Bloomberg Funded Anti-Gun Brain Washing Course Now Online, Learn to Hate Freedom

Opinion

Fairfax, VA – -(Ammoland.com)- Can we finally put the claim that “gun violence” research is underfunded to rest?

The Bloomberg Professor of American Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, Daniel Webster, and his colleagues at the Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research launched their much anticipated massive, open online course “Reducing Gun Violence in America: Evidence for Change” this week. The course is available on Coursera, an online learning platform.

For the record, we did not exaggerate the number of times Michael Bloomberg’s name appears in Webster’s position or school affiliation.

The course reference list is 16 pages long. Sixteen pages of studies and related articles all focused on the issue of “gun violence.” Granted, a small number of references are used in more than one week of the six-week program but we are still looking at sixteen pages of references. The course is geared to high school and college-aged people but is open to everyone, and “The hope is to get participants up to speed on ‘relevant legal issues and effectively use data’ central to the nation’s policy debate on guns.”

The organizers deliberately did not invite anyone from the NRA and the gun rights movement to participate in the course, and the results are what one would expect when such a conscious decision is made.

Rational arguments in support of gun rights are excluded or denigrated while other research, facing the same alleged shortcomings, is held up as fact. Inane and widely rejected research is presented as incontrovertible evidence. Data proven unreliable by another Bloomberg outfit is presented without comment, though it was only used to make a simple comparison. And, this is just week one.

Buckle up; the next few weeks are going to be…well, something. We’ve seen what’s coming in future weeks and it’s only going to get worse. Or better, if you’re the sort of person who enjoys arguing on the internet or seeing just how the other side will twist and misrepresent data and – spoiler alert – Supreme Court decisions – to demonize firearms and law-abiding gun owners. We’ll focus exclusively on week one in this article.

First, we like to give credit where credit is due. Webster acknowledges and then further emphasizes “a very important principle here is that gun owners who purchase a firearm legally, generally are even more law-abiding than your average person.” Webster’s course does not cover policy interventions in week one, but we did notice something missing from the reference list: Webster’s own work on comprehensive background checks and misdemeanor violence prohibitions in California, which found no effect of these laws on firearm homicides in California. We appreciated the effort of Dr. Webster, Dr. Garen Wintemute, and their teams to show that comprehensive background checks are ineffective and wonder why that work was not included in the Hopkins-Coursera course “Reducing Gun Violence in America: Evidence for Change.” We would have suggested it be included, had we been invited to participate.

Let’s look at some of the specific issues with week one. Webster criticizes a Gary Kleck study that estimated about 2.5 million defensive gun uses per year for having a small sample size and the allegation that the findings indicate there an exaggerated number of people shot during the study period. No such criticism is offered of the anti-gun studies on the same topic Webster presents, and the number of defensive gun uses found in these other studies is not mentioned. For the record, the estimate of the number of defensive gun uses from one of these surveys is around 116,000 per year. Webster says this is a “much, much smaller fraction of an estimated number of times in which civilians are using guns in self-defense.” That may be “much, much smaller” than Kleck’s estimate but 116,000 Americans using a firearm to defend themselves is pretty significant.

Also missing from the Bloomberg School online course: any mention of Kleck’s work analyzing long-hidden CDC data on defensive gun use. Kleck’s analysis found that the number of defensive gun uses per year ranged from 620,648 to 1.9 million over the years the CDC collected data in some states. Notably, none of Kleck’s work is included in the reference list.

The other major issue we found in week one is the use of Arthur Kellerman’s study from 1993. We’ve covered the problems with the Kellerman study in the past, notably here and here. In short, Kellerman’s very limited study supposedly determined that having a gun in the home increases the risk of homicide. Webster does bring up one point of criticism of the study, but does not offer the most obvious criticism: that the study was focused on homicide victims and made absolutely no effort to include the millions of Americans who own a firearm and are not killed or do not kill anyone else. Kellerman’s study also found that renting a home and living alone both had higher adjusted odds ratios of being killed. We eagerly await an online course advocating for group home ownership.

Until that happens, we’ll stick with the online course presented by the faculty of the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Next week is “Legal Issues Relevant to Preventing Gun Violence.”


National Rifle Association Institute For Legislative Action (NRA-ILA)

About:
Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Visit: www.nra.org

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Get Out

Bloomberg needs to stop going around the country with armed security for his protection all the while trying to disarm everyone else. He should go about his business without armed security and unarmed to show us it can be done. IMOA, he wouldn’t last a week.

willy d

Bloomberg supports RED FLAG LAWS lets drop the dime on him you only have to make the call just do it, he is a threat to himself and others, let him prove he is sane, just drop the oops .25 cents it’s not a dime anymore!!!!!!!!

