“Racism and guns go together,” nydailynews.com “reports.” “That’s the finding of an international study released Thursday that says the two are linked. More specifically, odds are greater that a racist white American also keeps a gun at home and opposes gun control regulations. The conclusion wasn’t too surprising for researchers at Australia’s Monash University and Britain’s Manchester University, which sought to better understand American gun culture.” Considering the source, I’m not surprised, either . . .
“There had already been research showing that … blacks are more likely to be shot, so we thought there must be something happening between the concept of being black and some whites wanting guns,” Monash researcher Kerry O’Brien said in an email to the Daily News.
And that’s how you conduct a study. First you come to a conclusion then you find data to support it. And then you couch your “result” in academic jargon. Like this . . .
“It is particularly noteworthy that the relationship between symbolic racism and the gun-related outcomes was maintained in the presence of conservative ideologies, political affiliation, opposition to government control and being from a southern state, which are otherwise strong predictors of gun ownership and opposition to gun reform,” said the study, published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE .
And what, you may ask, is “symbolic racism”? Have a look at the study’s objectives:
Racism is related to policies preferences and behaviors that adversely affect blacks and appear related to a fear of blacks (e.g., increased policing, death penalty).
Wait. Who decides which policy preferences and behaviors “adversely affect blacks” and “appear” (?) related to a fear of blacks? The authors! And right from the git-go they can GTFO. While I’m no fan of police militarization since when is supporting increased policing and the death penalty a sign of racism?
There’s your “symbolic racism.” Even the pro-civilian disarmament New York Daily News felt obliged to highlight (in the seventh paragraph) the study’s bias.
The report used data from the American National Election Study and scored people based on their “symbolic racism,” which is used to measure anti-black sentiments.
Since judging someone as racist can be subjective, the study ranked racism based on how participants answered a series of questions.
One question asked, “How well does the word ‘violent’ describe most blacks?” and participants were given five responses to choose from, ranging from “extremely well” to “not at all well.”
An “extremely well” response was seen as an endorsement of a stereotype.
The News didn’t really do a deep data dive. And I’m no Nick Leghorn when it comes to debunking bunkum. But even a casual observer can see that this is junk science. At best. Only the News didn’t want to see it that way, did it? By giving voice to this ridiculous pseudo-academic nonsense without any dissenting view, they endorse it. Here’s the end of the article:
“As distant and dispassionate observers growing up in countries where there is 36 times less gun-related deaths — and gun ownership is extremely rare and well-regulated — we couldn’t make sense of why there would be resistance to gun reform in the U.S.,” O’Brien said. “Most of the logic for wanting to have a gun was illogical.”
He said that clamping down on gun violence and murder rates is tricky if U.S. whites continue to oppose strong gun reform more than other racial groups.
U.S. policymakers may have to consider implementing new policies even if it’s against popular opinion, the study found.
“It would be good to see the U.S. government dedicate more funding to research on this issue, and to look at how our own, sometimes unconscious biases may influence our policy decisions,” O’Brien said.
What’s illogical: believing that people who want to defend and extend our natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms to all Americans are racist, sexist or stupid. But with anti-gun agitprop like this in the mainstream media they have every right to be mad as hell and determined not to take it anymore. [h/t Accur81 for the image]
What I find racist is the implication by foreigners that my dark skin automatically classifies me as a victim of circumstance, instead of an educated man who chooses to guide his own destiny.
Signed, a biracial veteran gun owner.
Bam! Nailed it. The entire current Democratic platform is built on that assumption.
Ah yes, the Democrat Party.
“Judging people by the color of their skin–not the content of their character–since 1828.”
Race has nothing to do with it as far as I am concerned. The idea that some foriegner thinks they know how life should be in America makes me sick. If your not happy with the way a country is run, then don’t go there, don’t live there, and (most of all) stop trying to change it into your shitty country….
These supercilious foreign meddlers are bad enough, but far worse are all the Americans who think we need to change who we are so we can be more like some supposedly sophisticated country on another continent.
So sophisticated are they that the ones who aren’t wimps are the very same low-class trash that permeates our and every society on earth.
Yeah, they want us to be more like the Europeans. You know, the “civilized” nations that slaughtered each other wholesale for centuries until the second time we redneck, bass akward, terrible Americans went over with our big ass guns, smacked em silly, split the continent in two, and forced them to chill out.
