By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
In what may be the most poorly conceived and horribly researched study ever published by The Journal of the American Medical Association during its entire 141-year history, a trio of anti-gun researchers now claims deer hunting is associated with a substantial increase in firearm violence.
To arrive at their laughable conclusion, the authors used data from the infamous Gun Violence Archive, which has been debunked dozens of times and is well known for its shoddy research and biased statistics.
Even the authors admitted there were problems with the GVA data. “Our study relies on shooting data from a single source, the GVA. Data from GVA have been shown to have a bias toward incidents that receive more media attention and do not include comprehensive counts of firearm suicides,” the report states.
Despite these inherent biases, the researchers used the GVA data anyway. They didn’t allow the facts to interfere with their preconceived and biased narrative.
The report, “Deer Hunting Season and Firearm Violence in US Rural Counties,” which was released Wednesday, was written by Patrick Sharkey, PhD; Juan Camilo Cristancho, BA, and Daniel Semenza, PhD.
Sharkey is affiliated with Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. Cristancho works at the University of California, Irvine’s School of Education, and Semenza is affiliated with the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers University.
The researchers sought to investigate “the association between the start of deer hunting season and shootings in rural counties of the US.”
They compared shootings during the first three weeks of deer season to a week prior to the season opener. The authors claim there was a “substantial increase in shootings” during the start of deer season, which they said calls for additional gun control, of course.
“The findings highlight the role of firearm prevalence in gun violence and suggest the need for focused policies designed to reduce firearm violence in areas with substantial hunting activity during the first weeks of deer hunting season,” the report states.
About the author
Patrick Sharkey, PhD, led the research team.
“Dr. Sharkey had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis,” his report claims.
According to his Princeton bio, Sharkey’s research focuses on “urban inequality, violence, and public policy.” He is also the creator of AmericanViolence.org, a website that claims it provides “comprehensive, updated data on violence from as many of the largest 100 largest U.S. cities as possible.”
AmericanViolence.org, like Sharkey’s recent study, relies upon debunked data. “In the latest iteration of the site we have drawn more heavily on data on fatal and nonfatal shootings published by the Gun Violence Archive, an excellent resource that has tracked all forms of gun violence in the United States over time,” the website states.
AmericanViolence.org is funded by Arnold Ventures. A story published earlier this month revealed that Arnold Ventures is a Houston-based for-profit corporation founded by billionaires Laura and John Arnold, who quietly bankroll research that promotes and supports their radical anti-gun views. Arnold Ventures and its companion foundation have more than $3.5 billion in assets, and regularly fund anti-gun research at Princeton and other colleges and universities.
According to the Laura and John Arnold Foundation’s 2022 IRS form 990, the couple spent $1.7 million on anti-gun research, including $1,065,933 to Sharkey’s employer, Princeton University, “to develop a research infrastructure that helps cities better understand and respond to waves of gun violence.”
Arnold Ventures acknowledges that it seeks to bridge the gap in anti-gun research, which it says was created by the 1996 Dickey Amendment, which prohibits the federal government from conducting anti-gun research.
Don’t Get Mad About Guns — Get Funding for Research, the group advertises on its website.
Sharkey has written dozens of Journal articles and essays on “gun violence.”
Sharkey was not willing to be interviewed for this story, but in an email, he offered three reasons for his use of GVA data, which even he admitted was biased.
“First, the Gun Violence Archive has become one of the most important sources of data on firearm violence and is used extensively in the health literature. I’ve listed below a set of 10 or so articles in top journals that analyze data from GVA, and there are many more out there. Second, our approach looks at shootings in the week before the start of deer season compared to the weeks after the start of deer season, so we’re comparing the same counties before and after the start of deer season. If one were to argue that the data source is leading to bias in our results than one would have to give a reason why the data would be more or less reliable in the first week of deer season relative to the week before deer season. That seems implausible. Third, the main reason we use the GVA data is that to carry out this analysis we need a data source that provides the number of shootings in specific places on specific days – our entire approach depends on being able to compare the precise week before deer season to the weeks after the start of deer season, and no other data source on shootings allows for that kind of precision,” Sharkey said in an email. “I should say that I hope this article doesn’t come across as advocating against deer hunting. I think it’s a hugely important and fun part of our culture. What we’re doing is trying to figure out how the prevalence of guns out in public and private spaces affects shootings. The goal is to get the right answer, and hopefully that allows for some objective ways to figure out how to reduce shootings.”
Reaction
Sharkey’s study is a twofer for the gun ban industry, as it denigrates both hunting and gun ownership. Nowhere in the report do the researchers mention the dangers associated with an overabundance of deer, which would occur if hunting was banned or reduced.
“Deer hunting is quite possibly the most important tool in modern wildlife management. It is critical to controlling herd size and generates tens of millions of dollars in revenue for state wildlife resource agencies and local economies. It is a time-honored tradition in rural America, not a launchpad for lunatics or criminals,” said Dave Workman, editor-in -chief of TheGunMag.com, and an award-winning outdoor writer, lifelong deer hunter and career journalist. “Suggesting that deer hunting is somehow connected to violent crime involving firearms is an insult to the millions of law-abiding American sportsmen and women, young and old, who annually head to the forests, plains, and mountains in hopes of notching a tag and making a lifetime memory.”
Second Amendment Foundation founder and Executive Vice President, Alan M. Gottlieb, reacted strongly to the report:
“This is ludicrous! Deer hunting leads to freezers full of venison, not gun violence,” Gottlieb said. “While this JAMA study may be laughable, it proves that the gun-ban industry and its biased researchers are willing to say anything to infringe upon our Second Amendment rights, even if it defies all logic and common sense.”
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