Texas Media Tries to Undermine Pro-Gun Moves with Debunked Study

Texas has long had a pro-gun reputation, but it wasn’t as well-earned as many would have liked to believe. Recent years have seen much of that change, though. They’ve started to live up to their reputation.

This year, the legislative session saw additional steps in that direction.

And it seems the media in the Lone Star State has a problem with that, especially in light of a recent “study” that’s made the news.

Texas lawmakers passed another set of bills making it easier for gun owners to access and keep firearms, and expanded the kinds of weapons they can access.

The push for looser regulations on firearms comes at a time when firearms are the leading cause of death among children in the United States, passing car accidents, cancer and overdoses. A recent study from the Journal of the American Medical Association has also linked “permissive” gun legislation to higher rates of gun deaths among children, with the study listing Texas as one of the most permissive states.

Meanwhile, legislation that sought to curb access to guns received little attention this session, a return to its roots after a small victory for gun control advocates in 2023, when a House committee passed a bill that would have raised the age to purchase a rifle from 18 to 21. The bill ultimately missed a key deadline to reach the House floor.

The bills passed that are waiting for approval from Gov. Greg Abbott represent a continued effort to make gun ownership easier for residents. Here’s what to know.

It’s pretty clear what the goal is in this. While they talk about the pro-gun measures Texas has undertaken, it’s pretty clear the writer wants people to see this as a bad thing.

This is a problem, though not an unexpected one.

Since the moment the study in question came out, I knew we’d see it repeated often enough in the media. They love these kinds of things, and they’re going to repeat them as much as possible.

The problem is that the study is absolute garbage.

They found what they found, sure, but there’s a lot of hinky stuff about the study in question. I’ve talked about it here and again here, and I also discussed what John Lott found here.

The long and the short of it is that the study is terribly constructed and reaches conclusions that are far from as certain as many are trying to make them.

The fact that it uses the McDonald decision as a jumping-off point illustrates the absolute stupidity of it.

But the media doesn’t care about that. They have no interest in a critical examination of the research. They don’t know how to examine research critically. They just parrot it because they like the outcome.

Texas is moving in the right direction. Bias dressed up like research shouldn’t change that, and shame on the media for trying to use it like this. It had no place in this story. It wasn’t relevant to the story about the gun legislation being dealt with by the legislature. That is, unless the story was really to attack pro-gun lawmakers for doing the right thing.