Three Communities Use 'Data-driven' Approach to Gun Violence

[MeekandMild]

Just claiming that their conclusion is flawed or results from bias is nothing

Well, its a first step, the construction of an alternative hypothesis.

We might also want to analyze the entire study before we take this too far, instead of just relying on a news article.

I used to do this sort of thing, back when I was in academia. (This was back in the day when you had to write your own statistics programs if you wanted to do any myultivariant analysis or analysis of covariables.) So this is the deal: Give me a lot of grant money and I will re-do their study from scratch, adding back the neglected risk factors and comorbid conditions in the violent population versus a control group of their nonviolent family members and a separate unrelated control group. Or give me a little grant and obtain their original data (including the stuff they left out of their papers) and I'll give you a publishable criticism of their methodological flaws.

Or, actually I'll just hire a grad student to do the legwork and a postdoc to edit things, write the introductory paragraph myself, attach my name as third author and keep a suitable percentage of the money.

The key here is money. Pro RKBA people are generally of moderate means, certainly not wealthy enough to endow university chairs and five figure grant proposals. The antis are generally funded by some very deep pockets who can pay for whatever conclusions they want.

 

[TallPine]

We need to demonstrate the errors we claim that they have made.

That's already been done ...

For instance, the error of mixing suicide in with "gun violence." Also, the error of ignoring violence in which a firearm was not involved.

Also, how many of the "gun violence" deaths were legal interventions by law enforcement, or legal self defense by private citizens? How many were "accidents" ?

 

[Roadkill Coyote]

I feel safe in asserting that there is close to a 100% correlation between the use or misuse of a gun and the presence of a gunshot wound, so I do not see an error in looking at guns thru a medical lens.

Whether you accept John Lott's contention that 90% of defensive gun uses occur without a shot being fired or not, the assumption that a gun cannot be used without being fired is deeply flawed.

 

[sendec]

Reread my statement, ie you cannot with any statistical signicance have a gunshot wound, without having a gun involved.

We have'nt done anything with their alledged errors. Anyone can say anything. Proof is a whole different issue.

 

[316SS]

And again ...

sendec wrote:

"Their conclusion is faulty" means zero by itself. Responding qualitatively to a quantitative conclusion has no validity.

You don't seem to get it. The scientific method follows a logical progression. Any argument must have a premise and a conslusion which follows logically from it.

These studies, by implication, conclude that guns cause violence. The premise is that the presence of guns correlates with violence.

What they seek to imply does not logically follow from the data they present. Correlation is only one third of the requirements to imply causation.

Do you honestly believe that all they are trying to say is that a gun is required for a gunshot wound to be sustained? I hardly think an epidemiological study is required to support this argument.

Its pretty simple: the logic is flawed; no valid conclusion may be drawn. Oi!

316

 

[Jeff White]

sendec,
The entire premise of gun violence is flawed. You don't have to be a PHD to know that if you could somehow wave a magic wand and remove all firearms from the face of the earth, that you could reduce gun violence to nothing.

You could elimate drunken driving by magically removing alcohol and automobiles from our society too. I can't think of any problem that you define by the tool that's used that you can't eliminate by removing the tool. But you can't define problems by the tools that are used. You have to define problems by the conduct not the tool used in the conduct.

You don't think for a minute that violence will stop when firearms are removed from society? In fact firearms are used in a small fraction of the violent conduct. Studies that focus on gun violence divert attention from the real issue which is violence. The fact is that certain segments of our society are very violent. But no one is looking at the social and cultural aspects of that. They are focusing on the tools. Removing the tools won't change the fact that the violent segments of our society are violent, all it will do is change the way they visit violence on each other.

I would worry about refuting the logic of this study if there was any to refute. We have the example of the UK to look at when we seek to solve a social problem by removing the tools of violence. Unlike many others, I don't think the increase in violence over there has much to do with the removal of firearms from law abiding citizens, because they were so heavily regulated that they weren't very useful for self defense anyway. I think it had everything to do with changing demographics of the population.

