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The original was posted on /r/blockedandreported by /u/Plastic-Ad987 on 2024-11-03 22:04:18+00:00.

Relevance: This post is about the proliferation of very dodgy policy prescriptions using even questionable survey data - very similar to recent cases Jessie and Katie have discussed in the GC sphere.

This is a little dive into Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s report from earlier this summer: “Firearm Violence: A Public Health Crisis in America.” This is a little late to be posting this, but I’ve been following this pretty closely and I’ve never seen a more egregious example of a central authority cherry picking very questionable survey-based “scientific data” to create policy prescriptions, which are then dutifully propagated to the masses.

1. What We Hear

Let’s start with the political talking points and work backwards:

“Gun violence is now the number one cause of the death of children in America — not car accidents, not cancer — gun violence — the number one cause of death for the children of America.” - Kamala Harris White House address September 26, 2024.

If this talking point sounds familiar, it’s because Biden (and, later, Harris) and their supporters won’t stop repeating it. It is their one talking point whenever issues of gun violence is brought up.

You can see it here and here and here … here’s Biden yelling it here … and here’s Jon Stewart repeating it here … and here’s Obama repeating it here … and Rashida Tlaib tries it on here. You get the point. Once you here it, you can’t not see it everywhere.

2. Why The Headline Stats are Plainly Untrue

As you probably guessed, this stat is not true when you dig into the numbers - at least not true as they have described it. Firstly, the Surgeon General’s 40-page report looked at data from 2002 to 2022 and found that, starting in 2019 gun violence (homicides and suicides involving a firearm) overtake car accidents as the leading cause of death for children and adolescents.

Children and adolescents are conveniently defined as those ages from 1-19, excluding deaths of <1 year old infants from SIDS, car accidents, shaken baby syndrome, etc. and including deaths of 18-19 year olds, who are legally adults in every state in the U.S. and, in 28 states, can legally purchase a gun (nationally, you have to be 21 to purchase a handgun from a dealer, but you can still purchase and possess a handgun from a relative, non-licensed dealer in 28 states).

Unsurprisingly, about half of the <20 homicide victims annually are in the narrow 18-19 year old cohort, so including them conveniently includes both i) a large swath of legal adults who tragically ended their lives with legally purchased firearms; and ii) a large swath of legal adults who unfortunately are in the prime age demographic for violent crime victimization nationwide.

More cautious journalists and pundits have been careful to carefully describe the Surgeon General’s findings with language like "gun violence is the number one cause of death for children and teens" or “… children and adolescents”. The Harris / Biden contingent could not be bothered by nuance, so decided to just “go for gold” by looping those cohorts together as “children.”

3. The Survey Data (The Good Stuff)

I have to admit, I wasn’t even particularly surprised or upset by this clever accounting and politicizing from the Surgeon General. This is pretty much par for the course.

What got me riled up was some of the other “facts” casually tossed around in the Surgeon General’s report, which should have drawn immediate skepticism.

For example (quoting directly from the report):

• 17% [of US adults] report that they have witnessed someone being shot

- 4% [of US adults] have shot a firearm in self-defense

• 4% [of US adults] have been injured by a firearm

Think about that. 17% of US adults have not just witnessed a shooting (a gun going off in public, say), but have been a personal witness to a bullet rip through someone’s body.

Let’s just break down the numbers around the 17%:

• There’s 262 million adults in the U.S. 17% is about 44.5 million people.

• Number of firearm homicides a year is about ~15,000 people. There are about 115,000 non-fatal firearm injuries a year. Let’s say conservatively those are two exclusive categories and we don’t account for instances where there was 1 person killed and 1 injured, etc. We add them up to ~130,000 incidents.

• Multiply the number of annual non-fatal firearm injuries times the average number of “adult life years” of ~39 (the average of the amount of time that a U.S. adult in 2024 has been alive) and you get about 5 million potential “witness instances”.

• To bridge the gap between 5 million witness instances and 44.5 million reported witnesses, you’d have to make the assumption that, on average, there were 9 eye witness for every firearm injury and homicide in the U.S., which is very, very unlikely. Every shooting would be a borderline mass shooting.

Here’s the thing, though: you don’t have to do the math to just know intuitively that it’s an absurd fact. It’s like if I said that 30% of Americans have seen a comet hit the earth or 42% of Americans have ventured into outer space. The burden of proof isn’t on the reader to verify that stat - it’s unbelievable on its face.

These figures in the report were taken from, of course, a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation of ~1200 representative U.S. adults who were paid for their responses. I’m not going to get into the methodology on the survey data because I think it’s irrelevant - they might have conducted what was, on face, a somewhat valid survey. But those results alone should have gave them pause. Of course, none of this was published in a medical journal - it’s an online polling group.

4. The Doctor’s Policy Prescriptions

The Surgeon General uses these survey results to build a larger case: that there is a ripple effect that extends beyond the immediate physical trauma of gun violence. The families, “witnesses”, communities that see gun violence are plagued by stress and anxiety, PTSD, youth behavioral problems, etc. In essence: gun violence is such a big deal that Americans can’t stop stressing out about it and therefore it falls within the realm of “public health.”

The doctor has diagnosed the issue. Now, what is he going to prescribe?

It just so happens that the police prescriptions align perfectly with the Biden Administration’s stated gun control agenda, which includes a national assault weapons ban, ban on high capacity magazines, and universal background checks - all of which have marginal, at best, projected effects on gun deaths for adolescents. I won’t go into the data here, but, if the issue is as big as they claim it is, their solution is remarkably lame and politically minded.

Of course, they have to address marginalized communities - you know, the places where (actually) the majority of gun crimes occur. While there is a whole public infrastructure dedicated to addressing on-the-ground gun violence issues in marginalized communities (i.e. law enforcement), the report completely disregards this and instead goes into the old “supportive environment” two-step where they casually order up a list of utopian policy ideas that together will ensure that communities are safe from gun violence. To quote:

“To decrease risk of firearm violence exposure, injury, and/or death, communities can, for example, promote and invest in safe and supportive physical environments and housing, equitable access to high‑quality education and health care, and opportunities for employment and economic growth.”

So, in short, gun violence is an immediate threat to the wellbeing of Americans, especially those marginalized communities. But don’t worry the solution is right around the corner: all we need to do is fix the housing crisis, close the education gap, pass universal healthcare, and ensure continued economic growth.

5. The Medical Institutional Head Nodding

I’m just going to drop this here:

Suffice it to say there was an immediate Aella-scale blowbang of institutions lining up to validate the report and dutifully fellate the SG.

The American Public Health Association: "The Surgeon General’s Advisory on Firearm Violence is important because it both raises awareness and offers evidence‑based solutions to mitigate the risks of injury and death from gun violence.”

APA: "Addressing gun violence is a pressing public health issue that requires solutions grounded in research, data and the voice of communities."

[Here’s the Yale School of Public Health repeating the 17% figure.](https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/shouldering-a-great-responsi…

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