Another day, another biased Violence Policy Center (VPC) report/study. Yesterday, a supposedly desperate firearms industry was militarizing the “most impressionable and ill-equipped to function in a complex society.” Today, it’s a UC Davis study, which appears online in the journal Injury Prevention. Methodologically speaking, gun control crusader Garen J. Wintemute “analyzed telephone survey results for more than 15,000 people in eight states” and concluded that “The highest levels of alcohol abuse were reported by gun owners who engaged in dangerous behavior with their weapons. For example . . .
gun owners who also drove or rode in motor vehicles with loaded guns were more than four times as likely to drink and drive as were people who did not own guns. But gun owners who did not travel with loaded guns were still more than twice as likely to drink and drive as were people who did not own guns.
“It’s not surprising that risky behaviors go together,” said Garen J. Wintemute, author of the study and director of the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program. “This is of particular concern given that alcohol intoxication also impairs a gun user’s accuracy as well as his judgment on whether to shoot.”
Should TTAG buy this report? I mean, literally.
Well I for one know that I’m always honest about my irresponsible behavior with strangers on the telephone.
Debunked
Seems like the anti-gun community is blasting out propaganda just as the Gunwalker hearings are getting into full swing. Could this be just a coincidence?
Yes. But it isn’t.
I wonder what the good people at the VPC would make of me. I have a college degree, and when I drink the guns go away. I won’t even take them out for cleaning. I can also say with 100% honesty that I have never gotten behind the wheel with alcohol in my system; it’s just not worth it. Do they believe there are any responsible gun owners out there?
I don’t drink. It interferes with my special medication.
+ 1
Does this mean that I have to start to drink?
I statistically engage in risky behavior when I choose to minimize risk to myself by carrying a firearm. Alrighty then.
Oh, risky behavior? Yep, I’ve been married three times.
Data set from 1996-97. Only used data from eight states. No distinction between legal and illegal gun ownership. Stick a fork in it . . .
Sigh.
Here are some simple stats that don’t require twisted leaps of logic: as gun ownership has gone up gun accidents have gone down, and violent crime has gone down.
Correlation doesn’t mean causation, of course, but the hoplophobes don’t even have correlation! Where are the “wild west shootouts over fender benders”? Where’s the huge uptick in accidents and injuries? Geez, what a bunch of nimrods.
I never abuse heavy alcohol. The light stuff is bad enough.
The data cited in this study was from 1996 and 1997 and they say this is the “most recently available data”. Really? 1997? 14 years ago? Did they even do telephone surveys 14 years ago? Whom did they call, the “old” Black Panthers or Aryan Brotherhood?
Complete and Utter Nonsense!
I like what the first commenter said. Information gathered in a telephone interview cannot be valuable enough to determine anything.
Yet, you guys seem to be saying everyone who owns a gun is a responsible with it as Van who “won’t even take them out for cleaning” when he’s drinking.
Too many of you are too loose with the safety and responsibility. I guess it makes sense because your basic human right, protected by the Constitution, to own this particular inanimate object, trumps everything else.
Correct.
OK we’re irresponsible drunks, because we own guns.
So, WTF is Wintemute’s excuse?
“Hmm let’s see that cherry picked 14 year old data is laying around here somewhere!There it is! Under the empty whiskey bottles! Someone get me a beer, so I can drive home!”
Anyone here with institutional access to this journal, or who bought the paper? I’m eager to know which states he sampled from. Did these states have any provision for lawful concealed carry way back in 1996? In other words, were the people who admitted to carrying guns by definition criminals?
“Information gathered in a telephone interview cannot be valuable enough to determine anything.”
Intentional mischaracterization. Questions relating to stigmatized behavior, asked by telephone or not, introduce bias to the study. This is a real concern in social science random surveying. “Hi Mr. Smith, I’m calling from the Census Bureau. How many times in the past year have you cheated on your wife?”