence and gun accidents indicts family breakdown more than availability of guns and carelessness more than the availability of guns.
Guns and gun ownership have been somewhat stigmatized already. We need to fight that and that includes fighting reports that distort research.