Expect comments on a NYT article based on a JAMA research paper

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hso

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https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2688536

The research at first would have intuitively obvious results that larger caliber equates to greater lethality (DUH), but there's a criticism of the JAMA article that can be offered about discarding intent from consideration. The smallest caliber group (.22, .25, and .32) could be considered as having less intent to kill than the two other groups since even criminals understand that you have a greater stop potential with larger calibers and intentionally using a .22 or .25 may not be focused on trying to kill. That reintroduces the intent question. Also questionable is the small data set for clear conclusions and whether the distribution of calibers was even across the 400 or so victims or if one caliber or the other was used more often.

None the less, we understand the relationship between caliber and lethality and can agree that larger calibers have a greater potential to stop an attacker, but when we look at their data we see another statistic of interest. The age and ethnicity of the victims. Overwhelmingly young black men who then may be assumed to be in high crime areas followed by young hispanic men. You could correlate high crime areas with shootings or youth with shootings and not be at odds with criminology.

More important than caliber is preventing violence in communities instead of trying to reduce the caliber used.
 
The intention of strong armed robbery was never violence. It was profit. In the old days, if a strong armed robber managed to steal or get his hands on a Colt or a Smith & Wesson, he might not rob somebody that night. He'd pawn it, sell it, and go out on a spree. Only when he was out of funds would he think of another robbery. If the intention isn't to hurt someone, a cheap pot metal piece of junk, thrust in somebody's face, was just as effective as a decent gun. Our average criminal knew little to nothing about guns, and his curiosity was small.

The media in railing against what they labeled as the Saturday Night Special educated the criminal, and created the desire for better ordnance. The question they could contemplate but won't is if your intentions are pure, but the results are exactly opposite what you intended, do you bear any responsibility? The primary push against the Saturday Night Special was never with a serious desire to keep guns out of the hands of criminals but to keep them out of the hands of poor people.
We've had periods of such severe poverty in this country that working people on the lower end of the scale simply couldn't afford to keep handguns, even cheap ones, without sacrificing food on the table for their children.

That situation no longer exists. The access of the poor to discretionary income is greater than it ever was before. It's a natural human desire to want to arm yourself and thanks to the education from the media these young men growing up in generational poverty aren't going to be satisfied with a pot metal .22 revolver that shaves lead, and misfires half the time.

This is important to us. While crime among these groups is high, these young men aren't inherently criminals. They're not necessarily going to be satisfied with a government that in exchange for taking care of them tells them they have no rights. They're going to want the rights. It's up to us to find a way to teach them the responsibilities that go along with them.
 
Good grief, some PhD's and a bunch of statistics.

Would the results be the same if the "sample" was taken in Chicago, Detroit or Baltimore.

Was everyone who was shot, shot in exactly the same location on the body, what ammo was used?

No I am not going to wade through all the "data"

Firearm caliber had no systematic association with the number of wounds, the location of wounds, circumstances of the assault, or victim characteristics, as demonstrated by χ2 tests of each cluster of variables and by a comprehensive multinomial logit analysis. A logit analysis of the likelihood of death found that compared with small-caliber cases, medium caliber had an odds ratio of 2.25 (95% CI, 1.37-3.70; P = .001) and large caliber had an odds ratio of 4.54 (95% CI, 2.37-8.70; P < .001). Based on a simulation using the logit equation, replacing the medium- and large-caliber guns with small-caliber guns would have reduced gun homicides by 39.5%.

OK sure. Seems the Military and LEOs need to go back to 45 ACP then.
 
The smallest caliber group (.22, .25, and .32) could be considered as having less intent to kill than the two other groups since even criminals understand that you have a greater stop potential with larger calibers and intentionally using a .22 or .25 may not be focused on trying to kill.

The smaller caliber is less of a handicap when comparing offensive vs defensive shooting. In a lot of cases the criminal has the advantage of selecting when and where the encounter takes place and can get the drop on the victim also.

The original article has been criticized on THR already. There was a lengthy thread on it recently, so I won't repost all that here.
 
Somehow, I don't think a judge would consider shooting another person with a .25 as having less intent to kill. If you level your firearm at another person and squeeze the trigger, you are intending to kill them. In that moment, you have aimed a deadly weapon and fired. The caliber is irrelevant to the intent.
What is interesting is that only about 1/4th of these shootings result in death, which means you still have the other 3/4ths walking(maybe) around for the rest of their lives having been shot. That could come with any number of life altering conditions caused by that shooting.
I'd be curious to see some data on that. What sort of correlation do we see between types of gun ownership/usage and people being maimed but not killed.

The thing the study does highlight is the well-known correlation between crime and poverty which leads me to believe if we want to reduce people being killed, we aren't going to do as effectively with guns as we would by reducing poverty.
 
What I found amusing was how the authors tacitly lamented the good old days of the Saturday Night Special when getting shot didn't necessarily mean getting killed.

The AMA doesn't have an institutional memory of the days before antibiotics when any penetrating wound could be deadly... eventually?
 
As an aside, one problem was that a round would push all the crap from your clothes into your wound, enhancing infection chances. In the days of dueling, a participants stripped naked as he said the risk was that a round ball would drag crap into the wound. The ball itself was sterile due to the blast and fire. So getting shot naked was a better bet. However, the sight of this, so outraged his opponent that the opponent felt the field and defaulted.
 
A clean silk shirt was the best duelist's wear.

There was also the debate over whether it was better to face your opponent and offer a bigger target or to blade your torso and ensure that an upper body hit would penetrate both lungs.

From the chapter on dueling in the 18th century book "Advice to the Young Gentleman." "If you are struck, submit to the ministrations of the surgeon. If it appears you are not to survive, resolve to go off with the best grace possible."
 
In the days of dueling, a participants stripped naked as he said the risk was that a round ball would drag crap into the wound. The ball itself was sterile due to the blast and fire. So getting shot naked was a better bet. However, the sight of this, so outraged his opponent that the opponent felt the field and defaulted.

This incident happened at the 1806 duel between two drunks in Humphrey Howarth (former army surgeon) and the Earl of Barrymore in England. It was Howarth who stripped naked.
 
I also read that the Mongols wore clean silk undershirts. If an arrow hit them the fabric would stretch into the wound, also aiding in preventing infection. Wouldn't work for bullets, though.
 
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