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By Salam Fatohi, NSSF

When you couple gun control advocates masquerading as academic researchers with a discredited gun violence “statistics” operation, you’re bound to get a defective “study” generated for the sole purpose of garnering anti-gun headlines. That’s exactly what just happened with that Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) and the “research” cobbled together and published with the attention-grabbing headline, Deer Hunting Season and Firearm Violence in US Rural Counties.

Disregard the fact that the “data” used in the study comes solely from the discredited Gun Violence Archive, that even the antigun The Trace has distanced themselves from. Forget that buried deep in the study the authors admit they “did not find a linear association between hunting licenses per capita and shootings.” Never mind that the authors also revealed that “The start of deer hunting season was associated will null effects on overall crime, as well as a reduction in alcohol-related arrest,” according to police data.

None of that mattered. The researchers set out to suggest America’s greatest pastime is “bad” and generate an anti-hunting headline they knew a sympathetic media would run with. And the media all too willingly complied.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

The saying goes, “You get what you pay for.” And in this case, billionaire gun control bankrollers paid millions towards antigun research, including financially backing Princeton University’s research department that employs the JAMA study’s author, Princeton sociologist Patrick Sharkey.

They aren’t quite in the league of Michael Bloomberg but gun control billionaires John and Laura Arnold have a deep record of funding gun control efforts that match their anti-Second Amendment beliefs. That includes the Princeton study that was concocted by a known gun control activist researcher using gun control activist data.

The study’s primary author, Princeton sociologist Patrick Sharkey, ignored criminals who illegally obtain and misuse firearms to falsely imply that hunters who are some of the most responsible and safest gun owners anywhere are committing crime during hunting season.

“Sharkey’s study is a twofer for the gun ban industry. It manages to denigrate both hunting and gun ownership,” Lee Williams writes in Shooting News Weekly.

Let Me Count the Flaws

After Sharkey published his “deer hunters cause gun violence” study, the mainstream media ran with headline. Forbes published a rehash of it. So did NBC News. CBS did too. A quick Google search shows dozens of local news outlets repackaged and republished the study.

Not only did the author “not find a linear association between hunting licenses per capita and shootings” – a direct quote from Page 5 of the study – he moved right along to then demonize deer hunters for the same idea.

“We did find, however, that the strongest association between deer hunting season and total shootings was in states with the highest number of hunters relative to the population (Page 5),” Sharkey’s report states.

Sharkey admits, however, another flaw in his own study that further clouds the murky data used. “Due to the absence of a centralized source for information on deer hunting season (Page 2),” Sharkey cobbled together rough timelines and guesses to use as his guideposts. As mentioned previously, Gun Violence Archive (Sharkey’s main data source) is unreliable, error ridden and biased against firearm ownership.

Sharkey also notes the Gun Violence Archive data found an increase in shootings after the start of deer hunting season that involve handguns, rather than the long guns hunters use.

Sharkey’s study also incorrectly states that the association of deer hunting season with shootings was most pronounced in states with the greatest number of hunting license per capita while also noting on the prior page that he “did not find a linear association between hunting licenses per capita and shootings” and that police data shows “the start of deer hunting season was associated will null effects on overall crime.”

Another dubious claim is that “Research on the prevalence of hunting with firearms show that participation is extremely low (and often not legal) in counties that are a part of or near metropolitan areas and increases substantially in sparsely populated areas outside of central cities and suburbs.”

There are patterns of increases in shootings in Chicago around holidays like July Fourth and yet there is no hunting season nor hunters in the Windy City at that time. What they do have are gangs, illegally-obtained firearms, including illegally-modified guns, no bail policies, prosecutors who won’t prosecute and so many gun control laws it is next to impossible to exercise Second Amendment rights.

Critical Counter Argument

Deeply flawed, agenda-driven studies like the Sharkey JAMA report are, sadly, far too common. There is plenty of money in academia will take grant funding pursue junk science to demonize hunters and push gun control agenda. The left’s “playbook” is old – study it, demonize it, then ban it.

