"Study" shows carrying a gun = "4.5 times more likely to get shot"

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  • Kharn

    Ultimate Member
    Mar 9, 2008
    3,578
    Hazzard County
    The problems with the study are too numerous to print.
    But lets start with the obvious:

    1. Did not control for licensed/legal carrying by either the shooter or the injured party
    2. A telephone survey of people not injured that day to find out if they carried a gun that particular day? Good luck getting accurate results
    3. How many of the shooters/victims were involved in illegal activity during the time the shooting occured?
     

    Deapsee

    NaN
    May 1, 2009
    288
    Calvert
    They need a press release

    Epidemiologists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine announce police much safer without guns. Charles C. Branas, associate professor of epidemiology shows armed officers 4.5X likely to be shot than if unarmed.

    :lol2:
     

    erwos

    The Hebrew Hammer
    MDS Supporter
    Mar 25, 2009
    13,866
    Rockville, MD
    3) very small sample size - probably not statistically representative
    Speaking as an econometricist for a moment, the sample size is fine. As a rule of thumb, for a truly random sample, > ~35 will actually give you a very good degree of accuracy. What's questionable is that they're attempting to extrapolate their results on a scale greater than Philadelphia.

    I agree with Kleck - the research looks fine, it's just that the conclusions being drawn from the research don't seem to have anything to do with it.
     

    zoostation

    , ,
    Moderator
    Jan 28, 2007
    22,857
    Abingdon
    It's amazing what can pass for science when you're telling the elitists what they want to hear.

    The "research" is laughable on its face. Notice the study comments on the likelihood of getting shot, but doesn't mention whether it is with the "victim's" own gun or their attackers. The majority of shootings in inner-city America are drug-related. Many or most are bound to involve situations where both parties are armed, and the difference between "victim" and "attacker" is who shot first. It's a far leap from there to say "having a gun doesn't help you." Perhaps a better title for this study would have been "Study proves that in a gunfight someone loses."



    (PS-I'm not saying everyone who gets shot in the city is involved in anything illegal, there are still innocent victims of course, and I in no way mean to impugn them.)
     

    thebullpupkid

    Active Member
    Feb 6, 2009
    632
    Right near the beach!
    I just wonder...

    They got 677 people who had been shot and 684 people who had not been shot. This totals to 1361 people.

    Now I KNOW they didn't find 677 people who had been shot out of the first 1361 people they talked to. So they obviously had to pick and choose from among those they talked to in order to arrive at these "statistics." There's no other way.

    They wanted an outcome, and they did what they needed to achieve it.
     

    Todd v.

    Ultimate Member
    Nov 30, 2008
    7,921
    South Carolina
    It's pretty simple actually to support this claim, I recently saw a study from baltimore even where the victims per capita were convicted of more crimes than the acused murder. If you throw all the thugs into the mix who are looking for a fight it's easy to substantiate this. Now if you throw out the criminals where at least one of them is going to apply to this statistic (shot while carrying a gun) in every shooting, you'd see a whole different story I'm sure. And how aout the majority if situations where the mere drawing of the legally owned gun ends the threat? Guess they don't count either since there we're no bullets flying.......?
     

    Markp

    Ultimate Member
    Dec 22, 2008
    9,392
    100% of the people shot in this study were shot by people with guns. :rolleyes: Really?!? Like someone else said, this is a sobering statistic, I think we should start by disarming the police, see how much traction that idea gets.

    Mark
     

    K-Romulus

    Suburban Commando
    Mar 15, 2007
    2,427
    NE MoCO
    I just wonder...

    They got 677 people who had been shot and 684 people who had not been shot. This totals to 1361 people.

    Now I KNOW they didn't find 677 people who had been shot out of the first 1361 people they talked to. So they obviously had to pick and choose from among those they talked to in order to arrive at these "statistics." There's no other way.

    They wanted an outcome, and they did what they needed to achieve it.

    If you check the study at the link, you will see that they reviewed police records on 3000+ shootings from 2003-2006. They then focused on 677 of the 3000+ as the "case group."

    The 684 control group people were identified at random from among the Philadelphia land-line-owning population.
     

    vette97

    Ultimate Member
    Feb 9, 2008
    1,915
    Carroll County, Maryland
    My dad, who lives in PA, said there seems to be a lot more talk about increasing gun control where he lives in East/Central PA. I think this is being driven by Rendell.
     

    thebullpupkid

    Active Member
    Feb 6, 2009
    632
    Right near the beach!
    If you check the study at the link, you will see that they reviewed police records on 3000+ shootings from 2003-2006. They then focused on 677 of the 3000+ as the "case group."

    The 684 control group people were identified at random from among the Philadelphia land-line-owning population.

    Right, so doesn't this back up exactly what I said. They reviewed 3000+ shooting incidents and "selected" 677 of those to derive their figures.

    Wanna bet the other 2323+ people were unarmed when they got shot? :sad20:

    Doesn't that prospect support the exact opposite of their outcome? That is, more unarmed people got shot than armed? :rolleyes:
     
    Last edited:

    smores

    Creepy-Ass Cracker
    Feb 27, 2007
    13,493
    Falls Church
    Well, did they say whether being shot = being killed?

