By Carl “Bear” Bussjaeger
I saw this yesterday . . .
Drunk drivers more likely to commit violent gun crimes in California, study finds.
Gun buyers in California convicted of driving under the influence are at greater risk of committing a violent crime or a firearm-related offense, a group of researchers at UC Davis found in a broad study that tracks gun purchasers over the span of a decade.
Well, that sounds bad, right? Maybe we should make a DUI conviction a prohibited person qualifier.
Or maybe we should look closely at the study and see what they really found.
I want to get to the really important stuff, so I’ll summarize this very briefly. Even when they examined the age range most likely to commit violent crimes, they found that honest gun owners are just that: remarkably unlikely to offend.
More, they had to inflate that “committing a violent crime” by counting arrests and charges, not convictions.They specifically did not look for convictions.
The important part, though, isn’t the study’s conclusions. It’s the methodology.
These researchers — including noted anti-gun rights UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program director Garen Wintemute — used Dealer Records of Sales to identify 160,619 lawful gun owners. They then tracked these individuals, including where they lived, for the period of 2001-2013.
That was 160,619 handgun buyers. It seems likely they got access to all DROS data, so the number is probably a lot higher.
Worse:
Data from DROS suggested that 2001 was a typical year. The sales volume of handguns in 2001 (160,619) was close to the mean volume during 1996 to 2005 (181,877 [range, 126,233-244,569]).
That suggests thee researchers have DROS data for ten years worth of lawful purchasers. Wintemute’s Violence Prevention Research Program could well be tracking millions of California gun owners.
The idea of Wintemute, with his anti-human/civil rights agenda, pushing unconstitutional laws by identifying and tracking lawful gun owners is not happy-making.
Carl “Bear” Bussjaeger is a longtime RKBA activist, writer, veteran, and former peace officer. He’s a contributor to The Zelman Partisans blog.
This letter was originally published at Random Acts of Gibberish and is reprinted here with permission.
“Drunk drivers more likely to commit violent gun crimes in California”
So… People who do one dangerous irresponsible thing are more likely to do other dangerous irresponsible things?
Groundbreaking…
That was my first thought too.
Stopped reading as soon as I saw U.C.Davis.
Just like when someone published that nearly three quarters of illegal homicides committed with firearms are committed by prohibited persons. (I.e., those prohibited by law to be in possession of a firearm, BTW it also includes components, ammunition, ammunition components, etc., and having any access).
N. B., no known homicides have been documented to be committed by firearms. I know Collion Noir has an ongoing experiment on this issue.
Emphasis: current law already makes it illegal for nearly 3/4 of firearms using murderers to have the implement they used in their crime.
So they break one law, they are already breaking the law, why not break another, not like the law is any kind of hindrance.
To eliminate deaths caused by drunk drivers, we need to stop sober people from driving.
That’s the way gun control works.
That should make perfect sense to people in favor of gun control.
To prevent vaccinated people from catching the infections they were vaccinated for we need to vaccinate healthy people who don’t actually carry the diseases.
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/opinion-vaccine-debate-is-not-about-the-good-many-and-selfish-few/
Amen!!
It is all mishegas!!
Oh Sh!t it’s the Anti Vaccinators again! It is like the Zombie Apocalypse all over again. See, if you had taken your dose we would not have these undead rising all over the place.
Funny! Even though it was directed at us anti – vaxxers.
That is so simply astute
You would think this would not be legal even in California. I think the ACLU should look into this. Strange as this may sound the ACLU has come to bat for gun owners on occasions where privacy rights were violated. This certainly would seem to be the case.
I want to know how they got IRB (institutional review board, or human subjects) permission to collect and use personal data like these without permission from the people involved. In the JAMA paper, there’s a link to a 2016 paper on the protocol, but it’s behind a pay wall.
Maybe one of you California Lawyer types can do some checking into The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) AB-375. CCPA becomes effective on January 1, 2020 so it would be a future deterrent to use if possible to sic it on them.
The intentions of the Act are to provide California residents with the right to:
Know what personal data is being collected about them.
Know whether their personal data is sold or disclosed and to whom.
Say no to the sale of personal data.
Access their personal data.
Request a business delete any personal information about a consumer collected from that consumer.[8]
Not be discriminated against for exercising their privacy rights.
We have been pushing for similar laws to no avail . It seems the Duh’s up in Tallahassee are business oriented. Maybe if they too discover they are just data to be exploited one day the laws will change.
So… said another way, they are 95% confident that someone who has a DUI and buys a gun has a 95% chance of not being accused of being involved in a violent crime over the next 13 years and someone who has a DUI as well as other convictions has a 89.8% chance of not being accused of being involved in a violent crime.
IOW, subsequent convictions not withstanding, someone with a slew of previous non-violent convictions has, at most, a 10.2% likelihood of being charged with a violent crime within 13 years of buying a gun.
