• jasory@programming.dev
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    11 months ago

    Not a gun nut. But these studies don’t actually test any hypothesis about defensive gun use.

    It is easily probable that it is simply the case that people obtain firearms for defense against an existing threat or are the threat themselves( i.e are susceptible to far greater violent events than the norm). In order to test that guns actually are ineffective in self-defense you need to compare it to actual incidents of violence towards the gun user.

    • poopkins@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Do you know why we don’t have such studies in the United States? The firearms lobby has ensured that it is prohibited from being researched.

      • jasory@programming.dev
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        11 months ago

        Yes, because the CDC is the only source of academic research in the US. Activist talking points are unfortunately rarely accurate. The Dickey Amendment reduced research into gun violence, but under no circumstances did it eliminate; it’s also been changed since it was first passed.

        The real reason why gun violence research is often poor quality is the same as why most social research is poor quality: high variability, unaccounted variables, differences in interpretation of questionnaire’s, unreliability of self-reporting, and the fact that most studies are conducted by parties interested in a specific result.

        • poopkins@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Thanks for the insightful response, those are legitimate points. I was confused by your first sentence and presume that was meant sarcastically?