For years anti-gun activists complained that they were shut out of receiving federal funds to conduct research into “gun violence”, even though the Dickey Amendment technically only prevented federal grant money going to projects that were used to promote gun control. In 2022, however, Congress opened up the spigot, and tens of millions of dollars started flowing to anti-gun academics and researchers. At the same time, private actors like the Joyce Foundation and states like California have delivered millions more to the academic wing of the gun control lobby, and there’s been a glut of junk science as a result.
The recently released report innocuously titled “Social Drivers of Health and Firearms Storage Practices” is a prime example. Tarang Parekh, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Delaware College of Health Sciences, and several of his colleageus ostensibly wanted to “investigate potential links between social drivers or determinants of health, such as housing and food insecurity, financial hardship and transportation barriers, with firearm ownership and storage practices.”
Underpinning that research, however, is an animosity towards the Second Amendment and gun ownership in general.
Some states, like California and Minnesota, have Child-Access Prevention (CAP) laws that make it illegal to leave guns unsecured in households with children. In these states, people were more likely to store guns safely.
According to Everytown Research & Policy, Delaware is one of 26 states with a CAP law; however, Parekh believes these laws could be stronger. California, for example, is the only state that mandates locking devices with firearm purchases.
Gun buyback programs, which Delaware has previously held, could also be beneficial.
“We must provide more incentives or financial benefits,” said Parekh, pointing to Canada and New Zealand, where buyback programs have been more successful.
I thought Parekh was interested in gun storage, but he’s clearly more invested in curbing gun ownership. In addition to those “incentives” he mentions (which, by the way, criminalized the possession of lawfully-purchased and possessed firearms), Parekh sings the praises of gun “buybacks”, which have been proved to be ineffective at reducing violent crime, suicides, or accidents involving firearms.
In the same press release from the University of Delaware, Parekh made his hostility even more explicit when he said, “We constantly talk about changing laws, but laws alone won’t solve the problem,” adding, “We need to invest in our communities to improve the social and environmental factors that contribute to firearm ownership.”
While Parekh’s paper doesn’t disclose who funded his “research”, there is a disclaimer noting that “the findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” which certainly suggests that our tax dollars helped support this bit of anti-gun activism.
Another clearly biased bit of newly released so-called research comes from Stanford’s John Donohue and two of his colleagues. To give you an idea where Donohue stands on the Second Amendment, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen the economist predicted the “decision will increase gun sales and gun carrying in previously restrictive states, but their citizens will largely be wasting money buying guns (and lugging them around) only to result in a higher level of violent crime victims.”
Instead, as we reported yesterday, violent crime overall and homicide rates specifically are plunging across the country.
Anyway, back to Donohue’s more recent endeavor; a working paper entitled Financial Firepower: School Shootings and the Strategic Contributions of Pro-Gun PACs. Donohue claims that “pro-gun PACs increase contributions by 30.2% to candidates in districts with fatal school shootings, but show no significant response to non-fatal school shootings or other mass shootings.”
The temporal pattern reveals strategic behavior: contribution spikes emerge in the wake of fatal school shootings and in proximity to elections, with effects dramatically amplified as Election Day approaches; within two months of Election Day, contributions increase by 1,730%. These effects are concentrated in competitive districts (margins of 5%).
Donohue and his colleagues assert that their findings “underscore a gap in democratic accountability: while public opinion should drive policy change, organized interests with financial power can insulate political candidates from public pressure and obstruct its translation into legislative reform.”
Speaking of gaps in accountability, at no point did Donohue and his team ever look at contributions from anti-gun PACs in these same districts. Is it surprising that pro-2A groups would increase spending to support candidates in races where gun control might be a top issue for voters? Not at all. I suspect that groups like Everytown, Giffords, and Brady also increase their political donations and independent expenditures too, but Donohue and company aren’t the slightest bit curious if that’s true.
If both sides dedicate more money to these districts, that would discredit his conclusion that “the role of campaign finance must be addressed” in pushing for more gun control laws. Donohue claims that his research suggests that “issue-specific tragedies can entrench, rather than erode, well-organized and well-funded policy coalitions, highlighting the outsize role of money in American politics in insulating officeholders and candidates against public pressure.”
What Donohue doesn’t say is that the gun control lobby has outspent groups like the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, and the National Shooting Sports Foundation in recent election cycles. Not only is that all the more reason to see if there’s a corresponding increase in political donations and independent expenditures by gun control groups in these districts, it undercuts Donohue’s assertion that money from the gun lobby is “insulating officeholders and candidates” from public pressure to pass more gun laws.
Unsurprisingly, gun control groups like Giffords are touting Donohue’s one-sided study, though Giffords and Everytown combined spent about $5 million more than the NRA in federal campaigns last year. Donohue’s working paper is more of an in-kind contribution to the gun control lobby than serious research, but that’s par for the course when it comes to anti-gun academics, and all the more reason for Congress to once again cut funding to this kind of advocacy disguised as serious science.
Read the full article here
