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By Lee Williams

If you didn’t know any better, the headline on a press release published Wednesday by Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health could appear damning: “Study Finds Link Between Dropping Permit Requirement for Carrying Concealed Weapons and Increase in Officer-Involved Shootings with Civilian Victims.”

The Trace – the propaganda arm of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun empire – was as excited and breathless as a young pup in their response to the press release . . .

“Shootings by police officers increased by 12.9 percent in 10 states that loosened public carry restrictions. That’s according to a new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health that looked at states which made it easier for people to carry guns without a permit between 2014 and 2020,” they wrote.

The lead Johns Hopkins researcher – apparently a well credentialed “gun violence” researcher – sounded as if his team had found a cure for cancer.

“The trend of more states allowing civilians to carry concealed guns without a permit may be influencing the perceived threat of danger faced by law enforcement,” Mitchell Doucette, PhD, MS, assistant scientist in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health Policy and Management, core faculty member in the Center for Gun Violence Solutions, and the study’s lead author, said in the press release. “This could contribute to higher rates of fatal and nonfatal officer-involved shootings.”

Mitchell Doucette
Mitchell Doucette (Twitter)

Discerning readers will note Doucette’s use of the weasel words may and could. This may be serious, one could think. It could prove problematic for the 25 states that have passed constitutional carry, right?

Nope.

Turns out it’s all bunk – nothing but a complete load of crap, because the vaunted Johns Hopkins researchers used flawed data from the Gun Violence Archive – a group of anti-gun activists masquerading as researchers that we debunked nearly a year ago.

You may remember the Gun Violence Archive. They’re the geniuses who claimed there were 417 mass shootings in 2019 when the FBI said there were only 30.

As we reported last July, The GVA is led by executive director Mark Bryant, who admitted his researchers troll Twitter, Facebook, police blotters, media stories and other less-than-official sources for their “data.”

Bryant denied he or his group were anti-gun, but in 2018, he coauthored a guest column for the Los Angeles Times, titled: “We have all the data we need: Stronger gun laws would save lives.”

Bryant also supports restricting standard-capacity magazines. “I think magazine capacity is an issue that should be addressed. You don’t need 30-round mags or a 60-round drum. While they are great ‘get off’ tools, they’re part of a hobby, not part of the Second Amendment.”

Also, in a guest column for the Lexington Herald Leader four years ago, Bryant spoke out against Senate Resolution 172, which encouraged teachers to carry firearms in the classroom. “It is a fatally flawed solution from folks who learned another lesson about tools: ‘If all you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail’ — the National Rifle Association solution,” he wrote.

Anti-Gun Dark Money

The Johns Hopkins study was funded by the New Venture Fund and the Joyce Foundation.

According to Influence Watch, the New Venture Fund “is a 501(c)(3) funding and fiscal sponsorship nonprofit that makes grants to left-of-center advocacy and organizing projects and provides incubation serves for other left-of-center organizations.”

The Joyce Foundation also funds the Gun Violence Archive. According to its website, one of the goals of the Joyce Foundation is to “Reduce gun deaths and injuries in the Great Lakes region.”

To achieve this, the Joyce Foundation has a four-step plan:

  • Advance and implement federal, state, and local policies and practices that reduce easy accessibility of guns to those at risk of violence.
  • Support policies to reduce easy accessibility of guns to those at risk of violence.
  • Reduce the next generation’s exposure to gun violence through education on the risks of gun ownership.
  • Litigate to defend evidence-based gun policies and challenge extreme gun rights policies and practices.

Takeaways

There’s no doubt that the civilian disarmament industry will work this study harder than a rented mule. They paid good money for it, after all, and it was clearly designed to target the growing constitutional carry movement, which terrifies them to their very core.

It’s too bad – for them – that the entire study was built on flawed data.

In my humble opinion, the Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Health team forgot one important research concept: the quality of input determines the quality of output. This concept has another, more familiar abbreviation: GIGO, which stands for garbage in, garbage out.

 

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51 COMMENTS

  1. This is a typical tactic of the Leftist Control freaks. They start out with a conclusion and then make up statistics and twist or cherry pick what will support their “claim.”

    • Well, I can’t vouch for an increased number of cops being shot due to permitless carry, which I sincerely doubt.

      What is, however, undeniable is the fact that gangbangers, felons, known terrorists and previously-convicted thugs of all races, creeds and religious claims have enjoyed “Constitutional Carry” since it became unlawful for them to even be in proximity of firearms decades ago. They’ve never needed a permit, a background check, training and have likely blown through every event that would’ve caused an ERPO on all of us. Yet they’re packing, all the time, everywhere, including and especially in GFZs.

