Our old pals at Emory Universitty are at again. Remember Michael Bellesiles???
userwww.service.emory.edu/~cozden/Dezhbakhsh_01_01_paper.pdfThis study was an evaluation that capital punishment IS a deterrent to crime (Forget that for the moment)
They followed up with the stupefying statement...
"A higher NRA presence, measured by NRA membership rate, seems to have a similar murder increasing effect." (pg 28, under concluding remarks, as measured on a county by county basis)
We can assume, tho they don't say it , they are talking about per capita rates.
Well NO DUH!!!!!!
It seems obvious greater percentages of NRA members are in rural areas - to wit, low per capita areas.
Thus a single murder in a rural area, would have a MUCH higher per capita murder rate than a dozen murders in NYC or Chicago with high per capita areas (where lower NRA membership exists.) They don't provide the NRA membership data by county, that I can tell.
Thus they come to the idiotic conclusion that NRA membership has some correlation to murder rates.
Further, the study ends in 1996 - when high NRA membership states passed CCW laws, and murder rates dropped measurably.
At what point do we conclude these idots are NOT idots by chance, but by choice???