You have to hand it to the Brady Bunch, they want to keep that sweet Joyce Foundation money flowing to avoid getting real jobs and they’re willing to use any tactic to retain that funding. The Brady Campaign released a “research” paper that concludes basically that gun owners are drunks and thus can’t be trusted with firearm. So what’s wrong with their research? Well for starters the data was cherry picked so heavily that they could make millions on a harvest. The “report” makes the following claim:
Altogether, 15 474 respondents provided information on firearm exposure. After adjustment for demographics and state of residence, firearm owners were more likely than those with no firearms at home to have ≥5 drinks on one occasion (OR 1.32; 95% CI 1.16 to 1.50), to drink and drive (OR 1.79; 95% CI 1.34 to 2.39) and to have ≥60 drinks per month (OR 1.45; 95% CI 1.14 to 1.83). Heavy alcohol use was most common among firearm owners who also engaged in behaviours such as carrying a firearm for protection against other people and keeping a firearm at home that was both loaded and not locked away.
In many states that allow for a right to self-defense drinking while carrying is a big no-no. Here in Minnesota you can carry so long as your blood alcohol level remains no higher than .04 (half of the legal limit for driving). Combine those facts with the fact that carry permit holders are some of the most law-abiding people out there and you can put the puzzle together. As the rate of crimes committed by carry permit holders is generally lower than other people and carrying while intoxicated is heavily restricted or completely prohibited in most states you can logically conclude that there are few people able to legally carry a firearm who carry while drunk.
The article on No Lawyer – Only Guns and Money also point out the fact that Utah ranks dead last on the Brady Campaign’s list of freedom hating states yet is mostly Mormon and Mormons have a prohibition against alcohol consumption. Thus there seems to be a lack of correlation between the Brady Campaign’s rating of “safe” states and alcohol consumption (and thus less opportunity for carry permit holders to carry while intoxicated). Oh and Utah has an extremely low rate of alcohol-related deaths to boot.
Basically if you cherry pick your numbers well enough you can create a report that says anything. If I worked hard enough at it I could release a report that demonstrates a correlation between being anti-gun and being a Nazi sympathizer.
I find hit hilarious though that the Brady Campaign can find any factual numbers to back up their claims that more restrictive gun laws lead to safer communities so they’ve resort to simply trying to run a smear campaign against gun owners. The next report they release will probably demonstrate how gun owners like to kick babies and murder cute baby bunnies while torching retirement homes. After that they’ll probably resort to simply calling us poopy-heads. Honestly you guys at the Brady Campaign should just quit before you embarrass yourselves any further. There is nothing bad about admitting when you’re wrong, we’ve all made mistakes. The difference is admitting your failures allows you to keep your dignity while attempting to do everything possible to avoid admitting failure just makes you look petty and pathetic.