Garen Wintemute
UC Davis's Dr. Garen Wintemute (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
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Dr. Jeffrey W.Swanson is part of a small community of American academics — about two dozen in all — focused exclusively on studying gun violence and how to prevent it. Washington has often stood in their way; for 24 years, Congress effectively barred the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from funding their work. Federal law still prevents the government from giving them access to gun-tracing records that would be extremely helpful to their research.
 
For years, they have felt that Washington was not listening to them, and they had better luck with state lawmakers. But now that President Biden has signed the most significant revision to the nation’s gun laws in decades, America’s gun violence researchers are taking a bit of a victory lap — despite viewing the bipartisan legislation as imperfect and last week’s Supreme Court decision expanding gun rights as a countervailing setback.
 
“I’ll settle for a glass half full,” said Garen J. Wintemute, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of California, Davis, who has studied gun violence for 40 years. …

These researchers say the new law is informed by evidence. But it is also notable for what it leaves out. It does not ban high-capacity magazines, which allow shooters to fire repeatedly without pausing to reload. Studies suggest doing so would significantly reduce death tolls in mass shootings. It makes no mention of gun storage safety locks, which a study published in 2000 found were associated with a 17 percent reduction in unintentional gun deaths of children. And although gun homicides disproportionately affect people under 21, the law does not raise the legal age for buying semiautomatic weapons to 21, from 18.

—  Sheryl Gay Stolberg in For Gun Violence Researchers, Bipartisan Bill Is a ‘Glass Half Full’

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65 COMMENTS

  1. These “studies” are little more than gravy train funding for “researchers” who have no actual purpose of function in their academic careers. The results of the study are determined before the evidence is provided which is then altered to demonstrate the pre-determine result.

    • Guess they decided to dutifully and purposefully ignore a couple of cases in the self serving interests of furthering the agenda & narrative.

      Parkland springs to mind immediately as did one of the Columbine shooters. VT assailant had the majority as 10 round magazines as I recall.

    • If they even spent an afternoon doing actual research just once they’d know that the SCOTUS decision striking down NY’s may issue law, meaning more law abiding citizens will be allowed to carry is not a ‘setback’ to minimizing ‘gun violence’.

    • Academics do have to “publish or perish”. With luck their paper published in an obscure journal won’t be subject to too much pesky peer review or even basic fact checking.

  2. About 1.25M doctors in the US…they’re supposed to save lives, yet they are responsible for about 250,000 deaths due to mistakes and malpractice. I ask you good reader, which is more dangerous 400M firearms that are used to end 35,000 lives or 1.w5M doctors that mistakenly end 250,000 lives a year…

    • ““I’ll settle for a glass half full,” said Garen J. Wintemute, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of California, Davis”
      The glass isn’t half full or half empty.
      The professor doesn’t seem to realize that what he has is a glass that is twice as big as it need to be!

    • Absolutely correct…There are some real azzhats in the medical field. A visit to your state board of medical examiner’s web site will show cases of disciplinary actions taken against wacky doctors.

      Make no mistake about it…Gun Violence is another concocted catchword just like Saturday Night Special, etc. It’s a charade and solely about Gun Control. If it were not there would be no concern about magazine capacity, etc.

    • This is one of those things that undermines credibility of the people making the argument.

      Yes, mistakes are made in modern medicine. Yes, it’s clearly overly bureaucratic. Yes, it’s currently displaying signs of institutional capture and on and on and on. All of these things are things that need to be worked on. Some of them quite badly. And yes, it’s true that it’s hard to figure out exactly what’s wrong because the litigious nature of US society means that hospitals and docs don’t want to be forthcoming about what’s wrong and how it might be fixed.

      OTOH, without modern medicine and water treatment the average life expectancy is ~44. With decently widespread modern water treatment but not widespread modern medicine the life expectancy is around 64, yet this still takes into account a bunch of people who do get some level of modern medicine.

      The medical establishment has some serious problems but harping on their mistakes which are negative but entirely outweighed many, many, many times over by the system’s benefit is myopic at best and, really, pretty dishonest.

      It the anti-gunner’s and with the same problem, ignoring all the benefit and focusing solely on the cost you’d like to promote as being there for political reasons.

    • “Dr.” Jeffrey W.Swanson is just a pshrink (witch doctor).