DAVID GROSS

BLOOMBERG IS WACKED , JUST LOOK WHAT HE DID FOR N Y , NO LARGE SODA’S. WHAT AN ASS WITHOUT A BRAIN. JUST GOES TO SHOW YA , ANTI AMERICAN……………………

freeillinois

Attention Attention Attention Gun control is on the move in Illinois. We need Alerts A major gun control bill is moving in the Illinois General Assembly that will require ALL gun owners to be finger printed and background check in person at an Illinois State police post.at their expense. The bill as amended also “ENDS” all private sales and transfers. Please contact your family and friends in Illinois and ask them to contact their Illinois State Senator and House member and tell them to oppose SB1966 as amended with House Amendment 1 (HA1) Please get involved and make those calls… Read more »

Todd Noebel

I think that we, as supporters of the 2A, should all sign up to take the course and provide information and perspectives not offered via the curriculum as part of our “participation”. That way we offer more dynamic information rather than the static, pre-programmed nonsense the course is trying to foist.

DAVID GROSS

I COULD NOT AGREE MORE , I WILL DO IT ALSO……………………………

James Slemons

BLOOMBERG IS INSANE !!! LOCK THIS NOBODY HACK UP !!!

Wild Bill

@JAMES S, To lock Bloomersberg up because he is insane, he has to be a physical danger to himself or others, not just a political one.

Charles Moore

If he gets his way, many people WILL die as a result; so he IS.

Boom

wow you gun guys are rednecks!!!

Austin Miller III

Why yes, yes we are. Thank you for noticing.

Larry Brickey

Some are and some are more centrist. But all believe in the 2A totally!

Heed the Call-up

Boom, that trope is about as real as the one that anti-rights, anti-firearms, anti-2A people are all fags and wimps and are afraid of the idea of personal responsibility and defense of self and others. We know the fag part isn’t true because there are “alternative lifestyle people” that do own firearms and believe in our Constitutional rights.

tomcat

@ Boom You are right and your buddy Obama was right one time in 8 years. He said we cling to our Bibles and guns, he got that right. see you are in his company.

RotaryConnected

And what are you, a snowflake?

Danko

Blowberg the old commie d-sucker he’s beyond sedition

William

Free speach I guess, dont agree. Everyone of sound mind and no crimes should have a fire arm. 2nd amendment rights. Tell the others to pound sand

Charles Moore

It is more than merely “free speech” when he is actively, criminally trying to subvert the Constitution and bring about tyranny and suppression of the people and their physical freedom and safety!

Tad Pole

“GUN FREE ZONE” How are they working out. From what I can see looks like a Lot Of Humans are dying in these zones. I personally don’t make a habit of going where I can NOT Carry Legally.

joefoam

Bloomberg must be delusional if he thinks ridding the world of guns will somehow change the 60,000 year old history of mankinds violence towards each other. The species has used everything from rocks to nuclear bombs to kill each other. Eliminating one weapon will not change a thing.

Mark

Bloomberg may or may not be delusional. But were Marx, Lenin and Stalin delusional? Whether he’s delusional or not is a moot point. Observing Bloomberg’s BEHAVIOR reveals that he is a bonafide Marxist. His intent is not about safety (as anti gun behavior has been revealed as leading to more gun violence via real research) but assuming absolute power to create the narcissistic utopia that serves him and makes you his slave. He cannot have absolute power until he disarms us. The Founders and Framers warned us about tyrants such as he and others such as those running for President… Read more »

rich z

Bloomberg is one of the most ANTI -GUN people out there BUT ,has a army of guns to protect his butt.

Robert J. Lucas

The Elite Hipocrisy.
HIPOCRISY = DO WHAT I SAY, NOT WHAT I DO.

Wild Bill

@Ammoland, You write, “Bloomberg Funded Ant-Gun Brain Washing Course …”. So, what the heck is an “Ant-Gun”.
Here in Texas we have the meanest, most dangerous ants in the US of A, the South American Fire Ant, but even they are not armed with teensy tiny little guns!
@Gas Block in WA, So what are you going to charge him with, sedition being legal in the U.S.?

JDC

@ Wild Bill, I dunno. Maybe that is why those fire ants hurt so bad…tiny microscopic guns and bullets. Sure felt like I was getting shot repeatedly last nest I steped on!

Wild Bill

@JDC, Bad ass ants, but good humor. Have a nice day!

Dave in Fairfax

Jeez WB, who did you think was using all those .9mm guns we heard about a while back?

Wild Bill

@Dave, The little creepy crawllies must still be using up all the .9mm because my gun shop’s clerk said that I was nuts and that it was simply not available! LOL

Gas Block in WA

Undermining our Constitution sounds like sedition at best. He should be in Leavenworth for the rest of his miserable life.

Sherman Kearns

Lock up Bloomberg for sedition. May he rot in jail for trying to usurp our Constitutional Republic.