Sounds an awful lot like DUI conviction and other alcohol related convictions don’t really suggest anything more than a jump off the baseline of 1.8% risk and, realistically, the chances are ~90% or better that the person DOESN’T end up getting charged with any violent crimes.
Unfortunately the way they wrote this up, compared to standard hazard ratio writeups, is backwards so what’s going to get play are the 2.6, 2.8 and 3.3 numbers with no reference to the baseline risk of 1.8% or mention of the overall risk profile for a 13 year time frame. The media is going to run with “People with prior alcohol convictions are 330% more likely to be arrested for a violent crime if they buy a gun!”
I would also note that their statistical variance is pretty wide to get that 95% confidence level. That 1.3-6.4 gap makes me… uh suspicious.
If we gain broad national 2A carry rights from the upcoming ‘NY Pistol’ SCOTUS case, look forward even more of this shit happening.
Their next move will be to expand, as much as possible, who is a legally prohibited person.
Expect a *blizzard* of new national and state laws making something as simple as a reckless driving charge being considered ‘proof’ someone is too dangerous to posses firearms.
I expect them to go as far as finding out who owns guns, so that the public ‘has a right to know’ who lives near them as being armed. Picture searchable sexual predator maps currently being used to be updated with gun owner info.
These people will be just a like the fictional Cyberdyne ‘Terminator’ :
(Modified by me)
“Progressives can’t be bargained with. They can’t be reasoned with. They doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. Just hatred for us. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until we are disarmed or dead!”
“Picture searchable sexual predator maps currently being used to be updated with gun owner info.”
Criminals looking to steal guns would appreciate such a map.
Already kinda happened. I forget where it was, but a small town newspaper published a list of all the local gun owners.. and there was a spike in breakins.. of all the OTHER houses..
Thank you newspaper for telling bad guys who is not armed.
That was the The Journal News and that “small town” was all the pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties on Long Island, OIW nearly the entire part of Long Island West of Bridgeport and East of NYC.
I suspect they will push for this.
It’s like the propaganda about tobacco or DUI. (Note: I’m not saying tobacco use is healthy or suggesting anyone pick up the habit here, nor am I advocating drunk driving.)
The tactic involves people’s lack of math knowledge. They focus on the percentage increase of risk off the baseline to make bad outcomes seem like a sure thing specifically by avoiding talking about what that baseline is.
For example, cigarettes CAUSE cancer, right? Everyone knows this. Smoking will give you lung cancer. Few people smoke without getting cancer, so few as to not be worth talking about.
Well, yeah in the way steering arms cause car deaths. Sometimes we can say it’s directly attributable to this thing and sometimes we can’t. The way it’s presented is pretty dishonest. Yes, there is a massive statistical increase in the chance of cancer developing based on tobacco use. But the original risk was ~1% so 24% is a 2400% increase off the baseline. But that’s not what they usually say. They say “Your risk of lung cancer is 2400% greater if you smoke! Don’t smoke!” Well, yes, technically true but your overall risk of lung cancer as a unrepentant smoker is about 24% in most cases without exacerbating factors, meaning you have a 76% chance of smoking all your life and not getting cancer. So… a good idea? No. A risk worth taking? Probably not, but it’s not a sure thing that this WILL cause cancer which is what A LOT of people believe. Campfire smoke can do the same thing and we don’t see a lot of studies on how avid campers die from lung and throat cancer do we?
So what sounds worse? That ‘a previous DUI convict is 330% more likely to be accused of a violent crime than someone with a clean record!’ OR ‘a DUI convict has a 5% chance of being accused of a violent crime within 13 years of a gun purchase’ OR ‘A DUI convict has a 95% chance of NOT being accused of a violent crime within 13 years of a gun purchase’?
Same thing as with cigarettes. ‘2400% greater risk’ sounds way worse than ‘76% chance it never happens’.
Or, there’s an INFINITELY greater chance of me killing someone with a Fararri if I buy one! (If I own one, which I don’t, so currently the chance is 0% and ANY increase is an infinite increase over 0.)
Propagandists pick what sells so they can demonize people they don’t like. I suspect this will be attributed to guns as well. This is why they want CDC studies and such. They don’t much care about the overall numbers as much as they care about the XXX% risk increase they can scream from the rooftops.
My Etsy shop’s stats are up 4693% over last year. Just follow my example, and you too can be a billionaire like me!
Oh, wait…never mind… Last year at this time my brand-spankin-new Etsy shop had only 4 visits per week and exactly two sales. When the baseline is so small, any change can seem gigantic on a percentage basis. Almost infinite, even.
But people trust the media’s “experts” way too much. Not to mention, there’s an appallingly large number of idiots out there. I can barely even math as it is, and even I can see through those ridiculous numbers.
Congrats on nearing 100 annual sales! LOL.
Yeah, Geoff is, sadly here, right. This is the same shit they pulled with those studies on having a gun in your house making your spouse/family member/domestic partner more likely to murder you. When you actually look at the studies a gun, should your family member decide to use it, makes it, IIRC, something like 4.7% more likely that they succeed vs. something like a kitchen knife.
