Doctors’ Role in Stopping Gun Violence – Iulia Filip – The Atlantic
Speaking as someone who’s spent 30 years doing clinical research, a big part of the problem is that they know this isn’t a “health care” issue. Is violence in general a public health crisis? What about crime, in general? What about the moral decline that leads to all this crime and violence? Is defensive gun use included in this so-called public health crises? If so, do they count all uses or just when shots are actually fired? A good model should take the latter into account.
If you want to call it a crisis, good analysis should include some comparison between the groups. I.e. all criminal violence v. criminal violence using a gun. Defensive gun use (even if no shots fired) v. criminal gun use v. all criminal violence. And while you’re at it, give me p-values at a 95% confidence interval. Let’s see if these claims actually satisfy a real scientific standard for statistical significance. Somehow, I suspect you won’t find p<0.05 much less 0.01 without some significant cooking of the data.
Before you try to shoehorn this into a medical issue, let’s see some a) justification that it even IS a medical concern and b) objective evidence that the concern is clinically and statistically significant. The few honest studies I’ve seen (such as Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy) fail those tests, and spend their conclusion trying to shift the burden of proof.
When the empirical data consistently fails to support your premise with any level of significance, *good* science dictates that you need to critically examine your model. Instead, I’m seeing the data chewed to yield a desired outcome. As a scientist, I find this not only embarrassing but unethical.
That’s ignoring the inconvenient fact that it is actually in decline and the more gun friendly the laws, the greater the decline.
Oops.
Then there is the other little problem this represents. Remember when, years ago, many of us were warning about how the ACA will be abused to use the medical system to control every aspect of peoples’ lives? Guess what?
You see, the argument is going to be, “Oh, we’re not stepping on the 2nd Amendment. All we’re doing is addressing a health care concern as we’re supposed to do.” So far, everything I – and others like me – have warned about Obamacare has been proving true. Loss of coverage. Skyrocketing costs. Decrease in quality. Increasing uninsured. Logistical/program nightmares. I wish I was wrong, but we’ve had a pretty good track record in what’s going to happen.
This one isn’t even that hard of a stretch. After all, that medical approval is already required in North Caroline where this story originated. It’s just taking an already bad idea to a national level.
As it is now, this whole “health crisis” argument by the gun control community is guilty of the fallacies of begging the question, the ecological fallacy, false dilemma and I’m sure a bit of analysis would show others. And there are enough red herrings to open a canning factory.
Someone want to do a real study on the issue? Good! Call me and I’ll help. Let the data fall where it may. I’m that confident. There’s a reason that Natural Rights are natural. There essential truth is undeniable and when looked at objectively, they will always win out. (Oh, and that is editorial for those who can’t tells the difference between statements of opinion and fact.)