      “American medical sociologist and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences” IE a doc of BS. As much a doctor as Jill Biden.

    • Your link immediately takes you to it’s home-page, not the article itself.

      Got another one?

    • Current rumor is NY is looking to expand the distance covered by gun free zones by a few hundred yards which quite a few people here already guessed. See how it plays out once we hear more.

      • NY view of Gun Free Zones: “Lets expand gun free zones by a few hundred yards to keep people from carrying firearms there.”

        Criminal view of NY gun free zones:

        Criminal 1: “Oh look, a gun free zone. Lets go in there and do some crime, no one to stop us ’cause we have guns and they don’t.”

        Criminal 2: “Well, actually the gun free zone started way back there so all those law abiding citizens, LOL, way back there are also probably not armed so lets do some crime there first ’cause they can’t stop us ’cause we have guns and they don’t.”

        Criminals rule number one for ‘Gun Free Zones’: The armed criminal in a gun free zone will be armed and the law abiding citizen probably isn’t.

        NY rule number one for ‘Gun Free Zones’: The law abiding citizen can’t be armed in a gun free zone so by the grace of Hogwarts and the oath of Harry Potter law abiding citizens can’t be victims of criminals with guns in the gun free zone.

        • I am also seeing changing up how businesses handle carry on their property making no carry the default and the business needs to “opt in” to allow carry on property and the consequences for those carrying (legally) go from a trespass type offense to a felony. See what they put through. Ultimately your summary will be accurate no matter what they do.

    • Right-click on the link (not left-click) and select “Open link in incognito window”. No more pay wall. Works on many other websites, too.

    • There are valid “qualfiers” that a researcher can use, to be HONEST about what they are peddling:

      “The data is not conclusive, either way, but we infer from [x, y and z] that further study will show . . . ” i.e., our conclusion doesn’t actually comport with the data, but we know it will, someday”;

      but they aren’t that honest. We do have some solid data points, that have yet to be refuted. They claim that “no federal research has been done”, but that’s a lie – there was a MANDATED CDC/DOJ report done about the end of the AWB – no statistically significant change in crime rates, murder rates, or rates of mass shootings. *LOUD BUZZER* Oops, you f***ed up.

      They claim that a “good guy with a gun” never stops crimes, and you are “more likely to injure yourself or your family” than deter a crime. And, yet, the CDC/DOJ did MANDATED research of DGUs, and found . . . a MINIMUM of 500,000 DGUs per year. A mximum of 4 MILLION. Let’s be generous and give them the minimum. Hmmm . . . 35,000 “firearm deaths” (75 – 80% of which are SUICIDES, FFS), vs. 500,000 DGUs??? And THAT is your “compelling” argument for more gun control????

      We need to stop letting them dictate the terms of the debate. We HAVE statistics that THEY got to diddle with . . . and those prove their BS to be BS. Their responses are to continue to cite small, limited, methodologically-flawed “studies” done to reach a pre-ordained conclusion. Michael Bellesisles, anyone????

      I, for one, would be perfectly happy to roll the dice on a COMPREHENSIVE, objectively crafted, methodologically sound study on crime, gun crime, murder rates, etc. . . . with BOTH sides agreeing to the methodology . . . and then we’re DONE with this nonsense.

      The Left constantly claims John Lott and his studies have been debunked, but . . . are strangely reticent to cite studies EQUALLY rigorous that supposedly “debunk” Lott’s results. OTOH, the Leftists give us shite like Michael Bellesisles, who has ADMITTED that he basically pulled “data” out of his arse.

      Yeah, I’m gonna call bulls*** on this one.

  5. > “for 24 years, Congress effectively barred the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from funding their work.”

    Nope, not at all. Congress just prohibited you from lobbying and advocating for political stuff. You could still do all the research you wanted. You lying whore. Did I say that out loud?

  7. “But it is also notable for what it leaves out. It does not ban high-capacity magazines, which allow shooters to fire repeatedly without pausing to reload. Studies suggest doing so would significantly reduce death tolls in mass shootings.”

    What study? Because any small pause for 10 round vs 30 round magazine changes is not going to significantly slow down a premeditated murderer.

