Thursday, February 12, 2015

New Study Suggests Gun Owners And Gun Rights Advocates Are More Racist

Huffington Post

With a flurry of national incidents calling attention to legislation surrounding the right to bear arms, gun ownership and gun rights advocacy has been at the center of debate. Between the staggering reports of gun violence in cities like Chicago, and the number of mass shootings throughout the year, gun control has become a major issue nationwide. 

But Americans are still facing off on either side of the gun debate, and a new study suggests that gun owners and supporters of legislation in favor of carrying concealed weapons are more likely to be racist. 

The report is extremely relevant, based on recent findings that African-Americans are disproportionately affected by gun violence. According to a 2012 study by the Children's Defense Fund, gun violence is the leading cause of death for black males ages 15-19. In 2008 and 2009, black children and teenagers were 15 percent of the nation's population, however, they accounted for 45 percent of young people killed by guns.

But researcher Kerry O'Brien said, despite the disparity, white Americans are seriously affected by guns as well. 

“White Americans oppose gun control to a far greater extent than do black Americans, but whites are actually more likely to kill themselves with their guns than be killed by someone else. So why would you keep them?” O'Brien said in a press release. “We decided to examine what social and psychological factors predict gun ownership and opposition to gun control.”

33 comments:

  1. Had a hell of a time finding the actual study. Here is the link for it,

    http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077552

    It is interesting to note that whatever your views on "symbolic racism", one thing that did stand out was that the study showed an ownership percentage of 52%. Even higher than the last study we discussed regarding a recent increase in ownership. And this study is two years old.
    It's a phone survey, which means it should be taken with the same grain of salt as the ones for defensive gun uses and the "gun show loophole". For the life of me, I couldn't find a sample size for the study. Does anyone else see it?

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    1. SSG needs to do a better job of reading.

      No, the ANES survey is not a phone survey. Respondents were contacted by phone to ascertain if they were willing to participate in the survey. If they were, they were given access to a website from which the monthly surveys were taken. Respondents were paid monthly for their participation.

      Re ownership of 52%, again, SG has difficulty with probability and stats. The survey notes that gun ownership was 52% among the sample. This does not mean it 52% overall.

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    2. Thank you for setting me straight on the method Jade. In regards to the ownership percentage in the sample, how is that different from any other study or survey that reports gun ownership? Aren't all merely reflecting a percentage of the sample?

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    3. Again, studies of this kind have to control for certain factors so that a given sample isn't under-represented or over-represented. For example, if I performed a Presidential preference survey in 2012 and took a sample in UT--it'd probably show Romney winning in a landslide.

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    4. A perfect example of how statistics can be used falsely to any sides convictions.

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    5. If this study doesn't have a reliable enough sample to make assumptions about gun ownership rates, then how the hell is it supposed to be reliable on any of its other conclusions?

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    6. Jade is right here. Unless the sample was specifically designed to be extrapolated for the general population, then the 53% figure can't be used that way.

      What's funny though, is that Jade did not share that belief when I pointed out the extreme bias in Kellerman's sample on urban vs. rural splits. He basically told me that because the counties encompassing Seattle, Memphis, and Cleveland have some patches of rural living at the edges, that the rural vs. urban differences between gun ownership and violence was accurately represented. In Kellerman's study less than 2% of the possible households in the study are considered rural- but that's good enough for Jade (in that case).

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    7. This is a surprise? Only to the red neck , racists. gun loons whose deep delusion makes them believe they are the true American patriots.

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    8. Especially in light of a more recent survey that we discussed here that showed that 56% of nonwhites surveyed believed that having a gun in the house made them safer. And whites that were surveyed came in only 9% higher. Which would suggest that the symbolic racism present is about equal.

      http://mikeb302000.blogspot.com/2014/11/fascinating-gallup-polls.html

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    9. Why is it SS that all the numbers Mike posts are BS, buy we are supposed to believe all the numbers you post?

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    10. Well Sandra, I just cited numbers that Mike posted that seem to conflict with other numbers that Mike posted. So none of them are my numbers as you put it. So then, which numbers are BS?

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    11. Thanks for claiming you never post numbers on this blog, it saves me from proving you are full of it.

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    12. "Thanks for claiming you never post numbers on this blog,"

      I never said that. I said that this time both sets of data came from Mike's sources. When I contribute and include a cite so others can comment and debate.

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    13. You ducked the question SS, as usual for your your dishonest tactics.

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    14. No Sandra, I didn't duck it. Your comment wants germane to my comment since both sets of numbers came from Mike. If I cite numbers, I tend to include a source so it can be examined and debated. That is what we do here.

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    15. I'll ask again expecting another non response. Claiming my question is not germane, is a duck. I wasn't asking about just these numbers, but you knew that since the question said that.
      Why is it SS that all the numbers Mike posts are BS, but we are supposed to believe all the numbers you post?

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    16. I've never claimed that all of Mike's numbers are BS. Some I've agreed with, for example, recently he posted a survey showing an increase in the perceived importance of gun rights over gun control. And another showing an increase in gun ownership.
      Though I can speak for Mike, I'm assuming that the purpose of this blog is to discuss these issues, preferably using facts and data, though opinion is permissible,
      If I don't agree with Mike's post, I can offer other data that supports my side of the discussion. If Mike just wanted to give his views with no discussion, he wouldn't allow comments, like Baldr on his blog.