Jeff

 

[Roadkill Coyote]

While you obviously cannot have a gunshot wound without a gun, you can have a sucessful defensive gun use without a gunshot wound, a use which preserves or prolongs the health of members of the community, and which is discounted by a study focused only on deaths and injuries. The information we have seen thus far suggests that this public health study has been designed to exclude any public health benefits. I am loathe to label the study as a self fufilling prophesy without having read it, but the information presented so far sounds like poor science.

Post a link to the study if possible though, I would be happy to read it.

 

[sendec]

Just curious, how many of us have actually read the study, or is this something we know is wrong, just because? How about none of speak to its conclusions, good or bad, until we have actually sorta like read the durn thing? If you don't have the time or interest i would say that you have pretty much abrogated your right to be critical of it.

 

[Harry Tuttle]

it doesn't appear Branas report will be online for awile:
http://www.asph.org/phreports/archives.cfm


heres some previous output:

http://www.apha.org/news/press/2003/AMHighlights.htm
5163.0 Firearms and Firearm-Related Injury
Wednesday, Nov 19: 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm
Featured presentations:


Is there a gun in the home? Concordance in the knowledge of adolescents and adults; Susan B. Sorenson, PhD

Determining the rate at which legal handgun purchasers become ineligible to possess the weapon they purchased; Mona A. Wright, MPH, Garen J. Wintemute, MD, MPH

Factors associated with state variations in homicide, suicide and unintentional firearm deaths; James. H Price, PhD, MPH, Amy Thompson, MS&Ed, Joseph A. Dake, PhD, MPH

Rural versus urban firearm death in the United States: Different causes, same results; Charles Branas, PhD, Michael L. Nance, MD, Michael R. Elliott, PhD, Therese S. Richmond, PhD, C. William Schwab, MD


LESSONS LEARNED: The Medical Professionals as Advocates Program (MPAP) to Reduce Firearm Violence
http://www.east.org/archive/MPAPflyer.html

this dood has a nice career running on this issue:
http://www.google.com/search?q=gun+"charles+Branas"&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off

 

[Coronach]

People in suburban and rural areas oftentimes think of gun violence as an urban problem that doesn't affect them. But as an ongoing study in three cities of less than 100,000 population is finding, good data-collection systems can reveal sometimes surprising gun-violence tolls in communities that may not think they have a problem.

Ok.

If you're trying to portray Allentown or Youngstown (not sure about Cedar Rapids) as being suburban, rural, or unaware of their respective crime problems, I can spot Problem #1 with your research pretty easily. Allentown and Youngstown are rough old blue collar towns with real proclivites towards violence.

Mike

 

[Roadkill Coyote]

How about none of speak to its conclusions, good or bad, until we have actually sorta like read the durn thing?

There is nothing wrong with making tentative judgments based on limited information. All the information I have seen so far suggests that there is a major flaw in the design of the study, in that it only documents the public health costs, and ignores the public health benefits of firearms use.

It seems that the authors, by their own admission in the above article, began by classifying firearms violence as a disease, rather than what it is, a mechanism. Since they proceed from the assumption that firearms use is a entirely malignant, they naturally overlook the counterbalancing benefits. If the study itself proves differant from what the authors themselves say about it in the above article, I may have to revise my opinion.

If you don't have the time or interest i would say that you have pretty much abrogated your right to be critical of it.

No, as a matter of fact I have not abrogated my right to criticize what appears to be poor research, and will continue to do so whenever and wherever I see it.






It has been my observation that when someone starts telling posters on a bulletin board that they have no right to criticize, his cause is generally lost. Saying something that foolish is like throwing a cow into the pirahna tank.

 

[Andrew Rothman]

First, some background on one of the "researchers:"


http://www.nursing.upenn.edu/faculty/profile.asp?pid=86

Therese Richmond, PhD, FAAN, CRNP
Associate Professor of Trauma and Critical Care Nursing

...