The thing is – the published article itself is worth reading (if you can read academic-ese). The authors conclusions (in the discussion section) are a mix between reasonable conclusions and biased overreaches (it’s pretty clear that the authors were looking for something negative about guns).
Nevertheless, some parts are interesting. The statistical analyses they chose were appropriate, and the authors are careful to point out that none of their relationships are causal, only correlational, and some of them indeed are weak.
HOWEVER, what is a BIG MESS is the press’ response to this. Scientists hate how our work plays out in the media – they don’t “get” it, they don’t read it, and they just take one or two things to make some outlandish claims and headlines out of. I mean, really – an “international study”? It’s totally normal to collaborate with colleagues in other institutions, even internationally, and not to mention that the “journal” it was published in, “PLOS ONE”, is not a traditional journal, but rather an online, open-access journal that publishes tens-of-thousands of articles every year.
Here’s an analogy: If PLOS ONE represents science, then Wal*Mart represents you (personally, individually, you – all of your thoughts, beliefs, dreams, and idiosyncrasies).
Here’s another analogy: If news-articles-about-science claim to explain science, that’s the same as your next door neighbor explaining the doctrine of transubstantiation (without notes and with catchy sound bites).
+∞
So. People who own something oppose laws banning what they own. I see a Nobel Prize in the works. Can we sue these sh*theads for defamation?
Well, although to be fair, it’s more like:
People who own are somewhat more likely to be white conservative southerners, and then, separately, white conservative southerners are somewhat more likely to be “symbollically” racist (they didn’t actually suggest they were racist, only “symbolically racist”). Oh yeah, and one of the other racist stereotypes they were trying to find a correlation for didn’t exist for gun owners, so there’s that.
Basically, they went 1-for-2.
Or, to be fair, more like .5-for-2 (since it’s only “symbolic”).
And then the Daily News got it…
And I should give 2 shits about a study done in Australia and Great Britain (now there is an oxymoron) because?
Yea, I love being told by a country that I have a 1 in 12 chance of being hacked to death in, in broad daylight, on the street, while folks just sit around and video tape it, that I should also live under the laws that allowed it to get that way.
The ‘research’ also concluded that 52% of households have guns. That’s up from the 30 something percent the rest of the gun grabbers claim.
Just another attempt to shame and stereotype all gun owners.
No! You guize are the sterotypers!
(/sarc)
“…odds are greater that a racist white American also keeps a gun at home and opposes gun control regulations.”
“…odds are that a racist black or Hispanic American gang member also keeps a gun at home and opposes gun control regulations.”
There, fixed it.
I just shake my head at most of the anti-gun propoganda. Life is too short. This, however, actually managed to make me angry at a level that even Piers Morgan has not managed.
So since welfare, minimum wages, affirmative action, a drug war, and government housing also disproportionately affect African Americans, can we then assume that the people who support those policies are rascist?
Yes! Yes, I believe we can.
Does the FBI, or any other “neutral” organization keep track of the races of individuals convicted of perpetrating violent crimes with firearms? If so, what is the white-on-black murder rate compared to the black-on-white and black-on-black murder rates? I’m willing to make an educated guess that the results of such a study wouldn’t play well into the researchers’ favor. And the results would be RAAAAAAACIST.
And while there may be a numerical correlation between having racist attitudes and owning firearms, the researchers are clearly engaging the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy of false causation.
Correlation ≠ Causation. I could make an equivalent argument that the presence of ice cream trucks on the streets of my town results in a higher crime rate. It’s true, but that doesn’t mean that ice cream trucks are causing crime to go up. However, it’s the temperature going up that leads to more crime.
Most murder is black on black or white on white. I don’t have the numbers off the top of my head, but cross racial murder is a small part of the total.
Yep. Here are the numbers.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6
I see a Colion Noir video in the near future…
I really wish that table also broke out Hispanics. Looking at MA #’s from 2004-2009 I found that the murder rate (as victims) for non-Hispanic white people was 1.1/100K, or LOWER than the vaunted UK murder stats. The rate among black people was 15X higher and among Hispanics 6X higher. This is the bastion of “progressiveness” Massachusetts. Perhaps the question we should be asking is why are young black and Hispanic men murdering each other in general rather than the chosen weapon used to do it. We’re all the same at birth, so what happens after that? And why here in liberal utopia does the problem seem exacerbated?