      And in the increasing unlikelyhood that they are caught, red-handed, so to speak, most of the large metro areas do not press firearms charges, in fact, the cretins are often sent right back out to prey on the general public (whom the government does not trust), usually without even the most paltry amount of bail bonding.

      What a country…

      • What a country…

        This man is fighting to make this country great, and this is how you reward him y all? He is everything anyone wants in a POTUS.

        FOX News on a Monmouth University Poll

        President Biden’s approval rating remains underwater and more than 80% of registered voters say the U.S. is on the wrong track, according to a Thursday poll from Monmouth University.

        The Thursday poll found that Biden’s approval rating is sitting at 38%, with 57% disapproval. Those numbers are down from March when Biden had a 39% approval and 54% disapproval. Monmouth also found that just 18% of Americans say the country is on the right track.

        • More popular than Obama or Hillary.*

          It will be interesting to see the massive crowds coming to his rallies in 2024. There won’t be an excuse to hide him in the basement.

      • WEll, Craig, Constitutional carry does not include criminals or terrorists. But you keep believing that if you want.

      • Oh, I know the “structure of a research paper”. Unfortunately, you Leftists don’t follow the guidelines.

  2. If Johns-Hopkins spent more time teaching and less time trying to ban guns, we wouldn’t have the 1000 Medical Malpractice Deaths Per Day in the USA that we presently have.

    They are also leaders in the push to legalize and beatify Pedophilia & Child Molesting.

  3. A Leftist/fascist, Bloomberg-funded pack of gun grabbers outright LYING about guns and statistics and policy??? Say it isn’t so!!!

    And in other news, the sky is blue, water is wet, and dacian the stupid and MinorIQ are morons.

    OF COURSE they made up statistics, from bulls*** sources, to support their narrative. And if you expected anything else, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’ll sell you, cheap. MinorIQ and dacian the stupid are going to pool their lunch money and bid on it.

    • I don’t think so, lil ‘d’s mom is pissed at him again and threatening to kick him and miner out of the basement – hence the reason they’ve been laying low and quiet as of late. When it all blows over, expect their normal output of regurgitation to resume to their normal levels.

      • I just assumed they had their quote of bilge postings in for May. Soros euros start again 1st of the month?

        • No, his SorosBucks are secretly being channeled into Russia to help fund the current proxy war being waged against the U S. It’s just a contest at this point to see who backs out first, or more likely, who goes bankrupt first. My money is on Josef Xiden, who was only counting on Burisma headquarters and evidence being destroyed, but now needs to get the egg licked off of his face by Xylinsky. Oh, and it’s Raggedy Ann Psaki’s last day today – now who’ll interpret the king’s inane ramblings… predicting popcorn shortages in the very near future. Stock up now.

  4. Johns Hopkins does some good work for good causes. Unfortunately, their credibility is tarnished by aligning with hacks like Doucette (Douche sp?). They should stick to actual health issues and stop conflating with political agendas.

    • “does some good work” – does is very different from DID. Name what JH has done, in their long anti-American prog era, of redeeming value

      • I do not agree with their Politics or their Political Agenda, but i can give them the credit they deserve for all the advancements they have made in the field of medicine. Less than 5 minutes of research found these accomplishments.
        Early cancer diagnostic tests, a synthetic soft tissue substitute, cranial implants and artificial lymph nodes are among the recent discoveries made by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine faculty that promise to change medicine.
        Johns Hopkins counts many “firsts” among its achievements, including the first to use rubber gloves during surgery and the first to develop renal dialysis and cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
        Johns Hopkins Medicine Timeline
        https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/about/history/timeline/index.html#7

  5. Cops have already shooting people for having wallets, keys, phones and nothing at all in their hands for decades. I fail to see how once you’ve achieved that level of threat interpretation anything at all could raise it.

  6. If Project Veritas could get someone in either JH or The Trace on video that’d be a holy grail wouldn’t it?

  7. To late gunm grabbers, everybody wants a gunm, and a whole lot gottem. You blew your wad with the peaceful protest.

  8. Busy body john hopkins should keep their lying noses in their own backyard with all the Malpractice Lawsuits that result from quack doctors misusing their tools of the trade. Hopkins Credibility? Zip, Nada, Nothing.

  9. “The trend of more states allowing civilians to carry concealed guns without a permit may be influencing the perceived threat of danger faced by law enforcement…”

    So not only is the study based on bad data, their “conclusion” quite literally admits that this is an officer TRAINING issue, not an actual increase in criminal activity.

