This is really preposterous. It defies not only logic but science, responsible reporting, and ethical obligations. But guns, so it’s fine, right?
I’m going to start by giving you CNN’s opening paragraph to this idiotic story.
During National Rifle Association annual conventions, when about 80,000 gun owners spend a few days focused on seminars, events and meetings, America seems to be safer, new research suggests.
Whoa! Right? Mind-boggling if true! Putting all the dirty gun people in one place makes everyone safer! PROVING EVERYTHING.
Only that’s obviously a steaming pile of stupidity.
Here’s more from the irresponsible CNN article:
More specifically, the rate of firearm-related injuries when NRA members gather en masse falls by 20% nationwide, according to a study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
When a state hosted a convention, and presumably a higher percentage of local gun enthusiasts attended, gun-related injuries in that state fell 50%, said Dr. Anupam Jena, the study’s senior author and an associate professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School.
Whoa again! How smart and statistical sounding! Very science! Much scared!
What a crock.
One more excerpt.
“Fewer people using guns means fewer gun injuries, which in some ways is not surprising,” said Jena, who is also a practicing physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “But the drop in gun injuries during these large meetings attended by thousands of well-trained gun owners seems to refute the idea that gun injuries stem solely from lack of experience and training in gun use.”
That one is important because it shows they are not only drawing a conclusion, they are stating that conclusion, and CNN is reporting it as a conclusion.
Here is what the NRA said.
This study is another example of when data and numbers fly in the face of logic and common sense. A quick glance at the numbers says it all: There are 100 million gun owners in America, with about 80,000 of them attending the NRA Annual Meeting each year — that’s less than one-tenth of 1 percent of American gun owners. This study claims that firearms-related injury plummets 20 percent nationwide when less than one-tenth of 1 percent of gun owners attend this event? That’s absurd. You don’t have to be a Harvard researcher to see those numbers simply don’t add up.
Great point. One which CNN follows up to with this paragraph:
The research was not intended to explain exact causes and effects or pin down how the numbers add up. But Jena, who says he has no strong political views on the NRA, tossed out some theories.
Remember above where they draw a conclusion and report a conclusion? Remember the opening paragraph where they imply a cause and effect? Yeah. Only there is no cause-effect relationship established at all. There isn’t even a correlation established, since there is no finding as the to the fluctuations in gun related injuries under other conditions, no elaboration on whether other major and possibly related factors cause similar fluctuations in the absence of an NRA convention (did hunting season end somewhere? Are more people on vacation? Is crime down?)
You don’t know because CNN doesn’t say. Or ask.
Despite high rates of unintentional firearm injuries,1-3 and recognition by the National Rifle Association (NRA) that firearm education is important it is often said that firearm injuries occur primarily among inexperienced users and that firearm safety comes with experience and training. To investigate this contention, we conducted a study in which we hypothesized that firearm use would decline during the dates of NRA meetings — which attract tens of thousands of members from across the United States, including firearm owners and owners of venues where firearms are used (e.g., firing ranges and hunting grounds) — and that firearm injuries would also decline even among experienced users. We identified emergency department visits and hospitalizations for firearm injuries during NRA convention dates and during identical days in the 3 weeks before and 3 weeks after NRA conventions in a national database of privately insured patients during 2007 through 2015.
The “control” dates are simply weekends preceding and following convention dates over a mere nine-year period. That’s nine conventions. No other parts of the year were studied, nor the impact on gun-related injuries of other factors.
In 2014, there was a cheerleading scandal the week of the NRA convention. There was a cheerleading scandal this week, too. During the 2011 NRA convention Colorado State held their annual cheerleading tryouts. In May 2010, during the week of the convention, the sports world was debating whether cheerleading was the most dangerous sport for women, or was even a sport at all. The day of the 2013 convention, The Texas Tech University Spirit Program named their pom squad.
CORRELATION!! CHEERLEADERS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR GUN INJURIES.
The NRA is correct about the conclusion being drawn. It’s a preposterous biased notion, and the New England Journal of Medicine and CNN are both fake news for drawing conclusions about gun owners on this nonsense “study.”
By the way? There is no corresponding increase in gun injuries in Dallas. Oh my!
(What? How do I know there isn’t? They would be flogging that if there were. That’s my scientific study.)