    I don’t follow every little detail of every mass shooting, but Columbine used a shotgun and a high point 995 (10 round) and Parkland used 10 round magazines. Then we’ve got Uvalde where the silly little bed wetter had so much time he could have caused as much death with reloading a pair of black powder revolvers. Those are just the ones I know of.

      • Yep. 10 rounders.

        OTOH, as any COMPETENT pistolero knows, “reloading time” is not a pause.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnP4IKHdgWw

        Now I will freely admit that I’m not (quite) that fast, but I practice “combat reloads” regularly. If you are relying on my “pause to reload”??? Yeah, that’s not going to work out well for you.

    • Columbine did have a TEC9 as well, but it seems they had plenty of time to reload shotguns (one a double barrel) and the hi-point. Hoping that maybe a mag reload will take too long and maybe the shooter gets stopped by unarmed people… In an already rare event… is really silly as a policy that affects the whole population. What about those first ten shots? I always call those the “free kills”, apparently you get ten shots before the liberals care.

      Make all cars have 2 gallon tanks (or small batteries) so a drunk driver can’t get far before having to stop and refuel? Or only sell beer in 5 can cases with 7 oz per can, liquor in only 375ml bottles hoping a drunk driver would get lazy having to open all those little packages? It’s not like they can’t pour another glass. It’s not a perfect analogy. Maybe this one – the federal bans on switchblades and auto knives, I guess that fast action vs having to manually deploy the blade would give someone the chance to escape?

  9. Like the “Climate Change” gravy train, these people want to set up another one, this time about “gun violence.” With sketchy premises that can never be proven, they can milk the Federal government for millions.

    “Scientists” are grifters.

    • It’s tempting to conflate “scientist” with “activist,” but they really aren’t the same thing. A lot of activists call themselves scientists because it’s convenient and useful. Real scientists (there are too few) understand that research is about characterizing and understanding the world, not prescribing solutions based on ideology.

  10. Ahhh nothing beats selective bias confirming faulty “science” studies. Yet again, root cause analysis ignoring that suicides and inner-city hand gun murders (mainly young black men) as the overwhelming majority of gun deaths and focusing on an emotionally charged political issue is par for the course.

    See COVID. The worst bias based politically motivated “science” garbage that has sent the hard won trials of strong clinical medical studies back DECADES.

  11. During the Clinton fiasco, Bill Clinton stated that the problem with this country is that people have too many rights. Sounds like something a socialist would say. He also said ” I did not have sex with that woman”.

    • Ed,

      And Barry Soetoro basically said the same thing. Funny that the one thing the Leftists agree on is that the Constitution isn’t to their liking. Heaven forbid that they have any limits on their authoritarianism.

  12. “Studies” never seem to have any details.
    Something tells me the circumstances in which those under 21s end up involved in homicides would negate any age limit or background check laws.

  13. Those statistics will soon appear to be much improved, when they plug in the figures from an 18 to 24 month period where NO doctors actually caused a death in the U.S. …. it was ALL Covid’s
    fault.

  14. ” magazines, which allow shooters to fire repeatedly without pausing to reload.”

    Well, first of all that is not correct/true. A magazine is just a “supply”. Its trigger pull frequency that lets a shooter fire “repeatedly” for as long as the magazine supply lasts then the shooter reloads when the magazine supply is exhausted. A magazine does not “allow” shooters to fire repeatedly nor does it enhance the ability for trigger pull frequency.

    Being a scientist myself (physics) I can tell you that actual science deals in facts and this “junk science” broad and incorrect, and false, assertion about magazines in the article tells me they have already predetermined what their study will show and have designed definitions that support their conclusions. This is not uncommon in anti-gun studies, and it is not science or valid reliable research.

    • And if you want to get really nit pickey about it… factually, physically, actually, the shooter actually reloads after each shot by the semi-auto functioning of the firearm.

  15. The truth is there should be NO SEALED JUVENILE RECORDS PERIOD…ALL VIOLENT JUVENILE OFFENDERS OVER 16 SHOULD BE ADJUDICATED INTO ADULT COURTS AND ADULT SENTENCES…These kids know right from wrong and its time to hold them accountable for what they do in life…It is time to stop excusing and compartmentalizing bad behavior and “nip it in the bud”….Stop blaming parents too…Evil is just evil…Evil needs to be SORTED OUT…

  16. My brother in his teens could reload a single break 12 gauge fast enough when dove hunting (keeping shells between fingers and even in his mouth) that anyone within earshot would swear in court they were hearing a semi-auto.