  10. I know this forum is essentially the choir loft. But even if the “study” was based in fact, should that change the reach of the 2A in any way? If our societal intent is solely to protect blue lives by restricting individual rights and liberties, then our other inalienable rights must be severely curbed as well. We all watched the “summer of love” where an entire police precinct was trashed, and its officers injured by thrown projectiles. We see police constantly denigrated and threatened by violent protestors cloaked in the 1A who clearly have little concern for police safety. We see the very same anarchists clamor in one breath for disarming civilians and emasculating urban police departments. Blue lives DO matter. Common sense tells us that those who threaten blue lives are rarely citizens lawfully carrying firearms.

  11. This fake science is preparatory to declaring fire arm ownership as a mental health issue. Next week when the World Health Organization (WHO) adds 13 amendments to the Obama produced 2005 ratified WHO treaty, we will have lost our rights and sovereignty. This will shortly be followed by the fire arms mental health instability declaration and the drive to confiscate our fire arms legally under our corrupted constitution (red flag). What do we do? Well many police officers will line up and be the WHO’s useful idiots because they are concerned about keeping their jobs and feeding their families. The decisions we make in the next six months will be critical. If we get to the election, and the mules are abated, it will be a God ordained miracle.

    • Most Leo’s know that can only go so far. They have to live somewhere. Pissing off at least half of your neighborhood, depending on where it is, doesn’t bode well for your security.
      F the who and their agenda. It does not supercede the US Constitution.
      What are they going to do call in the un?
      The blue helmets kinda stand out.

  12. Suppose for the moment this is true.

    1) Is it worth the cost? I say yes, freedom is worth it.

    2) Doesn’t the responsibility for this fall on police departments and their training? Especially the outdated assumption that “man with gun” = “bad”?

  13. When the Joyce Foundation and Bloomberg get together, the result is always a mountain of bvllsh!t.

  14. This isn’t about the thing we call Constitutional Carry. It’s just presented like it does.

    This is about criminal behavior. The honest law abiding citizen it’s extremely unlikely to even interact with cops. Much less be involved in gunfire with them.

  15. The key here, as noted in the article, is the use of mealy mouthed words that demonstrate that the correlation is weak and that causation cannot be established. Editing down the article somewhat, we end up with this: “may be influencing the perceived threat of danger faced by law enforcement”,which “could contribute to higher rates of fatal and nonfatal officer-involved shootings.” The substantive content of this is exactly zero. I suspect the study does not rely at all on actual officer perceptions, but just a correlation between concarry and increased police shootings, and then speculates as to a possible cause.

  16. Liberal and Progressive Democrats have historically been guilty of using Junk Science to forward an Agenda. No more obvious than the 50 years of failed science and scary predictions that never materialized in regards to Global Warming. Had even one of their scary predictions come true during the 70’s, 80’s or 90’s. Humanity would have been destroyed and living in the Dark Ages once again. Scare tactics by the Democrat leadership and their associated Zealots have known for decades that it is easier to control their Acolytes through the use of Fear and Guilt because they are governed by their emotions and how they feel about themselves. That is why the education system has been dumbed down and replaced with feelings based indoctrination. children have been taught for decades that their feelings and emotions are more important than their abilities and accomplishments. Hence all the Snowflakes and Offedials that permeate today’s Society.

  17. I don’t even want to count the number of times I’ve been stopped by police while armed. And, as a courtesy and common sense matter, I do inform them I am legally armed and do have a carry permit. Then I will ask to be allowed to pull my wallet and show my ID and Permit card. After the permit requirement drops the first of the year, if pulled over or otherwise in contact with police, I will still inform the officer I am armed. But, I have no reason to be frightened by police or be worried about being shot. Too old to fight and too slow to run. No warrants or illegal substances on me or in my vehicle. Besides, the police have dogs, guns, radios, helicopters, and there are usually more of them than of me. Who would win that fight? Could it be those getting shot by police are acting in a threatening manner? Could it be many police departments need to do a better job in training and not be trying to militarize their force? Seems most cops have an us versus them mentality to start with and anyone not in uniform is somehow and enemy or potential threat.
    If there is a problem, it is a police training problem and not a problem with the average citizen carrying a legally purchased and owned weapon.

  18. avatardacian May 13, 2022 At 18:38
    Your comment is awaiting moderation
    quote—————Turns out it’s all bunk – nothing but a complete load of crap, because the vaunted Johns Hopkins researchers used flawed data from the Gun Violence Archive – a group of anti-gun activists masquerading as researchers that we debunked nearly a year ago.———–quote

    What a laugh the Far Right reject every study done even by prestigious studies done by John Hopkins because it does not fit their far right propaganda and lies.

    In Britain they had ONE just One mass murder in a school and they put an end to it immediately by passing gun control and that was decades ago. Britain’s laws even prevented a group of self-anointed terrorists from committing mass murder by preventing them from getting both illegal and legal shotguns so they could carry out a mass murder they planned. In Capitalvania many people would have died by assault rifle fire from second hand guns

    In Germany when one kid used a pump shotgun to kill some people an immediate gun control law ended that madness.