Really all gun owners are racist??? Something else in that report bugs me the figure they use on the difference between American and British gun crimes wouldn’t it be higher in Britain and Australia if guns are banned/ really hard to own in those countries? Wouldn’t stuff like owning too many, without a permit, or an illegal type factor in there and boost those numbers??
Meh. We know the Brits are cooking the numbers; I’d bet that the Ozzies are too. Pot, meet kettle.
I was just wonderin I mean with all the people breaking the dumb gun laws here ( like possession of ammo, owning 30 round mags, loading 8 in a mag.) If that could contribute to high gun crime numbers and if they count those with gun violence (murder, attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, armed robbery, armed burglary, etc.). That’d be an interesting way to dissect the antis arguements there.
Here is the old “Post hoc ergo propter hoc” argument which defines the position of feeble thinkers and lazy essayists.
There may well be a high black death toll due to firearm injury.
There may well be a propensity among white, rural men, to own firearms.
These two facts are not linked in any way.
White men are not shooting black men.
Black men are shooting black men.
The paucity of firearms in “Great” Britain and Australia is not in any way a cause for limiting firearm ownership in America.
In fact the US Constitution enables the right to keep and bear arms. (So does the English 1689 Bill of Rights, but this has been disregarded by Commonwealth parliaments since the 1930s).
This discussion requires a little bit of common sense, something utterly lacking in academic circles.
Perhaps they were angling for a little share of Bloomberg largesse?
reminds me of when the willfully ignorant scream “Conspiracy Theorist!”
I’ll bet the jews living in the Warsaw ghetto circa 1943 would have been THRILLED to have been called racists in exchange for some guns.
Hundreds of millions of dead killed at the hands of their own government or an invading government would have made that trade all day…
I can send them a picture from my local range. It will blow their minds.
I was in Cabelas today (and of course found another gun, a Colt M1917) and saw a lot more than OFWGs.
So they are saying because more black people are shot by other black people – racism!
No, no, you got it all wrong. It’s like this; BECAUSE we’re so racist, more black people are shot by other black people. Black on black crime is really just a manifestation of our psychic abilities.
All pollsters are morons. I know this because I took a poll.
All people who want to disarm black Americans are racist. All people that want to disarm white Americans are racist. Me I just hate everyone that doesn’t comprehend the constitution.
Reminds me of somethin one of my black Drill Sergeants in BCT told us on day zero.
” Privates I am the most racist mother f@$&er on this post. I hate whites, hispanics, asians, arabs, jews, and blacks!! The only race I like is the army, unfortunately for you sorry sh1tbags you won’t be army for the next 9 weeks. Piss on you all I hate each and everyone of you. Just gimme a reason to torture you please so I can vent my racial frustrations.”
“…and to look at how our own, sometimes unconscious biases may influence our…decisions”
Irony so thick you can cut it with a knife.
There is a real dichotomy in the number of blacks vs. whites shot, but the cause is the War on Blacks which they euphemistically call the “War on Drugs.”
Wouldn’t that be the war IN drugs really? Speaking technically. I think I just created a new media buzzword, you heard it here first folks.
So I am being illogical by not wanting the fate of more than a 100 000 of my fellow countrymen to befall me?
F*** you Monash university, F*** you Manchester university and the horse you rode in on.
Usually I dont write like this but it is personal.
Might be a good time to explain what country you were in, lolinski, when 100,000 of your countrymen met their fate. And what were the gun laws like in that country.
“It would be good to see the U.S. government dedicate more funding to research on this issue, and to look at how our own, sometimes unconscious biases may influence our policy decisions,” O’Brien said.
It would be good to see academic researchers looking at how their own, sometimes unconscious biases can transform their research into nothing but a steaming pile of fallacies and culturally biased assumptions.
Or at least look at the research that Obama has forced through recent executive order instead of ignoring it because it doesn’t support the international socialist agenda.
And perhaps also pull their pointy heads out of their azz and stop ignoring reality. Want more gun control? Take a walk in the Chicago South Side some warm evening.
Having looked at this “study” in greater detail, I can see that it is riddled with anomolies, and geared to produce a slanted outcome.
