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Second Amendment advocate calls conclusions ‘laughable,’ ‘biased’

A Princeton University study linking gun violence to the beginning of deer hunting season recently attracted criticism from a leading Second Amendment organization.

Published recently in the American Medical Association’s JAMA Network Open journal, the study is “bogus” and “inherently-biased,” according to a National Rifle Association writer.

In the study led by Princeton researcher Patrick Sharkey, the authors said they looked at gun violence data from 854 rural counties across the U.S., comparing the numbers at the start of deer hunting season to those of the week prior.

Their findings, published in “Deer Hunting Season and Firearm Violence in US Rural Counties,” are similar to previous research “showing that firearm prevalence is associated with an increase in the risk of firearm violence,” according to the authors.

“This study suggests that the start of deer hunting season is associated with a substantial increase in shootings, highlighting the role of firearm prevalence in gun violence,” the authors wrote.

Across seven years of data, they found “that the start of deer hunting season was associated with a substantial increase in shootings,” according to the study.

“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 authors wrote.

Other researchers involved in the study came from the University of California at Irvine and Rutgers University.

But NRA writer and Second Amendment advocate Mark Chesnut called their conclusion “laughable.”

“In my 25-plus years of reporting on bogus, inherently-biased anti-gun studies meant to turn the public, via the so-called “mainstream” media, against private firearm ownership, I’ve never seen one quite as laughable …” Chesnut wrote Wednesday in a column at NRA Hunters’ Leadership Forum.

He wrote:

[T]his “study” was nothing more than a ridiculous waste of money and time. It did not prove that any of the increased shootings were committed by deer hunters or even had anything to do with deer hunters or deer season. It did not “find a linear association between hunting licenses per capita and shootings.” Plus, “The start of deer hunting season was associated with null effects on overall crime, as well as a reduction in alcohol-related arrest,” according to police data.

In fact, since the first three weeks of deer season likely encompasses Thanksgiving weekend in the vast majority of those counties, it would be just as easy to conclude that shootings go up in rural counties around the Thanksgiving holidays.

Despite the flaws, traditional news outlets “lapped it up,” including U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, NBC News, and CBS News, he wrote.

“What the ‘study’ is meant to do is to build on the proven fallacy that more guns in public make everyone less safe, when, in fact, it is only guns in the hands of criminals that make society less safe,” Chesnut wrote.

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