    Yes sane gun control laws do work and work well as history has proven it many times over in civilized countries who do not have the corruption in government that Capitalvania has because in Capitalvania its legal to bribe Congressmen to become your prostitutes and put the public at great risk as well as bankrupting them by corrupt drug and insurance companies.

    • dacien —

      Then show us how well the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 – 2004 measurably reduced crime.

    • dacian the stupid,

      Pro tip (I’m feeling generous, today): Continuing to spew the same stupid lies in your illiterate posts, attempting to substitute “anecdote” for “data”, dismissing every conservative source as “propaganda” while whining that we don’t take “respected” sources on the Left seriously (who does, other than Leftist/fascists like you?) – and then posting illiterate, poorly stuctured and punctuated, irrational rants? Does NOT make you look smart OR “educated” (which you aren’t); it makes you look a damn fool.

      Go back to your circle jerk; MinorIQ and the nameless, brainless, d***less troll miss you . . . and they are the ONLY people in the world who do. You certainly will not be missed, here. And you remain too stupid to insult.

  19. Since when does the FBI track the number of mass shootings? They have a definition for ‘mass murder’ but they don’t have a definition of ‘mass shooting’. Most researchers who track ‘mass shootings’ usually define what they mean by the term since there is no agreed-upon definition. Some define mass shooting as ‘four or more people shot in one incident’ others insist there has to be a multiple deaths before they count it as a mass shooting.

  20. That’s why I say we have no hope for change except by force. This country has been taken over by corrupt politicians for over 45 years. Everyone one that in government from the past 45 years has baggage. They all need to be put on trial and investigated.i do home work ….. 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐤.𝐜𝐨𝐦

  21. So where exactly nis the JUNK SCIENCE here/ This is nothing more than an interpretation of STATISTICAL evidence . I cannot for the life of me see why statistical eveidence has to be taken as some kind of POLITICAL plot simply because giving the same parameters [which I have no idea as to their correctness by the way or how they are arrived at] the examining party whoevewr it is would come to the same conclusion so either you have absolute proof that the STATISTICS are wrong I suggest you do you own analysis instead of going off a o0n another pointless political rant.

    THe ‘rant’ usually includes references to ‘COMMIES’ DEMOCRATS and LEFTIES and I very . much doubt that the those doing the ‘ranting’ have the slightest idea as to what any of those expressions actually mean.
    Now we have some certifiably mad American Gun Freaks suggestiong a bloody CIVIL WAR just because somebody somewhere has interpreted some statistics in a way the disagrees withntheir own DYSTOPIAN viewpoint.
    Is not ONE CIVIL WAR, that at least had behind it a HIgh Moral Stance even if it did not last long, enough?
    That war caused MORE casualties and deaths than pretty much every war the USA has been engaged in ever since at over 600,000 and you can tot that up.
    Inh the meantime the Amer4ican Public has the right to vote for whosever it chooses and a corbnerstone of DEMOCRACY is that ALL must recognise and support that descisiion when it arises.
    You may protest of course but to openly declare that you WILL SHOOT, if given the opportunity anybody who disagees with you, because that’s what Civil War is in the final analysis is madness with a capital M.
    What is it about Americans?? Half the bloody population seems to be obsessed about having the opportunity for an excuse to blow somebodies, anybodies, brains out.

  22. Albert, or whoever you are, your first paragraph holds the answer. Statistics are fine, if they well defined and truthful. This study used statistics from a source known to alter data.

    Second, you must not read the opinions of those who call themselves Social Democrats if you believe the talk of a Civil War is a right wing point. The Socialism minded, I know what they and Communists are, are not talking about a defensive Civil War but a war they would make the first shot. Most of those here support a defensive war where we are not the aggressors. We still vote, we still voice our grievances and have maintained a status of ready. Therecare a few on the right who are like those on the left, but they are truly outliers.

    The US is not a Democracy, was never meant to be one nor do serious people want us to be. We prefer our blended Republic, hard for any one faction to dominate the other very long.

    I believe in the words of Thomas Paine when he said: I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace.

    I know the burden of war, I have been places where civil wars were fought and seen the aftermath. I want people to calm down, reevaluate and understand that our form of government is a more perfect union and we are fortunate to have been born here. However if it comes to it I will do my duty to the Republic. I just prefer I won’t have to.

  23. Johns Hopkins need to stick to what they know and from what sources report, that isn’t much.

    • (you really believe there were only 12 mass SHOOTINGS in a entire year? lol. IL alone had more than that)

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