{"id":81198,"date":"2022-05-18T13:42:17","date_gmt":"2022-05-18T18:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=81198"},"modified":"2022-05-18T14:22:29","modified_gmt":"2022-05-18T19:22:29","slug":"81198","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=81198","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Follow the Science, Unless it Leads Where You Don\u2019t Want to Go<\/a><\/p>\n

Researchers in California have published the results of a study evaluating the effectiveness of so-called \u201cgun violence restraining orders\u201d (a.k.a. \u201cextreme risk protection orders\u201d or \u201cred flag\u201d orders).\u00a0Assembly Bill 1014<\/a>, was enacted in California in 2014, and since then, 19 states and the District of Columbia have adopted similar laws.<\/p>\n

Authors of the study,\u00a0Firearm Violence Following the Implementation of California\u2019s Gun Violence Restraining Order Law<\/em><\/a>, include Garen Wintemute, the director of the University of California Firearm Violence Research Center and a \u201ckey contributor<\/a>\u201d who helped draft AB 1014.<\/p>\n

Very briefly, these laws create a mechanism that allows a family member, police officer, or some other third party\u00a0(in California, this includes coworkers, school employees, and teachers) to file a petition in court, supported by allegations that the person named in the petition, at some point in the future, poses a danger to themselves or others by possessing or having access to a firearm. If the court is satisfied that there is some potential of future harm, it issues an order authorizing police to take away all firearms the person owns or controls, and prohibiting the person from possessing or acquiring firearms while the order is in effect. The initial court process may be \u201cex parte\u201d (without any notice to, or an opportunity to respond by, the affected person) or a full hearing on notice. In California, the ex parte order has a minimum duration of 21 days. Once confirmed in a full hearing, the \u201ctemporary\u201d order is in effect for up to five years, although orders may be renewed indefinitely.<\/p>\n

The researchers examined whether implementation of the California gun violence restraining order (GVRO) law was associated with decreased rates of \u201cfirearm assault\u201d or firearm self-harm between 2016 (when AB 1014 took effect) and 2019. They compared the post-GVRO rate of firearm violence in San Diego County (chosen because it had a \u201chigh GVRO uptake\u201d or incidence of GVROs) with the estimated outcome in a synthetic control unit (a combination of California control counties weighted to match the firearm violence trend in San Diego, 2005-2015, as closely as possible). The researchers \u201chypothesized that the GVRO law would be associated with a reduction in firearm violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The results, though, showed that the GVRO law had no impact \u2013 \u201cwe found no evidence that GVRO implementation was associated with decreased firearm assault or firearm self-harm at the population level in San Diego.\u201d The researchers sought to qualify this result by noting that the findings could be \u201cpartially explained by access to firearms through the underground market,\u201d or \u201ccould reflect a true absence of association or limitations of our study; further research is needed to determine which of these is the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A 2,000-word\u00a0editorial<\/a>\u00a0authored by another set of researchers, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association concurrently with the Wintemute study, repeated this \u201ctelling caveat\u201d and sought to downplay the findings, expressing the hope that \u201cthis will deter gun industry lobbyists from spinning the study\u2019s results as definitive evidence that \u2018gun laws do not work\u2019\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSpin\u201d is a remarkable word to use here. The editorial authors are self-described \u201ccollaborators\u201d in another, ongoing study on GVROs, \u201cfunded by the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research, which includes [the 2022 study researchers] Dr\u2019s Pear and Wintemute.\u201d One of the editorial authors is a \u201cfounding member\u201d and serves on the Executive Steering Committee of a consortium that was \u201cinfluential in developing the Gun Violence Restraining Order (GVRO) law in California,\u201d the very law under review.<\/p>\n

The palpable spin \u2013 and spin it surely is \u2013 is the attempt to diminish, or dismiss entirely, the findings as \u201cpremature,\u201d or affected by \u201cunobserved contextual factors specific to San Diego County,\u201d or due to the small number of GVROs compared to the \u201ctheoretical pool\u201d of \u201csuicide-planners in gun-owning households and angry gun-carriers in San Diego County,\u201d resulting in \u201ctoo small a pebble to make much of a ripple in such a big pond.\u201d Would these same elaborate justifications and qualifications be advanced as forcefully or at all had the study results reflected the promises that this legislation was predicated on?<\/p>\n

The Wintemute study established that rates of firearm injury and death had (to use the words of the editorial\u2019s authors) \u201cno statistically significant association with GVRO implementation.\u201d The results are based on data from a jurisdiction that has had a GVRO law in place for several years. The study used similar methodology to much social science research, that these researchers are normally happy to draw conclusions from, assuming that they\u2019re the \u201cright\u201d conclusions. But, when this \u201cevidence\u201d points to the conclusion that gun control doesn\u2019t work, these same researchers will downplay their own results.<\/p>\n

The NRA and other organizations have opposed GVRO-type laws for many reasons, notably because they deprive citizens of their fundamental rights and property without due process safeguards and a clear evidentiary basis. Orders may issue unchallenged, without notice or the opportunity to respond, on flimsy grounds, and without any evidence of actual wrongdoing. The ACLU of Rhode Island\u00a0expressed<\/a>\u00a0\u201cgreat concern\u201d about a \u201cred flag\u201d law because the \u201cstandard for seeking and issuing an order is so broad it could routinely be used against people who engage in \u2018overblown political rhetoric\u2019 on social media\u201d or based on a person\u2019s \u201cmere possession of firearms,\u201d and because the process sets a precedent \u201cfor the use of coercive measures against individuals not because they are alleged to have committed any crime, but because somebody believes they might, someday, commit one.\u201d In one troubling indicator that appears to bear out these concerns, an early analysis showed that the\u00a0vast majority<\/a>\u00a0of California GVROs that were issued \u201cex parte\u201d (without notice) were later not confirmed or extended by a court in a full hearing.<\/p>\n

The flip side of \u201cgun industry lobbyists \u2026 spinning the study\u2019s results\u201d to show gun laws don\u2019t work is gun control proponents continuing to maintain that those GVROs are an effective way of addressing suicide and gun crime despite their own study results being incompatible with that notion. The researchers here maintain that \u201c[d]espite our null findings, the state of the evidence overall supports GVROs and related legislation as tools that may be useful in preventing firearm injury and death,\u201d and the editorial collaborators dismiss the study as simply an \u201cearly report\u201d with new studies and more work needed. As it happens, the unintended consequence of this gratuitous and excessive spin \u2013 the over-rationalizing and minimizing of the results \u2013 is to undermine the reliability and credibility of any further research endeavors and trivialize future findings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Follow the Science, Unless it Leads Where You Don\u2019t Want to Go Researchers in California have published the results of a study evaluating the effectiveness of so-called \u201cgun violence restraining orders\u201d (a.k.a. \u201cextreme risk protection orders\u201d or \u201cred flag\u201d orders).\u00a0Assembly Bill 1014, was enacted in California in 2014, and since then, 19 states and the … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,8,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goobermint","category-rkba","category-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81198"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81201,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81198\/revisions\/81201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}