States With High Gun Ownership See More Officers Killed

[SecularMotion]

The higher the rate of gun ownership in a state, the higher the likelihood of a law enforcement officer being killed, a new study has found.

Researchers, writing online in the American Journal of Public Health, used F.B.I. data on the rate of police officer deaths in each state, along with information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on gun ownership rates. From 1996 to 2010, there were 782 homicides of law enforcement personnel, 92 percent of them by gunfire. Responses to domestic disturbance calls resulted in 116 police deaths, 15 percent of the total.

Among the 180,000 officers in the eight states with the lowest rates of gun ownership, the homicide rate was 0.31 per 100,000. Among the 183,000 in the 23 states with the highest gun ownership rates, the rate was 0.95 per 100,000. The researchers controlled for race and ethnicity, poverty rates, educational level and other factors.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/states-with-high-gun-ownership-see-more-officers-killed/?ref=health

[sarisataka]

1. Hemenway

Another area we talk about where social norms have changed is smoking. What a magnificent change we’ve had in smoking in the United States. We need to see a social norm change on gun violence. Instead of it being the mark of a real man that you can shoot somebody at 50 feet and kill them with a gun, the mark of a real man is that you would never do anything like that. You’d show that you were stronger than they were and smarter and not just that you had some weapon. The gun is a great equalizer because it makes wimps as dangerous as people who really have skill and bravery and so I’d like to have this notion that anyone using a gun is a wuss. They aren’t anybody to be looked up to. They’re somebody to look down at because they couldn’t defend themselves or couldn’t protect others without using a gun.

[beevul]

3. Higher rates due to low population, not high officer deaths. N/T

[gejohnston]

4. funny, the only cop shot to death in my state in my lifetime

that I know of was a RSPD detective killed by the public safety director in a cop car. IIRC, that was 1979.
A couple of game wardens were ambushed in the 1940s. SWC deputy in the 1950s. WHP? Never. Some killed with cars, but not weapons. This is in a state with the highest gun ownership rate.
BTW, why was it published in the Journal of Health instead of a criminology journal.
Oh, Hemenway, I think I know why.

[Kang Colby]

5. More intentionally misleading statistics

The researchers controlled for race and ethnicity, poverty rates, educational level and other factors.

So basically they just made stuff up. It gets worse, in all likelihood they didn't bother to limit the instrument of murder to guns. http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/state.html

What will they make up next?

[branford]

6. It gets better...

The "study" also "controlled for factors known to affect homicide rates."

The "researchers" clearly formed their conclusions first, and then "controlled" the data to ensure it fit their hypothesis. Is there any wonder why Congress refuses more funding for such "scholarship?"

Moreover, as many in the debate about policing reminds us, the number of officers killed in the line of duty is thankfully quite small as a percentage of the number of law enforcement officers in the nation, and such deaths are hardly only caused by firearms. The data set is also far too small to accurately use comparative rates as a reliable measurement of anything.

https://www.odmp.org/search/browse

http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/state.html

Lastly, and most importantly, the study notably makes no real effort to distinguish correlation from causation.

Gun control activists have seemingly realized that they're losing so badly in the courts, legislatures and public opinion that they're now trying a strategy of gun control to save police officers' lives (someone better tell the BLM folks)! Apparently, the attempted moral blackmail about saving the children just doesn't poll well anymore...

[gejohnston]

7. that list includes all line of duty deaths

including car accidents.

[DonP]

10. I'm sure it's relevant (muffled laughter)

After all, just knowing there are law abiding citizens with firearms out there must upset some officers to the point of having traffic accidents.

But I'm guessing that someone didn't bother actually reading the story in their rush to get another Google story posted.

J.A.G.D.

[ileus]

9. misleading is better than the damn lies that are normally thrown around.

[ileus]

8. If more officers are getting shot, Imagine the civilians, good argument for getting your CHP.

[Eleanors38]

11. Hmm. This floated up on NPR this A.M. The same show and host...

interviewed another gun-control story/research a few days earlier. So far, no countering viewpoint, or story by pro-2A activists. The controllers may have found a vein.

[pablo_marmol]

15. This is an old strategy with (somewhat) new clothes.

One of the more insidious ploys to attack gun rights was based on Controller vexation about the fact that rank and file law enforcement sides with gun rights supporting citizens. So a cynical plan was devised to put a wedge between the two groups, and that wedge was "cop killer bullets".

[Eleanors38]

17. That, too. I note this is the second "gun control" study on this NPR show.

[pablo_marmol]

18. The desperation shows itself in many ways, does it not? NT

[Fred Sanders]

12. 300 million guns...anyone that thinks America needs more GUNS is entirely insane.

Regular folks fear guns, police who protect the folks fear all the guns folks have; everyone is living in fear because of the fucking gun.

Gun lovers make me ashamed to know such people even exist that defend the GUN with nothing more childish NRA-direct talking points....so obvious as to be painful to witness on DU.

More Guns, More Deaths

http://crooksandliars.com/2015/08/more-guns-more-police-deaths

The research is impeccable and so will be sure to be have verbal feces thrown at it....read it and weep for common folks and for police and for a nation living in fear of the fucking gun:


...............


“If we’re interested in protecting police officers, we need to look at what’s killing them, and what’s killing them is guns,” lead author David Swedler from the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, said in a statement Thursday. “We know that 92 percent of police officers killed in the line of duty are killed by guns, three-quarters of which are handguns.”

For the purpose of the study, Swedler and his colleagues analyzed the homicide rates of police officers -- calculated as the number of officers killed by guns per number of officers employed in each state -- between 1996 and 2010 using FBI data. To get data on gun ownership, researchers used a survey called the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which is conducted annually by state health departments.

The study found that of the 782 cases of homicides of police officers, 716 were committed using guns. The top gun-owning states such as Montana, Alaska, Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi also had the highest rates of officer homicides, while Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island ranked at the bottom for gun ownership as well as police officer homicides."

.................

Police are also terrorized by 300+ million, yes MILLION, fucking guns floating around the land, and who can blame them?

Fuck the NRA, their idiot supporters and anyone even slightly apologizing for the hell they have created and want to keep.

[DonP]

13. 320 million, get your numbers right

... and growing every month.

Now, what are you actually doing to demand registration of every single one of them? Petitions? LTTE published? Meetings with your congress critters? Paying dues to Brady or Everytown? Anything?

I mean, besides ranting online and misspelling "defence" here in your "Favorite Group"?

[pablo_marmol]

16. "Police are also terrorized by 300+ million, yes MILLION, fucking guns floating around the land..."

Yet another bald-faced lie -- what a shock! Cops know who the trouble-makers are, and to assert otherwise is not only to lie, but to insult police officers as a group.

The only police officers who have a problem with concealed carry, for example, are high-ranking officials who have to bow to ignorant politicians to maintain employment. Otherwise, the rank and file know that it's a very small percentage of gun owners (criminals!) who they have to be "terrorized" by.

[pablo_marmol]

14. "A new study....." and "Researchers, writing online in the American Journal of Public Health......"

Whenever you see these two phrases together, even if Hemenway's name is not invoked, you know you're being fed bullsh*t.

[gejohnston]

19. The writer didn't read the study

or he is lying. I'll give him the benefit of doubt and say that he read Hemenway's press release. The study doesn't compare gun ownership with police murders. It actually compares suicide by firearm with police murders.