“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]