Dr. Richmond serves as the Research Director of the Firearm Injury Center at Penn where she works with an interdisciplinary team to fulfill the Center’s mission “to create safer communities through the systematic reduction of firearm injury and its repercussions to the individual, family, and society.â€

And this study, and its funding source:

http://www.nursing.upenn.edu/research/grants/default.asp?pid=86

REDUCING FIREARM INJURY THROUGH INTERDISCIPLINARY AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP: EMPOWERING MEDICAL....
Agency Reference #: NA
JOYCE FOUNDATION
5/1/2001-10/31/2005
Principal Investigator: Charles Schwab
Co-Investigators: Therese Richmond, PhD, FAAN, CRNP

And here's what the foundation says:

http://www.joycefdn.org/programs/gunviolence/gunviolencemain-fs.html

Gun violence takes nearly 30,000 American lives each year, second only to automobile crashes among causes of injury-related death. But while safety regulations have dramatically reduced highway fatalities, firearms remain virtually unregulated. The Gun Violence Program supports efforts to bring the firearms industry under comprehensive consumer product health and safety oversight as the most promising long-term strategy for reducing deaths and injuries from handguns and other firearms.

Program priorities are:

Supporting efforts by state-based groups in the Midwest and by national groups with a strong Midwest presence to promote strong state and federal public health policies on firearms, including consumer product oversight of the firearms industry

Supporting focused, policy-relevant research and public education regarding the impact of handgun ownership on public health and safety

Strengthening and building public and policy maker support for the National Violent Death Reporting System, which gathers vital public health data on violence-related fatalities

Gun Violence Program Officer: Roseanna Ander


"Gun Violence Is a Preventable Epidemic"
“There are effective public health prevention strategies for gun violence,†Joyce President Ellen Alberding wrote in the Chicago Tribune after a recent wave of tragic shootings. “We’re just not filling the prescription.â€

The study is funded by an organization that has already concluded that "gun violence" is a medical epidemic requiring government regulation. Are we surprised that studies funded by such an organization would reach the same "conclusions"?

Dr. Miguel A. Faria, Jr., a neurpsurgeon, has a couple of interesting articles. The second attacks this author's previous work:

Statistical Malpractice – 'Firearm Availability' and Violence

Part I: Politics or Science?
http://www.gunblast.com/Statistical_Malpractice_1.htm

Part II: Poverty, Education and other Socioeconomic Factors
http://www.gunblast.com/Statistical_Malpractice_2.htm

A look at the primary author's slide show: http://www.facs.org/education/gs2003/gs55schwab.pdf

Take a look at page 22! Lies!

 

[Cool Hand Luke 22:36]

...and that in a gun-toting community they could still address firearm violence without polarizing the community into a pro-gun, anti-gun discussion."

Biased Language=Biased Research

 

[Aguila Blanca]

The entire premise is bogus. I know that two of the three cities chosen have severely depressed economies, and knowing that the Univ. of PA is a liberal, Ivy League university that suggests to me that the third is probably a match, and that they were chosen specifically so the "data" would result in a perception of a problem.

Suicide and homicide are opposites? Gee -- in the former one kills oneself, in the latter one kills someone else. What could that be other than "opposites"? Why focus on gun suicides? It has been well documented that people who wish to kill themselves use whatever means they have available. Many years ago a friend on mine didn't own a gun, so he drove his pickup truck at high speed into a bridge abutment. Where's the outcry to ban pickup trucks, or the studies of "pickup truck violence"?

While it appears logical to assert that you can¿t have a gunshot wound without a gun, the step of characterizing ALL gunshot wounds as "violence" is a sneaky trick. To an epidemiologist, virtually any physical trauma is a "violent" injury. However, many "traumatic" (in the medical sense) injuries are caused by accidents. This includes injuries caused by gunshot, chain saw, lawn mower, automobile accident, even the occasional stab wound caused by tripping and falling on the garden rake. By using a term (or terms) with one specific meaning in the medical/scientific community and releasing it to a general public whose members see those terms in entirely different connotations may be accidental, or it may be deliberately misleading.