Hunters – and all law-abiding gun owners – must stay vigilant and vote to stop gun control legislators who will use studies like Sharkey’s to push further restrictions on Second Amendment rights on law-abiding citizens while ignoring criminals who break the law. That includes the more than 10 million hunters who are not yet registered to vote on Nov. 5. They need to #GUNVOTE so they don’t risk their rights.

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30 COMMENTS

  1. if you read the statements he made in his study in response to an email, published in an article over at SNW … in part of his reply to questions he basically said in essence ‘we know the GVA data is flawed and biased but we used it anyway.’

  2. How ironic that an association representing a group that conservatively is responsible for 600,000 ” accidental ” deaths annually would want to start pointing fingers.

  3. Criminals can’t be hunters if they are barred from exercising their 2A rights. Further, just looking at the split of handguns to long gun killing should have told this idiot he was on the wrong track.On top of all that, these anti-hunting morons just can’t seem to comprehend that without natural predators, hunting is absolutely critical for protecting the health of the herds. Allowing animals to starve to death by banning hunting is cruel, period.

    • Hard to imagine something more cruel than death by wolves…

      As it relates to deer and elk, the anti hunting movement is not about cruelty. If they were, they would not be stocking wolves.

      • Nature was always cruel. It’s just that Nature had “publicity agents” like Walt Disney and other Hollywood film makers.

        “Charlie the lonesome Cougar” was a very entertaining film when I was a kid.

        But many years later cougars in california were eating people alive.

    • FWIW, more and more “criminals” are having their rights restored. The Supreme Court seems to be leaning toward the idea that only dangerous, violent criminals should be deprived of their civil rights. Additionally, the SC seems to be leaning toward the idea that due process is necessary before declaring a person dangerous and violent.

  4. He admits it based on flawed data, yet it was published.

    I am old enough to remember such a “study” would never gotten past peer review much less published. Honesty is rare today.

    • After years of that TRUST THE SCIENCE™ nonsense I really just assume it’s a lie to get money/liberty/or life from me unless I know enough to prove otherwise.

  5. My conclusion, after skimming this tripe, is that firearm violence causes deer hunting.

    It does make me wonder if the funders actually understand they are getting junk for their money.

  7. The anti hunting so called environmentalists and disarmament industry leftists want to find any and every excuse they can to remove firearms and couldn’t care less about management of game animals or wildlife at sustainable levels. Nor do they care that there are many people who do depend on harvesting fish and game for their food supplies. Even folks out here on the farm who raise our own food supplement our supplies with wild game, fish and foraging wild foods.
    Many states require some sort of hunter/firearm safety certificate to get hunting licenses. And hunters fishermen and outdoor sportsmen and women contribute a fairly large amount of money in fees etc. into government coffers.
    But so long as the articles and studies can be skewed to support the agenda and narrative anything is allowed and supported.

  13. This doesn’t make a lick of sense. Did they set out trying to prove that hunters commit crimes? Like a guy in an orange vest and camo spraying innocent people? That’s like the least criminal set of people there are. I dont even get what they’re trying to do here.

    • they did the typical anti-gun bias study.

      they started with an anti-gun premise, then ‘designed’ the ‘research’ to support the original premise using data that is biased and flawed, then reach the pre-determined conclusion of their original premise, then publish the study and claim ‘science says’.

      its called ‘junk science.

      they even admitted the data they used was biased and flawed.

        • Yes, they are “saying hunters=gun violence”. Just another anti-gun lie, another anti-gun study full of biased and flawed data like all of their studies are.

          Its not the most asinine they have come up with, but it ranks somewhere in the top half of the list of the asinine that has come from them.

          Its actually pretty routine. Anti-gun studies always use a biased or flawed data source, and they exclude what doesn’t fit, to support their per-determined conclusions.

  14. I’d like to see a study on why Healthcare Professionals kill 1,000 Americans every day through malpractice, carelessness, ignorance, laziness, stupidity, neglect, etal.

  15. Hey cultists, don’t forget to vote red in support of the 2A. Like when FL REPUBLICANS passed anti 2A legislation after the Broward County H.S. shooting 😂🤡

    • Any Republican who voted against the 2A, is not a Republican. but then you know that already.
      The bill you talk about was to raise the age to buy a rifle to 21. So what?

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