For instance, “symbolic racism” includes any policy measure which relates to justice, housing, education issues. A conservative viewpoint is regarded as inherently racist regardless of the merits or otherwise of the position, just viewed through the lens of the ultimate result for the “black community”, as if there were a homogenous entity capable of expressing its wishes in a coherent fashion to the researchers.
The efficacy of firearms ownership is limited in the researchers eyes, to the ease with which it enables members of the white “community” to ensure success at suicide attempts. No mention of DGUs, no question over the suicide rate being related to the cost of medical care in the case of terminal illness.
It is ironic that views are expressed by Australians, one of the most racist countries on the planet (viz their consistent treatment of Aboriginals and of non Causcasian illegal immigrants in recent years).
This is a “study” where simplification is the instrument of clarification. The terms, frames of reference, and limitations in information gathered, cripple this “study” to the point of uselessness.
Without establishing the real complexity of the overall situation, what comes across is more of a comic book.
This was a “study” where the conclusion was foretold and any data was only permitted to support the dubious findings provided.
The only use I can find for this is to print it off and use for toilet paper.
Why waste the ink (or toner)? There’s plenty of good toilet paper otherwise available. The best possible use for this study is to immediately consign it to the obscurity it so richly deserves.
“…since when is supporting increased policing and the death penalty a sign of racism?”
Normal leftist world-view. Given: Any difference in outcome, such as disproportionate crime rate or incarceration rate for a particular racial group, must be the direct result of bias in the system. Disproportionate number of black people in the prison system? The answer is obvious: Release some black people and/or lock up more people of other races. If you disagree, you are a racist. Neat and tidy, and much easier than, for example, pissing off the teachers’ unions by fixing the inner city public schools.
I heard a well-respected black economist (who’s name at this moment, I cannot recall, unfortunately) on the radio respond to the question of why there are so many young black men in the prisons:
“Because they DID the crime!” No racism evident, in his opinion.
Walter E Williams? Thomas Sowell?
Probably Sowell. He has extensive writings on race besides being an economist.
What a blindingly brilliant research paper. How much do you want to bet that they spent 95% of their grant money at the pub? BTW, that’s a great Linus and Lucy bit.
If “idiot” is a race, I might be racist…
“Racism and guns go together”. One could almost think they are getting desperate looking for a gun control argument that gains traction.
“U.S. policymakers may have to consider implementing new policies even if it’s against popular opinion, the study found.”
And here lies the crux of the matter: We live in a country where the government is supposed to be “…Of the people, by the people, and for the people…”
The will of the people, not a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats, is supposed to reign. For these people to suggest that the enlightened elite dictate to the people what is best, and damn what the people think, shows you their true colors.
Yeah, and if you read a little deeper into the study, you will find their rationale for enacting anti-2A laws:
The implementation of initially unpopular public health initiatives has proven effective for other public health threats (e.g., tobacco taxation, bans on smoking in public places, seatbelt use) that initially did not have widespread public and political support, but have eventually proven popular and have led to changes in attitudes [48], [49].
See. You’ll eventually grow to like having your rights taken away. You’ll realize eventually that it’s better this way, and that our benefactors did, in fact, know what was best for us.
Mandatory seat belts are not only nazi/fascist, but they’re wrong – driver side belts save exactly the wrong person. The negligent driver death rate declines, while the death rate of innocent bystanders increases.
The driver apparently gets the “I’m invulnerable, so don’t need to pay any attention.” syndrome.
“Gallup poll data from 2007-2012 released earlier this year found that 50% of U.S. gun owners are white men and 64% are southern married men. Black gun owners totaled 21%.”
This data is very interesting considering that the most recent census data shows that around 12% of the population is black and just over 70% is white.
So, one could reasonably assume that the majority of guns owners are white simply because there are more of them. Also, if blacks only make up 12% of the overall population, but made up 21% of gun owners polled, one could conclude that there are actually a large amount of black gun owners in the US.
Not only that, but if those numbers are accurate, gun ownership is significantly higher as a percentage among blacks than among whites. Therefore gun ownership would be most strongly associated with being black. But it doesn’t fit the racist redneck stereotype these enlightened researchers want to reinforce, so out it goes.
Is it inconvenient to point out that a quarter of all afro-americans like in seven southern states?
Would it also be inconvenient to say that if most gun owners are white then there is probably a substantial of that group that owns guns and is not racist?
