Posted on 09/15/2018 8:44:36 AM PDT by jazusamo
Well, its another day, and another anti-gun study thats shoddy . It comes with additional controversy since its author will not release his data or even open himself to questions about his work. In August, the Crime Prevention Research Centers John Lott took to task an anti-gun study by Adam Lankford, who suggests the U.S. is the mecca for mass shootings, being the epicenter for 31 percent of them ; all of this thanks to our rates of gun ownership. Again, its not the criminals fault; its all about the gun, which apparently has magic powers that forces people to commit acts of violence. Regardless, former President Obama cited it, as have a slew of media organizations:
Lankford claims to have complete data on such shooters in 171 countries. However, because he has neither identified the cases nor their location nor even a complete description on how he put the cases together, it is impossible to replicate his findings.
It is particularly important that Lankford share his data because of the extreme difficulty in finding mass shooting cases in remote parts of the world going back to 1966. Lack of media coverage could easily lead to under-counting of foreign mass shootings, which would falsely lead to the conclusion that the U.S. has such a large share.
Lankfords study reported that from 1966 to 2012, there were 90 public mass shooters in the United States and 202 in the rest of world. We find that Lankfords data represent a gross undercount of foreign attacks. Our list contains 1,448 attacks and at least 3,081 shooters outside the United States over just the last 15 years of the period that Lankford examined. We find at least fifteen times more mass public shooters than Lankford in less than a third the number of years.
Even when we use coding choices that are most charitable to Lankford, his 31 percent estimate of the USs share of world mass public shooters is cut by over 95 percent. By our count, the US makes up less than 1.43% of the mass public shooters, 2.11% of their murders, and 2.88% of their attacks. All these are much less than the USs 4.6% share of the world population. Attacks in the US are not only less frequent than in other countries, they are also much less deadly on average.
Yeah, I can see why Lankford would want to head for the bunker concerning questions on his work (via CPRC ):
In phone calls and emails from RealClearPolitics, Lankford was asked how he supplemented the NYPD methods. He did not answer those queries. Nor has he responded to requests for his raw data, which is missing from his published paper, or to clear up basic questions. One of them is why he lists shooters instead of shootings, the term most criminologists use when comparing data. This is significant because mass shootings outside the United States often involve multiple triggermen. Also, although Lankford cites 202 shooters globally from 1966 to 2012, these cases arent listed in any appendix and he only lists totals for a handful of countries. This means that other scholars cant replicate his research to test his findings or point out shootings he overlooked.
Carl Cannon, Washington Bureau Chief, Real Clear Politics, September 4, 2018
Lankford declined an interview request about his study and told Fox News in an email that hes not interested in giving any serious thought to John Lott or his claims.
Lukas Mikelionis, a reporter at Fox News, September 1, 2018
I am not interested in giving any serious thought to John Lott or his claims, he said in response to an email seeking comment. . . .
Stephen Dinan, a reporter at The Washington Times, August 29, 2018
Unlike Lankford, Lott has released all of his data in nearly 500 pages of appendixes so people can reach their own conclusions. Lankford declined a request to release his research or to discuss in any way his findings in comparison to Lotts report. However, in an email exchange with The Fact Checker, Lankford acknowledged the Mumbai attack in 2008 that killed 168 people was not included in his overseas tally.
Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, September 5, 2018.
Lott furthered turned this studys results into sashimi in a NY Post op-ed :
Lankford cites a 2012 New York Police Department report which he claims is nearly comprehensive in its coverage of recent decades. He also says he supplemented the data and followed the same data collection methodology employed by the NYPD. But the NYPD report warns that its own researchers limited [their] Internet searches to English-language sites, creating a strong sampling bias against international incidents, and thus under-count foreign mass shootings.
Does Lankfords paper also have that problem?
A new report from the Crime Prevention Research Center, which one of us heads, has just finished collecting cases using the same definition of mass public shootings used by Lankford.
We know of no way to discover most of the cases where four people have been shot to death in an incident in Africa or many other parts of the world during the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s or even 1990s, and that is the reason the new study just looked at the last 15 years from 1998 to 2012 of the 47 years he examined.
Lankfords data grossly undercount foreign attacks. We found 1,423 attacks outside the United States. Looking at just a third of the time Lankford studied, we still found 15 times as many shooters.
Even when we use coding choices that are most charitable to Lankford, such as excluding any cases of insurgencies or battles over territory, his estimate of the US share of shooters falls from 31 percent to 1.43 percent. It also accounts for 2.1 percent of murders, and 2.88 percent of their attacks. All these are much less than the United States 4.6 percent share of the population.
Of the 86 countries where we have identified mass public shootings, the US ranks 56th per capita in its rate of attacks and 61st in mass public shooting murder rate. Norway, Finland, Switzerland and Russia all have at least 45 percent higher rates of murder from mass public shootings than the United States.
When Lankfords data is revised, the relationship between gun ownership rates and mass public shooters disappears.
Well, further discussion on the data is over since Lankford isnt answering questions , telling Fox News and Circa I am not interested in giving any serious thought to John Lott or his claims, he said in response to an email seeking comment. This is why Second Amendment supporters, conservatives, gun owners, republicans, and rural voters dont trust the push for more government funding for gun control studiesand for good reason, just look at this fiasco. If this is what comes from one study that appears to be erroneous, what will come when government becomes a main funding partner in these ventures? Holy hell!
Remember Obamas surgeon general , who tried to make this a public health crisis?
Could you imagine if Obama and other anti-gunners had endless government-funded studies compiled by left wing academics? Oh, it would be the slog of the century maybe.
This study might not have had that intentor who knows it could have beenbut what is certain is that the anti-gun Left would use these studies compiled by academia, which is disgustingly liberal, and have ample political ammunition to push for terrible pieces of legislation across the country, which chip away of our constitutional rights. Its not worth the risk. Though the Crime Prevention Research Center seems busy, doling out their data that undercuts or refutes the liberal consensus on Second Amendment issues. Carry on, folks. Carry on.
Maybe Lankford is simply omitting Muslim terror attacks from his database. To include them would be Islamophobic.
The Delusional Lying Left lies.
If you’re a Lying Leftist minion, you lie. It’s what you do.
Yep, blatant lying and when caught it bothers them not.
Right now Afghanistan and Syria are likely meccas for mass shootings, not to mention South American and Africa countries ...
They have and do admit they constructively are liars.
[In 2016, the NYTimes] media reporter began a story this way: If youre a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nations worst racist and nationalist tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?
In an interview last October [2016] with the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, Baquet admitted that the piece by his media reporter had nailed his own thinking. Trump challenged our language, he said, and Trump will have changed journalism. Of the daily struggle for fairness, Baquet had this to say: I think that Trump has ended that struggle. . . . We now say stuff. We fact check him. We write it more powerfully that [what he says is] false.
With that decision, Baquet also changed the basic news story formula. To the age-old elements of who, what, when, where, and why, he added the reporters opinion. Now the floodgates were open, and virtually every so-called news article reflected a clear bias against Trump. Stories, photos, headlines, placement in the paperall the tools that writers and editors havewere summoned to the battle. The goal was to pick the next president.
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/2016-election-demise-journalistic-standards/3/
Let's Wrap This Baby Up, Folks!
Thanks for posting this interesting info!
Most welcome FRiend...Shows how low the left will go, this Lankford is a real loser.
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