    If not, I'd rather be shot while shooting back, and living - than to be shot without any ability to defend my life.
     

    K-Romulus

    Suburban Commando
    Mar 15, 2007
    2,427
    NE MoCO
    More press.

    It seems the "Study" might have been funded by NIH?

    http://www.philly.com/inquirer/heal...Carrying_gun_raises_risk_of_getting_shot.html

    (...)The controls were actually equally likely to have a gun with them, but more than 80 percent of them were at home at the time of the incident - a big possible difference - and many more people own guns than carry them. Only 9 percent of the victims were home when they were shot. Most were outdoors.

    To arrive at their result, Branas said, he made statistical corrections for this and other factors that might influence a person's chance of being a victim - neighborhood type, a person's use of alcohol, and involvement in the drug trade, for example.

    After all the corrections were put in, he and his colleagues concluded that the people in the study who were carrying a gun at any given time interval were more than four times as likely to be shot.

    Branas offered several possible explanations. Having guns could induce people to behave differently, he said, perhaps emboldening them to stand up to attackers. Another possibility, he said, is that people are having their firearms turned on them.

    Comparing cases and controls isn't traditionally applied to violence, said Branas. "It's sort of new on the radar screen for the public." The study is one of the few funded by the National Institutes of Health.

    (...)
    The Penn study comes after a 2004 report by the National Academy of Sciences calling for more research into gun violence. The chairman of that panel, criminologist Charles Wellford from the University of Maryland, lauded the Penn study.

    "I think this is a very good paper," he said. "This is the kind of work we were hoping . . . would be done. This is a good first step to try to understand better what role guns play in self-defense."

    But several statisticians not involved in the gun research said you can't reach such sweeping conclusions with this kind of study. "There are some sketchy things going on here," said J. Michael Oakes, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota who reviewed the study at The Inquirer's request.

    Studies that compare cases with controls were designed to look at cancer, he said.

    "The foundation of the case control study is the sense that those who are the cases are exactly the same as those who are in the control group," he said. Here, Branas is assuming the people who were shot were no more likely to have guns than a group of controls of the same gender and racial mix. "It's a big stretch," he said.

    Economist Jens Ludwig of the University of Chicago expressed similar reservations. "They can't tease out whether guns are contributing to assault or assault risk is contributing to gun ownership," he said.(...)

    Maryland REPRESENT!!!:rolleyes:

    For those in the know, Ludwig is one of the premier anti-gunowner researchers in America, one who basically made it his life's work discrediting the John Lott "more guns less crime" thesis. Even he's leery of this one.

    And finally:
    (...)Branas acknowledged the possible pitfalls of his study. To do a perfect experiment, he said, researchers would need to get a big group of people and give them guns and compare them to another big group who were not allowed to have guns. "There are a couple of [ethical] problems with that," he said, noting that Penn's institutional review board would never approve it.

    But he is in the process of running a real experiment with simulated guns. That way, "we can look at how you perform in all sorts of threatening situations," he said, but using a simulator "so no one gets hurt."

    We need to watch this like white-on-rice. I foresee a "confirmation study" of that BS 20/20 story "If I Only Had A Gun."
     

    Eudaimonia

    Active Member
    Sep 1, 2009
    558
    I really enjoyed the arguments in this: http://reason.com/blog/2009/10/05/why-skydivers-would-be-better
    Since "guns did not protect those who possessed them," they conclude, "people should rethink their possession of guns." This is like noting that possessing a parachute is strongly associated with being injured while jumping from a plane, then concluding that skydivers would be better off unemcumbered by safety equipment designed to slow their descent.
    Maybe people who anticipate violent confrontations—such as drug dealers, frequently robbed bodega owners, and women with angry ex-boyfriends—are especially likely to possess guns, just as people who jump out of airplanes are especially likely to possess parachutes.
     

    Allium

    Senior Keyboard Operator
    Feb 10, 2007
    2,703
    One note - Case study was in Philadelphia, correct me if I am mistaken but the one large area where CCW is prohibited excluding schools, courthouses is the actual city of Philadelphia! I can only assume then that they either talked to cops who wear in line of duty or gangbangers who don't follow the law to begin with.
     

    novus collectus

    Banned
    BANNED!!!
    May 1, 2005
    17,358
    Bowie
    One note - Case study was in Philadelphia, correct me if I am mistaken but the one large area where CCW is prohibited excluding schools, courthouses is the actual city of Philadelphia! I can only assume then that they either talked to cops who wear in line of duty or gangbangers who don't follow the law to begin with.
    Only open carry by those without permits is prohibitted in Philly.

    I remember a while back they did a study of murder victims in Philly and they found about 60-80% had a criminal record. As I said before, I wonder how many of the live shooting victims with a gun had a criminal record and how many people with a gun legally were not shot because they had a gun to stop the attack?
     

    kalister1

    R.I.P.
    May 16, 2008
    4,814
    Pasadena Maryland
    Let me put my SPIN on it
    People who illegally carry guns are criminals, criminals are more likely to get shot by other criminals than people who do not actively partake in crime.
     

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