News bits: A bit of gun violence research; Authoritarian radical right propaganda tactics; Etc.

Researchers published gun violence data for 1991-2016. They found that gun safety laws correlated with decreased gun violence.

The Era of Progress on Gun Mortality: State Gun 

Regulations and Gun Deaths from 1991 to 2016

Background:

The recent rise of gun violence may lead to the perception that the problem of gun mortality in the United States is intractable. This article provides evidence to counter this perception by bringing attention to the period spanning from 1991 to 2016 when most US states implemented more restrictive gun laws. Over this period, the United States experienced a decline in household gun ownership, and gun-related deaths fell sharply.

Methods:

The main analysis examines the conditional association between the change in gun regulations at the state level and the change in gun mortality from 1991 to 2016. We include a range of robustness checks and two instrumental variable analyses to allow for stronger causal inferences.

Results:

We find strong, consistent evidence supporting the hypothesis that restrictive state gun policies reduce overall gun deaths, homicides committed with a gun, and suicides committed with a gun. Each additional restrictive gun regulation a given state passed from 1991 to 2016 was associated with −0.21 (95% confidence interval = −0.33, −0.08) gun deaths per 100,000 residents. Further, we find that specific policies, such as background checks and waiting periods for gun purchases, were associated with lower overall gun death rates, gun homicide rates, and gun suicide rates.

Conclusion:

State regulations passed from 1991 to 2016 were associated with substantial reductions in gun mortality. We estimate that restrictive state gun policies passed in 40 states from 1991 to 2016 averted 4297 gun deaths in 2016 alone, or roughly 11% of the total gun deaths that year.

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The NYT reports: 

One of Trump’s Oldest Tactics in Business and Politics: 

I’m Rubber. You’re Glue. 

Whenever Donald Trump is accused of something, he responds by accusing his opponent of that exact thing. The idea is less to argue that Mr. Trump is clean than to suggest that everyone else is dirty.

Former President Donald J. Trump is appearing twice in court this week — on Tuesday in Washington and Thursday in New York. He was not required to attend either hearing. But advisers say he believes the court appearances dramatize what is fast becoming a central theme of his campaign: that President Biden — who is describing the likely Republican nominee as a peril to the country — is the true threat to American democracy. 

Mr. Trump’s claim is the most outlandish and baseless version of a tactic he has used throughout his life in business and politics. Whenever he is accused of something — no matter what that something is — he responds by accusing his opponent of that exact thing. The idea is less to argue that Mr. Trump is clean than to suggest that everyone else is dirty.

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GOP slanders:

“Joe Biden knew exactly what he was doing, he knew exactly how his family was receiving tens of millions of dollars from our enemies around the world.” — Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), interview on Fox Business Network with Maria Bartiromo, Dec. 22

“I mean, you have more than $20 million that has been moved to the Biden family through many of their shell companies and in LLCs that they set up. We know that a lot of that money came from foreign adversaries, including China and Russia and Kazakhstan and places like that.” — House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Jan. 7

“Based on the evidence I’ve seen so far, I think the number is going to be north of $50 million that we’re talking about here. This will go down as one of the most politically corrupt presidents and families in U.S. history.” — Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), interview on Fox Business Network, Aug. 22

Too bad there won't be any blowback or legal repercussions for the slanders that authoritarian GOP elites routinely poison American politics with. Those lying slanderers belong behind bars. Instead, they are treated by America’s radical right as pillars of the community fighting for truth and democracy. 

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Compassionate conservatism in action: 

Moving beyond efforts to block expansion of health care for the poor and disabled, Republican governors in 15 states are now rejecting a new, federally funded summer program to give food assistance to hungry children.

The program is expected to serve 21 million youngsters starting around June, providing $2.5 billion in relief across the country.

The governors have given varying reasons for refusing to take part, from the price tag to the fact that the final details of the plan have yet to be worked out. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said she saw no need to add money to a program that helps food-insecure youths “when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.” Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) said bluntly, “I don’t believe in welfare.”