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    17. I'm sure glad the proof of your dishonesty is printed for all to read.

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  2. Progressives just love to project their own racism onto their opponents.

    As for this study, this article totally misstates the findings--of course, this is to be expected from such a bastion of quality journalism as the Huffington Post. The article says that the study suggests that gun owners and gun rights people are more likely to be racist. Actually, if one reads the summary of the study the finding is that the more racist someone is, the more likely they are to like guns.

    This actual finding only tells us about the preferences of some racists, not the preferences of gun owners. It is a logical error to try and use the one to prove the other.

    So we can see that this study does not show the link the article claims that it does. This doesn't even begin to get into the questions about the reliability of their methods.

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    1. Here is the conclusion verbatim: "Symbolic racism was related to having a gun in the home and opposition to gun control policies in US whites. The findings help explain US whites’ paradoxical attitudes towards gun ownership and gun control. Such attitudes may adversely influence US gun control policy debates and decisions."

      The meaning is very clear cut: gunloonery correlates to more racist tendencies.

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    2. "Progressives just love to project their own racism onto their opponents."

      Brwaaahahahahahahahaha

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    3. Jade,

      We know that you. like the writer of the HuffPo piece, want to interpret the relationship indicated by this study as proof that gun owners are racist, but if you look at the study itself you will see that the relationship they found was that the more racist a person was, the more likely they were to be a gun owner. This does not imply a linkage in the other direction, no matter how much you want it to.



      Mike,

      Deny it and laugh all you want, but progressives are the ones constantly obsessing over race in modern society. In addition to this telling obsession with race, there are also their actions to go by. In all my life, I've heard far more racism come from the mouths of progressives than from conservatives. Progressives were the ones who I heard calling Clarence Thomas an Oreo (white progressives--never heard that from blacks I've known, even the liberal ones). It was a progressive who was editor of the school paper who sent out an e-mail castigating a Sikh student and calling him a "raghead" at my university--why? The Sikh guy wrote a column criticizing the school for having the University police stop the College Republicans from canvassing for signatures on a petition. It was the College Democrats who said, "Yeah, he shouldn't have used that word, but he was right about everything else! That Sikh guy's column has to go and the editor should keep his job!" It was a group of progressive classmates, one of them a Hillary campaign person, that I made the mistake of taking to a Turkish restaurant where they proceeded to make jokes about terrorists whenever the wait staff were out of earshot.

      Beyond these personal anecdotes, we all know about the remarks of various Democrats which were along the lines of Harry Reid's famous words about the president's light skin and lack of "negro dialect," and about the notorious racists like Bob Byrd who served in the party for years.

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    4. S.J. I don't believe you for a minute when you say, " In all my life, I've heard far more racism come from the mouths of progressives than from conservatives."

      Unless we live on different planets, this is just not true.

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    5. Big surprise, Mike. You refuse to believe anything that doesn't fit with your view of the world, whether it be the experiences of the rest of us or crime numbers that don't fit your view. It doesn't matter that my statement is true; all that matters is that it doesn't fit your worldview, so you cannot accept it.

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    6. That's not true at all. I believe a lot of things that don't fit with my world view, but when you say "" In all my life, I've heard far more racism come from the mouths of progressives than from conservatives," I call bullshit on that one.

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    7. If you don't dismiss everything contrary to your narrative you haven't given much evidence of it here where we usually see you declaring that statistics and studies cannot be true because they don't fit with your "common sense".

      As for my statement, you can call bullshit all you want. It doesn't change the fact that it is true. All the examples about progressives are true too. My similar experiences with conservatives were with old dried up racists that the rest of the family had nothing little to do with (disown your child for adopting a black kid and you'll find yourself pretty much disowned by the rest of the family), and a weird family with racist ideas about not mixing--ideas that seemed incongruous with their long pattern of working with churches in black neighborhoods.

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    8. "In all my life, I've heard far more racism come from the mouths of progressives than from conservatives."

      That IS bullshit. No surprise coming from SJ.

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  3. Funny to see this "study" trumpeted just as "gun control" hero Mike Bloomberg says that young minority men need to be disarmed.

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    1. That's not what he said, Kurtie. But you knew that. What Bloomberg did say, among other things, is that we need to keep guns out of the hands of children and young people "who have been failed."

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    2. Nice attempt at spinning Bloomberg's comments Jade, but we're not buying it.

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  4. The gun loons prove their dishonesty and distortion, again.

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  5. Did you guys really need to pay for a study to validate your beliefs? We all know from arguing with you gun control lovers how much you like to call gun owners "racist" every chance you get.

    But one thing we have to consider is how these people define "racist".

    Specifically, participants indicated the extent to which they agree (1 = agree strongly to 5 = disagree strongly) with statements such as “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class” (reverse scored)

    Get that? You're a racist if you disagree that the black population is still being held back by slavery. I'd like to see the rest of the questions. It seems they might define a racist as someone who doesn't cry "racism" every chance they get. In other words, if you don't think like MikeB, you're a racist.

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  6. The study points out that " According to a 2012 study by the Children's Defense Fund, gun violence is the leading cause of death for black males ages 15-19. In 2008 and 2009, black children and teenagers were 15 percent of the nation's population, however, they accounted for 45 percent of young people killed by guns" Did they happen to say what race the shooter was in these situations? My guess is that a vast majority of these black children and young adults were shot by other black children and young adults. Would this be a sign of racism?

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