Laying The Anti-Gun Groundwork For 2021

Anti-gun activists are laying the groundwork now to blame gun owners for any increase in violent crime this year. First came desperate attempts to tie “gun violence” to COVID-19 when the pandemic dominated the news cycle. Now, anti-gun academics are rushing to produce research that can be used to blame gun owners for any increases in crime in this unprecedented year.

The Washington Post covers the latest research and claims that a “gun-buying binge is associated with a significant increase in gun violence across the United States.” The UC Davis study – which we covered last week – is based on the idea that Americans bought an “excess” of firearms this spring. The Brookings Institution analysis also focuses on the spike in firearm sales but tries to assign despicable motivation to the millions of Americans who purchased a firearm in this time period. Each set of authors made questionable decisions on data selection, seemingly to prioritize obtaining rapid results over using appropriate measures.

The UC Davis study uses data from a web scraper with a history of coding problems to tie law-abiding gun buyers to the actions of gang members, drug dealers, known criminals, and even police officers using rubber bullets. The underlying claim in the UC Davis paper is that an “excess” number of firearms were sold from March through May, and that Americans exercising their right to keep and bear arms are somehow associated with an increase in fatal and nonfatal injuries.