The determining factor in those cases, which the media didn’t bother to mention, wasn’t the choice of weapon but the choice by a spouse/domestic partner/family member to kill. The media played on the statistical difference in success rate for men vs women based on choice of weapon to sensationalize the story.
Realistically if someone living with you decided to kill you the stats said you were fucked. I would hazard the guess that’s because someone living with you probably opts to attack by surprise or just did attack by surprise simply because not many people expect to come home and get murdered by someone they live with/trust.
Great re-use of the Terminator material! Fitting, funny!!
As usual, Geoff “I’m a fcukin’ moron” spreads his do-nothing defeatist bulls hit…
Just another reason why I haven’t purchased a gun in CA and never will. Some of my friends actually registered their previously off-the-grid guns *voluntarily* when the laws said they didn’t have to. All to stay in the good graces of TPTB.
Never, never, never register whenever you have the option.
The only privacy you get in California is to have gay sex. That’s the only privacy that matters in the not so Golden State.
Oh I forgot. Having children get abortions without their parents knowledge or permission through government assistance is also part of the privacy priority as well.
If this info was available for the research team then the Feds are obviously also keeping records on nixs checks via their computers although technically the records are supposed to be destroyed but then again its in the hard drives of Govt computers and the Govt knows it is and knows how to retrieve it any time they want or need it.
No. Here we have to fill out and submit to the California DOJ something called the Dealer Record of Sale (aka DROS). (California does its own back ground checks in addition to NICS.) This is an entirely different from than a 4473. All of that information, including personal information , and the make model and serial number of the firearm purchased, are entered into a computer data base. The state law claims that this is not “registration,” but if it walks like a duck…
The infinite capacity for arrogance by people like Wintemute, AOC, and billions of other “humans” during our pathetically short and pointless lives leaves little hope for the survival of the species.
Those who claim to know, know nothing.
**********************************************
“LVI
‘So careful of the type?’ but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, `A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.
‘Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.’ And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law—
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed— (Tennyson)
Nice use of Tennyson!!
Compliment it with this extract from The Dry Salvages (TS Elliott). I think this nicely describes our gun-grabbers (yes, sorely out of context):
“Where is there an end of it, the soundless wailing,
The silent withering of autumn flowers
Dropping their petals and remaining motionless;
Where is there and end to the drifting wreckage,
The prayer of the bone on the beach, the unprayable
Prayer at the calamitous annunciation?”
Elliot is another who has a grasp of reality. People of that stature are few and far between in our modern world. Thanks for the reminder. 🙂
So we don’t need to eat the babies since the carbon signatures will rise irreparably in the next two months dooming the world and this will only accelerate the inevitable evolution of the next life form to replace humans in evolution. I see a bunch of anaerobic life forms screaming like AOC in our distant past as our former carbon rich atmosphere was displaced by an oxygen rich atmosphere causing the extinction of billions of early Earth species. Mother Earth vomits out her obnoxious species every now and then to make room for more advanced life.
RE: George Carlin; Save the Planet. On youtube. 🙂
Seems like California is a bad example for everything. Competing with Florida?
Nah, Florida is competing with California. California and NY are the two worst in the country when it comes to restrictive gun laws.
And Florida is becoming New New York
Florida is just jealous that California and New York get all the press and all of the interesting SCOTUS cases. (And all of Bloomies’ and Soreass’ dollars).
Have you ever heard of New Jersey, The Garbage State? They are as bad as CA & NY.
They want data on people with the means to protect themselves and the guts to do so. A list of people they are going to have problems with is very valuable. Gun registration is the key .
Yet at the same time, the California DOJ database is admittedly so inaccurate that it is not sufficient to support good cause for the issuance of a warrant. If you buy a gun, it remains in your name even after you transfer it to someone else, and even if you file a notice of doing so. The records are not cross-referenced.
Track this ; of the plethora of gunms I own, six have paperwork three are in my possession. The rest are squirreled away, mostly amount friends with No Gunm purchases on record.
IMHO: JAMA Is the top Publisher of anti-gun junk science studies! Then the anti-gun politicians and groups cite the Studies as if coming from the Burnin Bush BECAUSE: JAMA Published them. Nobody reads the fine print Disclaimers on Content. Shit in, Shit out and Shit quoted as fact.
No. No we’re not. Lefties go home.
Registration and background checks are already mandatory. Just a precursor to confiscation. Anyone believe that the research isn’t faulty or biased?
These are the same ones who publish the figure for firearms related deaths and don’t bother to break down the information. Two thirds of firearm deaths are suicides. Another portion are legal uses of firearms by police and armed citizens. The CDC tracks all the causes of death in the US, and guns don’t even make it to the top 15 causes.
Doesn’t this violate our privacy, constitutional and bill of rights. I guess non of this matters to communist California.