  17. “We pretty much own rural and small town America, and I think this is a sensible solution to the problem before us, which is school safety and mental health and, yes, I hope it will be viewed favorably by voters in the suburbs we need to regain in order to hopefully be a majority next year,” McConnell added, per CNN.

    Got that? Do you wonder why they don’t care about you? Because they think they own you. They’re concerned with making inroads into the big city suburbs. Funding for drag kween story/dancing hour at your local elementary school can’t be far behind.

    *Had to spell queen wrong in that context to avoid moderation.

    • I for one will NOT be voting for my RINO senator in November, because he sold us out on this. And I told him so.

      I encourage others in the same situation to stay home, or vote out their RINOS. And tell them why.

      • Prepare to love your Hillary clone. You MUST get INVOLVED in the process before your state primary to get REAL Conservative Republicans nominated. Turning out a Senate incumbent at a primary is nearly impossible. Even with a Trump endorsement.

        Will be SIX years before you get another chance.

    • Only fools go along with the “rino “ title and think Republicans are anything other than yesterday’s Democrats. They’re two wings of the same authoritarian bird. Their Saint Ronnie Reagan passed some of the worst gun laws ever, ran up insane deficits, in addition to supporting abortion as the governor of California.

      • The average garden-variety Republican is no different, I agree.

        But until there is a viable conservative/libertarian/populist alternative, we have to work with what we’ve got. That means prioritizing issues, punishing bad decisions, and rewarding good ones.

        This also assumes that voting actually matters.

        I’m not always sure that it does. The game is rigged eight ways til Sunday. However, by voting myself I make it marginally more difficult, at least in theory, for someone to stuff the ballot box without getting caught.

        • “But until there is a viable conservative/libertarian/populist alternative, we have to work with what we’ve got.”

          This. Try to take the RINOs out in the primaries. If you can’t, vote for them in the general instead of default support for the commies. As bad as McConnell is, he’s better than the alternative. The Senate majority under his leadership helped to deliver the current makeup of the Supreme Court. Remember when they tried to sell Merrick Garland as a moderate Justice, and McConnell held the line?

        • Dude,

          This is why we keep trying to flush but the turds keep circling the bowl instead.

          Nope. I’ll take the Dem for 6 years over the RINO. At least that way I know what to expect.

          I’ll probably vote 3rd party (or maybe just stay home) instead of actually voting Democrat, unless they are a blue dog.

        • Remember when they tried to sell Merrick Garland as a moderate Justice, and McConnell held the line?

          Remember when Joe Biden could string together a coherent sentence pretty much at will? Remember when Benedict Arnold wasn’t a traitor? Remember when K-12 wasn’t pushing more genders than Heinz has flavors? Remember when a brutal killer was an innocent child?

          Yeah, so do I. So fucking what?

        • “Yeah, so do I. So fucking what?”

          It means as bad as they are, there’s still a stark contrast with Democrats. I’m also old enough to remember the Puritans like Glenn Beck and Ben Shapiro, among many other conservatives, saying they couldn’t support Trump in 2016. If everyone voted like those big name right wingers, we would have a Supreme Court full of political activists that didn’t know what a woman was.

          None of that means we can’t take them out. It means we shouldn’t cut off our nose to spite our face. If people don’t know what to expect from both the RINOs and the neocommies at this point, then I have to assume they’ve been asleep for the past six years.

        • You’ll essentially gut the GOP or the country will slide into chaos with do-nothing GOP establishment types at the helm.

          It’s that simple. There’s no middle ground on this. The Dems are unsalvageable at this point and there’s no organization around a serious third party.

          Nearly all the RINOs go in the primaries this time around or we all pay a price most people cannot imagine having to pay. But they will figure it out and when they do “Hell’s coming to breakfast”.

        • I’ve given it some thought. Our two party system is so entrenched that I don’t see a realistic viable third party anytime soon. The answer is to use the existing infrastructure by remaking the GOP. My minimum list of those that need to be taken out in the next primaries are those that voted for this nonsense and those that voted for the Build Back Broke infrastructure package. I feel like it’s a realistic goal to take out nearly half of them. People are fed up. I don’t know if that’s enough, but it’s better than what we have now.