 

[sendec]

Studying the mechanism of injury is hardly bogus. Examining the misuse of guns and how it relates to injury is no different than examing power tools and injuries that accompany their misuse. It is a study of the mechanism of injury, not the cause of injuries. Injuries that result from bicycle accidents are labeled as bicycle accidents. DWI is another example - it presumes the presence and misuse of both alcohol and motor vehicles. Dog bites presume the existance of dog. Gunshot wounds presume the existence of guns.

I fail to see how any gunshot injury is'nt "violent." It may have reulted from intent or negligence, but it is still violent, but then so is depressurizing an airplane at 30,000 feet. Claiming that some GSWs are non-violent is going to be a tough sell. Y'all are arguing semantics when the issue, if any, is methodology and conclusions. This would be an excellent opportunity to read the study and test their hypothesis independently. Of course, anyone getting "pro" results will be accused of having an agenda.

They (and we) treat the term violence like its a bad thing. One theorist (Zinam) taught that violence was the misapplication of force. I am uncomfortable because there can be plenty of times when force is appropriate and even desirable, so if we want to sub force for violence I'd be OK with that, but the end result is the same.

With the exception of John Lott, we are way, way behind in the use of scientific methodology to support our claims regarding the positive usage of firearms. We tend to sneer at academics when instead we should be using their tools to prove our points. We also cannot ignore that far too many people are injured in cases of firearms accidents and that guns make handy tools for badguys. IMHO we would be ahead of the game to acknowledge these issues and steal the thunder from the antis.

 

[Hawk]

For me, as an epidemiologist...

So once you say firearms violence is a disease, you go to that first step and you do basic public health. You describe the disease.

I'm calling foul - any epidemiologist that didn't sleep through the introductory classes knows that guns fail the most basic test - the postulates laid down by the 1905 Nobel Prize laureate, Dr. RObert Koch:

To wit:

1. The specific organism should be shown to be present in all cases of animals suffering from a specific disease but should not be found in healthy animals.

2. The specific microorganism should be isolated from the diseased animal and grown in pure culture on artificial laboratory media.

3. This freshly isolated microorganism, when inoculated into a healthy laboratory animal, should cause the same disease seen in the original animal.

Since we're studying "gun violence", "guns" will be present in all cases of the "gun violence" disease - by definition. The fact that guns are also found in the non-diseased portion of the population is, unh, inconvenient.

Next, we isolate the pathogen, in this case, the gun. Colt or Ruger will provide a nice petri dish - we grow a suitable quantity of the candidate pathogen.

Next, we introduce the candidate pathogen (GUN) into a healthy subject. Say yourself, your mother, your pastor or rabbi, whatever. At this point the subject MUST develop GUN VIOLENCE or the premise that guns are a pathogen never makes it to first base.

While the Joyce Foundation would, I believe, LIKE to put a respectable public health face on the issue of gun-grabbing, it only works if the most basic tenants of epidemiology are ignored from the outset.

Any current med students or medical professionals feel free to correct me on the above - last I heard, Robert Koch's postulates were still alive and well but I'm no expert on the subject.

Edited to add citation to source: AAPSFaria

 

[sendec]

Sorry guys, but science is science. The disease model is just that, a model. If you want to refute this study(and by doing so you've already screwed up, going in with a bias) break out the calculators and start grinding data.

The fact that guns are found in a healthy population is acceptable under the disease model. E.Coli is the classic example of a pathogen that is present in most if not all of the population, but only has ill effects in certain cases.

I dont get the objections - if you have the ability and opportunity to challenge their findings I'd think you'd jump at the chance, but you cannot state that it is erroneous just cause you say so. Y'all have raised plenty of potentially valid points, but they have zero value until you back'em up with a proof.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

Sendec:

If the conclusion is wrong, develop a hypothesis, design a model, and test it. Just claiming that their conclusion is flawed or results from bias is nothing. You have the means to either support their conclusion or find it incorrect.

It isn't their conclusion that's flawed, so much as their initial premise (as prior posts have eloquently expressed). If I design a study that looks only at species of apples that are red, I can then postulate that all apples are red because the study found no yellow apples. The fact that the study omitted numerous varieties of apples does not validate the resulting conclusion. The conclusion is logical, but invalid because it is based on a study that began from an incorrect and arbitrarily limited set of data.