Blacks commit 53% of murders with guns and constitute 50% of victims of murder with guns…despite comprising only 13% of U.S. population. In proportion to their respective populations, more blacks own guns than do whites. Is this based on racism? If so, racism against whom?
F**k those guys. Seriously. F**k them.
They should study the racism practiced in Australia against Aborigines and in England against East Asians and stop worrying about how we live in the United States.
““There had already been research showing that … blacks are more likely to be shot, so we thought there must be something happening between the concept of being black and some whites wanting guns,”
While I didn’t know being black was a “concept”. Most blacks are shot by other blacks.
They can’t be bothered with reality, they’re too busy connecting concepts.
I`m sure that using their same methods of research, I can prove that Brits and Aussies are effeminate government boot lickers and douchebags.
I’d like to see somebody get on PM’s show and ask, “Is it true that all British boys’ first sexual encounter is of the homosexual type, with other boys in the schools?”
Folks – yeah, the article is nonsense, but for a real scare read the comments to the original newspaper story. The responses posted are genuinely disturbing.
By the time I was halfway through them I was almost starting to think the whole thing was some sort of way-too-subtle parody of East Coast Gun Hatred. I’ve honestly never read so much unrelieved denial of reality in my life.
Someone please tell me it’s all a bad joke.
John Lott Jr. Has a great rebuttal article about this “study”, currently up on Fox News’ site.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/11/01/are-racist-if-own-gun/
I recal playing the “Are you a racist?” game. It started on Facebook, took you to another page and you used keys to respond to faces that popped up. The directions were confusing as well as the method for answering. It didn’t ask anything about firearm ownership. Ill bet my paycheck they assembled this data to fit their narrative.
I completed my own study recently. It goes like this;
There had already been research showing that … blacks are more likely to play basketball, so we thought there must be something happening between the concept of blacks playing basketball and some whites wanting hightop sneakers.
Next, they’ll say that gun owners are more likely to be global warming/climate change deniers. Not only do we want armor-piercing, nuclear-tipped bullets, we want the world to burn to a crisp because of all the harmful emissions coming from gun manufacturers. The evidence couldn’t be any clearer. Guns = that global, climate, warming change………….thing.
Obvious tripe. Anyone who had really conducted a serious study would have found that:
1. Racism and modern gun-control culture (which is derived from Jim Crow gun control culture) are the true bedfellows.
2. As so many have already pointed out we blacks are the victims of so much gun crime because we are killing each other, and…
3. Northern Urban White American Liberals, along with the Koreans and the Japanese, have the most racist cultures on the planet (and thus have an affinity for gun control).
I’m a white guy who has a couple guns who lives in Alabama…. I’m the stereotype who they are putting up. One of the first people I would call to back my ass up in a STHF scenerio is an friend of mine who happens to be African American.
The most intolerant, oppressive, prejudiced and discriminatory place that I have lived was San Francisco. The most tolerant, balanced, and mutually-respectful place I have lived in was Portland Oregon.
Blacks are more likely to be shot by other blacks, Or if they intrude on my home.
Gun control on Youtube
Nice graphic, sir.
Gee, blacks are more likely to commit violent crime, especially against whites. Fear of blacks is not racism, it is reality.
While black people are more likely to commit violent crime than white people (as are all groups of people that are poorer than white people on average – including the poor white people), they typically commit violent crime against people in their own communities – other black people.
White-on-white and black-on-black violent crime is common, cross racial violent crime is pretty rare going both ways. While cross racial violent crime is more likely to be black-on-white, it’s likely that the statistics are highly correlated to income (meaning that if you control for poverty that difference goes away).
Still, point stands that there is nothing wrong with being wary of people who are more likely to commit crime. It makes sense to be extra-cautious when you’re in particularly poor neighborhoods (of any race). Just don’t be stupid enough to fear people because of their skin color.
Why is this guy prejudiced against muslims? My muslim friends are more tolerant and accepting than my christian ones. They dislike guns, violence, and sexism and treat their wives equally unlike us whites do.
As a Muslim Republican, I find this comic highly offensive every way I look at it.
I’m pretty sure this blog has a low Muslim readership, but I find that comic extremely offensive. Come on TTAG, this is not Clash Daily.
Stupid, evil, libtard (democrat) hypocrites.
It is as if I named the cartoon.