Last week, I wrote about a study out of UC San Diego that should have been laughed out of the research community, but wasn’t. It tried to link gun ownership with domestic violence.
Not gun ownership rates, mind you, which can have a number of potential links, including as a response to domestic violence. Oh no, they tried to link gun ownership with domestic violence itself.
The study had some serious flaws in its methodology, in part because it was based on a survey and also because it just looked at two incredibly different states: California and Louisiana.
Of course, despite these flaws, the mainstream media didn’t waste much time reporting on it.
From Newsweek:
A link between domestic violence and firearms ownership has been identified in an eye-opening new study.
Those who have experienced or perpetrated intimate partner violence in the past year are significantly more likely to own a firearm, and to have purchased one in the past year, the study found.
Researchers from the University of California San Diego studied an analysis of statewide survey data from adults in California and Louisiana, using data from both states’ 2023 Violence Experiences surveys.
Paper author Jakana Thomas, a professor of political science at the college’s School of Global Policy and Strategy, said in a statement that the results suggest “that both experiencing and perpetrating intimate partner violence are strongly associated with increased rates of firearm ownership and recent firearm purchase.”
“The fact that we see these relationships in states with very different firearm policy contexts suggests this is a broader phenomenon, not limited to a particular legislative environment.”
…
Perpetrators of intimate partner violence were five times more likely to have bought a firearm in the past year, while victims of intimate partner violence showed three times higher odds of doing so.
However, what Newsweek left out was that the “three times higher odds” were just a smidge over six percent.
In other words, despite the hysteria, it’s actually ridiculously low.
And the truth is, surveys might be the only option to try and get data like this, but the truth is that surveys are notoriously bad at gathering accurate information. Far too many people report what they think they should report, or may report things they want people to believe–yes, they often believe them themselves, even if they’ve never experienced it–and so the results can be skewed horribly.
But I’ve already covered all of that. I did it just last week.
What gets me is that the media is using this, reporting it as if it’s somehow relevant, and doing so with absolutely no questions or critiques, even by other researchers or firearm experts. They’re parroting the study as if it’s unquestionable.
Of course, this isn’t surprising. A decade ago, a science journalist named John Bohannon kicked off a firestorm. Twice.
First, he did it with a study that found you could lose weight by eating chocolate. He got it published and everything. The media lapped it up, with most publications just parroting his press release. Very few even bothered to talk to him–he was operating under the pseudonym, Dr. Johannes Bohannon, for this purpose–and only one got even close to discovering the truth.
Then, he blew the whistle on himself.
What he found in truth was that science journalism is in a sorry state, where the reporters covering this particular beat have no understanding of research, research protocols, or literally anything else. They’re just working that beat and filing reports that are little more than rewriting press releases, and that didn’t involve anything beyond that.
The publications could have just run the presser as it was and saved themselves the salary of a so-called reporter.
That whole hoax and how it exposed science journalism runs through my head every time I see one of these reports. And let’s be real here, if they’ll do such little work over something as bizarre as losing weight while eating chocolate (in fairness, it was dark chocolate), then why would they put more effort into something that paints guns and gun owners in a negative light?
Expect more of this.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment.
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