I’ve yet to see a single bit of research from Rutgers University’s New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center that is remotely supportive of the right to keep and bear arms, which is exactly the way the anti-gun politicians who fund the center want it to operate.
In its latest “study”, the center’s executive director Michael Anestis purportedly found that “adults with firearm access are far more likely to be exposed to gun violence than they are to defend themselves with their firearms”; a finding he hopes will lead to gun policies that “more heavily weigh the harms that frequently occur, not the instances of defense that rarely happen.”
You can read the study for yourself here if you’d like, but I can also spare you the time and energy by pointing out the fundamental flaw in Anestis’s “research.”
Under the study’s parameters, 3000 gun owners were asked a series of questions about defensive gun use:
Have you ever engaged in any of the following behaviors with a firearm to protect yourself or someone else:
- Told someone who was threatening you that you had a firearm
- Shown your firearm to someone who was threatening you
- Fired your firearm in the vicinity of but not at someone who was threatening you
- Fired your firearm at someone who was threatening you
- None of the above
Survey respondents were also asked about their exposure to “gun violence”.
Please indicate whether you have had each of the following experiences:
- Have you ever known someone personally that has died by suicide with a firearm?
- Have you ever been threatened with a firearm by another person?
- Have you ever been intentionally shot with a firearm by another person?
- Have you personally known someone, such as a friend or family member, who has been shot on purpose by another person with a firearm?
- Have you ever personally witnessed a shooting in the neighborhood where you lived at the time?
- Have you ever heard gun shots in the neighborhood where you lived at the time?
See the problem yet? The universe of questions regarding exposure to “gun violence” is far broader than those queries about defensive gun use, so it’s not particularly surprising that the anti-gun researchers found that DGUs are far less common than being exposed to gun violence.
Anestis and his team only asked about the respondents’ defensive gun use, not whether or not they knew anyone who had used a firearm in self-defense. But when asking about “gun violence”, the Rutgers team was eager to include anyone the respondent might have known who took their life with a firearm or was intentionally shot. I’ve never used any of my guns in self-defense, and I have lost a few friends to suicide with a firearm, but I also know multiple individuals who’ve used one of their guns to protect themselves. Those folks, and their defensive gun uses, are completely irrelevant… at least according to the terms of Anestis’s study.
There’s another issue with the questions used to generate Anestis’s results. Respondents were asked whether they’ve ever personally witnessed a shooting or heard gun shots in their neighborhood. If the answer was yes, the respondents were automatically categorized as having been exposed to gun violence. What if the shooting they witnessed was a defensive gun use? What if the gunshots they heard were fired in self-defense or another lawful purpose?
My late wife heard the sound of gunfire on a regular basis when she was living in Camden, New Jersey. But she also heard gunshots ring out all the time living on our small farm in central Virginia. The difference was that those gun shots in gun-controlled Camden were most likely fired by individuals breaking the law, while the sound of gunfire in the woods and pastures near our farmhouse were generated by hunters or recreational shooters.
Frankly, I think it’s kind of ridiculous to include the mere sound of gunshots as exposure to gun violence, especially when the respondent has no idea why they heard a gun being discharged. If the subjects of Anestis’s study have no way of differentiating between the criminal misuse of a firearm and lawful activities involving the pull of a trigger, how would they know if they were exposed to “gun violence”? And by lumping in every discharge of a firearm within earshot of a respondent as “gun violence”, the anti-gun researcher has found another method of guaranteeing his preferred finding that “gun violence” being more common than a defensive gun use.
According to Anestis, the parameters of his study were approved by the Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences institutional review board, which doesn’t exactly instill me with confidence in any research given the green light by that body. Regardless of how many “experts” gave his study the thumbs up, though, this study was conducted in a manner that was certain to generate the anti-gun result the researchers were looking for.
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