Anti-Gun Flack David Hemenway has conducted an "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit

[Justin]

https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3zx8xc/science_ama_series_im_david_hemenway_director_of/

Hello, reddit!
My name is David Hemenway[1] . I’m professor of health policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. You can read more about our research on firearms here[2] .
Throughout my career I have written and done research widely on injury prevention, including research on the role of firearms, violence, and suicide. My 2006 book, Private Guns, Public Health[3] describes the public health approach to reducing firearm violence, and summarized the scientific studies on the firearms and health.
You can watch two recent videos[4] where I discuss why gun violence is a public health issue, and how a public health approach can decrease deaths and injuries from guns without violating the Constitution.
I’ll be here from 5:30-7:30 p.m. ET to answer your questions; Ask Me Anything!
EDIT: It's 7:55 p.m. and I do have to go now. Thank you all for your questions! Sorry I didn't have time to answer many of these questions.

The comment thread is long, but well worth reading.

 

[yokel]

I keep hearing people say they want to "regulate" guns the way we regulate cars. They don't really mean that, of course. What they mean is they want to make it acceptable to find more ways to basically abrogate the right to keep and bear arms.

 

[Shanghai McCoy]

What's Reddit ?

 

[Red Wind]

Since suicides account for 20,000 of the 33,000 gun deaths in 2013 and gang bangers fighting over drug turf in cities such as Detroit,St.Louis, New Orleans and Baltimore account for another 10 grand, there really is very little to talk about in today's America.

Law abiding, sane gun owners are doing very little damage.

Overall homicides are at a lower point than 1950 with twice the population and 6 times the guns.

 

[barnbwt]

Does anyone at least ask him if he knows the first thing about anything to do with firearms? ETA: no.

Here are some highlights I noticed (it actually is a good read);

"Yes But in public health we do not think that "blaming" is usually a very effective way of preventing the problem"
BWAHAHAHA!!! That's rich, right there! Might be why they can never correctly identify the 'causes' of all these social ills, either

"A major problem is in some communities shooters are overly respected"
Maybe because people who do not give respect to the gang-affiliated shooters (who go unpunished) end up shot?

"I assume that the goal is to save lives, not just make someone's life more difficult, right?"
Sweet.

"A first issue to tackle is the definition of a legal gun"
Ooookay, moving right along... I love how that's their response when asked about the social utility of lawfully owned/wielded guns, though; classy.

And, we've got fools claiming Chicago doesn't have the highest (gun) crime rate per capita as a response to questions about effectiveness of gun laws (even though Shy-town's crime comes exclusively from like three boroughs with the strongest enforcement regimes).

"How can you control poverty, alcohol consumption, etc. without skewing numbers to make these things equal. These issues seemingly correlate strongly with gun related homicides"
How, indeed...apparently 'multivariate analysis' is the key, and it requires dumptrucks of government grant money.

Baseless assertions that gunownership is declining (hasn't the number of guns gone up by like 1/4 just since Obama, yet they still use 300 million as the total?)

"Very briefly, success stories would include the Australian gun policies after the mass shooting in Tasmania and the Boston miracle in reducing youth gun homicide in the 1990s"
Open advocacy for mass-confiscation... Does anyone know wth the "Boston Miracle" is? I can't find any clear description anywhere, just news articles about trying to replicate it in other anti-gun hell-holes that are still hell-holes (like the same parts of Boston). I hope it's not just some bright & shiny program that was rolled out just as the crack-epidemic began ebbing & our drug war shifted from our cities to south of the border...

And of course, the old chestnut about 'no funding for real research' immediately followed by questions about the Joyce Foundation, Bloomberg, and other 'charitable' disarmament orgs...which go unanswered.

TCB

 

[barnbwt]

"Guns are used in a little 50% of suicides in the US. I suspect that if there were no guns, the overall suicide rate would fall by 35%-40% but that is only a guess"
Wow, they really do think gun owners are stupid; if our guns disappeared, only 1 out of 5 of us would be able to figure out how to off ourselves if so inclined...bit of a mask-slip there in that he's seriously thought about all guns being disappeared, though (nice subtle question for the pro-gun troll, actually)

"Two possible conclusions: a) guns make people poor, and b) people should have more money to have fewer suicides."
LOL I know my gun hobby has made me poorer (yet somehow happier? )

TCB

 

[MachIVshooter]

My head hurts now. Hemenway is an anti gun moonbat with an economics degree masquerading as an expert on public policy. He exists in a privileged echelon of academia, and is as out of touch with reality as most other liberal pundits.

 

[Red Wind]

"Guns are used in a little 50% of suicides in the US. I suspect that if there were no guns, the overall suicide rate would fall by 35%-40% but that is only a guess"

Hemenway Quote

I posted this about a month ago; the facts haven't changed. This is not a guess but a fact.

I must disagree with jmr40 and Sunray and stick with Librarian and Carl Brown. Japan has vastly more gun control than the USA and virtually no firearms in "civilian" hands.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Carl N.Brown
"Most gun deaths are suicides. Suicide prevention specialists have abandoned the idea that banning one particular method will impact the over all suicide rate; it will just change the means.
Yet Japan's suicide rate is quite larger than ours. If a person is bent on self destruction there are hundreds of ways to do it."

See this chart. Japan is 17th. The USA is 50th.

 

[Shanghai McCoy]

"If a person is bent on self destruction there are hundreds of ways to do it."
Sadly, very true. My daughter chose illegally obtained prescription drugs and overdosed.

 

[MachIVshooter]

Sadly, very true. My daughter chose illegally obtained prescription drugs and overdosed.

Sorry for your loss.

Unfortunately, lethal overdose is one of the most common methods for females, the sex generally opting for less outwardly disturbing and destructive means than men.

 

[psyopspec]

Very sorry to hear about your daughter.

What's Reddit?

5 minute video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlI022aUWQQ

Related discussions to the Ask Me Anything (AMA) with deeper and more detailed analysis of the answers can be found at www.reddit.com/r/guns and www.reddit.com/r/firearms.

For the AMA itself, I continue to be impressed at the ability of Redditors, ostensibly younger than many on this forum (in my early 30s, I'm an old guy on Reddit), to apply skepticism and science to authority figures.

 

[Shanghai McCoy]

^^Thank you.^^

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Looking through the comments, David Hemmenway was frequently "owned"--challenged and contradicted--not by people who appear to be gun rights proponents, but by people who questioned his statistical methods and the impact of gun laws on bad behavior by bad or crazy people.