Was it Will Rogers who first said "Figures never lie, but liars always figure."?

 

[Hawk]

I find Sendec's points regarding a proper challange of their conclusions and / or findings well put.

I guess part of my problem is that I'm not seeing much of a conclusion or finding. The jointogether article doesn't have any conclusions other than that the number of suicides with firearms involved surprise some people. Several of the more "interesting" remarks are sourced as "...said in an interview". Which is a nice way of just tossing out something that can't be reasonably vetted.

The link to FICAP has a pdf of a resource monograph here. (Click "Firearm Injury in the US" to get to the resource book download.) The resource monograph appears to be well cited until it gets to pages 27 through 30 where we get interventions and conclusions.

Maybe it's me, but I can't see where all the gruesome stats are actually used as a basis for the proposed interventions, other than occuring in the same publication. In fact on page 28 of the monograph, we get

The effectiveness of these potential interventions is largely unknown, but they provide reasonable strategies that merit further consideration and study.

In other words, they're guessing. The GOA would likely guess otherwise.

I don't see a conclusion to refute - at least not in the article originally posted.

I doubt I'll ever be able to take the mixture of epidemiolgical disciplines and inorganic non-replicating tools, but that's just me. Being old enough to have grown weary with junk-science causality claims has jaded me, perhaps. Real scientific proof of causality via epidemiology is tough and rigorous - proving non-causality is even tougher (else there would not have been the flap over artificial sweeteners, breast implants, toxic mold, etc, etc).

I share a respect for the scientific method. If I were to start crunching numbers, I'd likely start here. It admittedly addresses only the juvi population but that's 25% of the target stats.

So, to actually address Sendec's concerns:

1. Agreed - we are not refuting their conclusions - we're griping about a generally undisciplined conglomeration of observations that we "think" is "heading somewhere" - the article doesn't really say anything at all.

2. The disease model is imperfect. However, we're not the ones trying to assert a cross-discipline causality. Epidemiology is only marginaly better suited to gun violence than, say, climatology (my opinion).

3. I always tread carefully around the "you can't prove a negative" maxim. However, I believe it applies here. You'll never be able to prove guns aren't to blame. Think Aspartame: 90 countries, 200 peer reviewed studies showing no problems and a half-dozen hyperventilating web sites with anecdotes get intelliigent people frightened of the stuff.

4. Proving bias IS relevant. As the other posters have pointed out, there is an obvious agenda shared by the funding organizations. If a study came out along the lines of "NRA data driven study shows guns are good" it would never have any credibility whatsoever. The same should apply to the Joyce Foundation - just check the charter.

Sendec, you may not agree with anything I'm saying, but at least I read what you're saying - sorry I didn't do it earlier.

 

[Rebeldon]

The idea of "gun violence disease" is idiotic, and ideologically conceived.

It is juvenille to assume that if guns did not exist, all victims of gun homicide and gun suicide would still be alive today. If somebody intends to kill somebody, or themself, guns are not the only tool they can use to accomplish this.

Gang Violence:

If there were no guns, gangs would use knives, chains, clubs or other contact weapons, and even bombs. In fact, one can argue that guns cause less gang violence than would otherwise exist without guns (not that I advocate that gangs should have guns). The use of guns by gangs force members of opposing gangs to respect each others' ability to do damage to their side. What one or two gang members can accomplish with a gun would require several gang members to accomplish with knives, chains, clubs, etc. Without guns, gang violence would cause more carnage, as it would require more soldiers to fight it out with contact weapons. With guns, there is more fear of each other. If they only have contact weapons, the gang soldiers would be bolder to fight. Think about it. Ten gang members see a group of three gang members of a rival gang. For what reason would the ten gang members NOT assault and kill the three gang members of the rival gang? Ten gang members can kill three without fear of taking on much damage to themselves. However, if they all have guns, those ten gang members realize that the three gang members of the rival gang can cause significant damage to them (even if they were to prevail) so they will usually leave them alone. Therefore, because of guns, three lives were saved. Compare battle casualties today to battle casualties when all they had was swords and bows. Heck, today, the media can't wait to report the 1,000th casualty of the Iraqi war. In Roman times, 50,000 to 100,000 were slaughtered in one afternoon. Because of guns, an American army of only 145,000 can hold off the population of a 27 million. If they didn't have guns, the Iraqis could slaughter our troops with knives and clubs. Not that I approve of gang members having guns, as I don't approve of people being in gangs in the first place, but I'm saying all this to say that if more people had guns, and everybody knew it, people would have more respect for each other. The presence of guns is a deterrent to violence, not a cause for it. Gun violence occurs when one person or group has a reason to be assured that the other person or group is disarmed.

Suicide:

People who are successful at committing suicide with firearms have proven themselves to be serious about wanting to die. There is no reason to believe that the presence of a gun made them kill themselves. They want to die because they don’t want to face the circumstances of their lives. Sure, it made it easier, but they will find a way to die. There are pills, ropes, bridges, gas ovens, garages, tall buildings, train tracks, or you could walk down the street in Harlem wearing a white hood and robe. Over 30,000 Japanese per year (over twice the rate of the U.S.) find plenty of ways to kill themselves. In China, over 250,000 people per year commit suicide. These are not countries where the general population have access to guns.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that...

 

[Gunstar1]

I get your point Sendec

The collection of data is good, however the conclusions to that data are false.

For example

If the data says 50% of Suicides are from Firearms.
Conclusion1: Removal of Firearms will reduce Suicides greatly.

Now what if more data is added?
Suicides overall and by firearms have remained steady for 20 years.
Japan has a higher suicide rate than the US.
Japan has almost 0 suicide from firearm deaths.
There are more suicide deaths than firearm related deaths in the US.

Conclusion2: The 50% that did not use firearms shows other means of death are used often and a ban/safe storage laws will marginally impact suicide rate.
Conclusion3: People with suicidal thoughts will find a way to kill themselves.
Conclusion4: Safe storage laws/gun bans will not stop someone determined to kill themselves.
Conclusion5: Suicide is a greater problem in the US and world wide than firearms.
Conclusion6: Reducing the Suicide rate will reduce the number of deaths by firearms.

All conclusions are valid. However, if Conclusions 1 and 2 are presented in a study comparing nations firearms and suicides and 3, 4, 5 and 6 are ignored and not even brought up, such as the FICAP does then the study is wrong.

A true study would then set out to find which conslusion (1-6) is the best and what we can do to best treat the problem within availible laws and abilities. Unlike the FICAP study that says the 2nd amendment is not an individual right so any law is good (including registration that is against the law) and includes citizen polling information that has nothing to do with the data they are studying.

Last, they say nothing about the CDC or DOJ reports that the exact requirements they suggest have had no impact. Infact they have no proof anything they are suggesting will work at all even though many states and cities have had those suggestions as laws for years.

Best of all, they want to treat firearms as a disease while ignoring the mental illness that causes suicide. Suicide is a greater problem than firearms, yet if suicide rates go down, firearm deaths will too. Where is Americans against Suicide, or the Brady Campaign to stop suicide deaths?

 

[saltydog452]

'Data Driven' Approach to Gun Violence

The name says it all:

We're gonna take the data we want and interpet it any way we want. Just like the book 'Arming America".

Even though the stats can be 'massaged' a little , that ain't gonna happen because, as sendec says, there is something called 'peer review'. Is that kinda like the term 'preaching to the choir'? I bet Mike could make a movie about something like that..Maybe call it "Farenheit Something-Or-The Other"

Oh, by the way, we're just talking guns here. The rest of the stuff like spousal abuse, endangerment to a child, kiddie porn, etc. we ain't gonna include that stuff in our data base.

Using selected data and creative imterpetation even a dumb old truck driver like me can reach just about any pre-determined conclusion I want.

salty.