        • Dude,

          Look, I’m generally a pretty optimistic person. So much so that I tend to look at people who are basically life-long assholes as having been victims of a brainwashing system.

          I don’t see how you get out of this unless you completely and utterly gut the GOP establishment. To the fuckin’ bone. You don’t play nice with cancer and that’s what the establishment is. I could give you a very long list, one of my old-school 2017 style posts, I won’t. I’ll just ask you if you think the GOP would deal with the following short list in any rational way.

          1. $259 Trillion in unfunded liabilities and debt.
          2. Rampant lawlessness in the Executive agencies and Federal LE.
          3. Complete and total capture of other many Executive Agencies by outside forces. (Regulatory capture, IOW).
          4. The unchecked surveillance state that needs to be, uh, pruned rather mightily.
          5. The entire K-12 and higher ed systems, top to bottom, tip to tail.
          6. A senile POTUS and a hapless VPOTUS.
          7. Inbound food shortages the likes this country has never seen.
          8. The complete and utter takeover of media, social media and internet infrastructure by actors that are openly hostile to the COTUS.
          9. The obvious complete and total lack of border security that we have.
          10. The damage done to our energy infrastructure by this administration.
          11. The overall decay of pretty much all of our infrastructure.
          12. Extrication of our European “problems”.

          Each of those items could easily generate a quite serious 50 page white paper on the topic and I could go on for several pages more topics.

          Pray tell, which of these will the GOP address quickly, correctly and more or less wholly? I’d like to say half the list I’ve posted. IRL, the answer is none. What they’d have to tell the public in order to do any of those things simply isn’t a political possibility.

          You’re dealing with a GOP that is now known to have held a very “blue” policy of talking big on ACA repeal while NEVER having intended to do it because that would mean they would “lose the issue going forward”.

        • A lot of big talking BS from those who obviously yap yap yappin rather than ever getting involved in the political process. Just to icky for your delicate sensibilities?

        • Wait a second. You’re optimistic? I’m glad I didn’t read that before going to bed. I agree that the establishment has to be gutted. I was just being realistic. We’d be lucky to take out half of that list. Some will retire which will help. Entrenched power defends entrenched power. I live in a decent red district within a decent red state. My rep and senators aren’t on those lists. The state government here is pretty good. However, the state GOP tried to pull a fast one and limit who could run in the primaries recently. They don’t want the people to choose. They want to choose the candidate who ends up in the general. Remember Sen. McCain’s push for campaign finance reform? That wasn’t for the people. That was for the entrenched power. It would have limited new candidates without a massive war chest. The establishment didn’t want to be challenged.

          It can be done. AOC took out a big establishment dem. I’m not sure, but she may have had some money backing her. I know she had a big tech exec running her campaign. They may have viewed her as a vessel for change.

          It looks like the dems have gotten into the Republican primary game. They’re voting for the lesser of two evils or against “MAGA” candidates. I’ve said it before: if someone lives in a blue district, register as a Democrat and vote in the primary. The general election only matters if you’re in a swing district. In the past, most people have ignored the primaries. That needs to end.

  18. Over 200 days since the atf has received my form 4. “Gun control”. Who needs hearing? And yep, done at a kiosk, 3rd time. 3 time loser. Guess they finally had enough of me mailing in adopt a dog flyers.

    • It’s all political theater. They have to be seen to be doing something, anything, no matter how much resources are wasted, no matter how ineffectual, and no matter the unintended consequences in reality.

      • More or less this. They’ve admitted as much. Plus, they love expanding government and spending money we don’t have. We’ll have to see how using federal money to coerce the states works out. They probably placed some extra spending in there as well because they do that every chance they get. Deals were made.

  22. Real Studies don’t suggest, they show. The real study of the 1994 to 2004 High Capacity Magazine Ban came to the conclusion it had no effect on crime. Let’s see here, what infamous School Shooting with an Assault Type weapon with standard capacity magazines, happened right in the middle of McSniffy Schitz-His-Pants’ much loved and lauded, but totally ineffective “Assault Weapon and Standard Capacity Magazine Ban? Oh yeah, Columbine.

  23. Let’s look at how many crimes were thwarted with guns, and see how we can use guns to reduce criminals and crime. It worked in Brazil! Look it up!

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