Though this isn't exactly another series (like How We're Taught About Guns), one thought leads to another about women and guns. Last week I reviewed anti-gun propaganda directed especially at women, as well as some corrective perspectives by women themselves in the firearms community. Our usual readers probably agree that the healthy, rational approach to guns is to acquire sufficient acquaintance and skill to use them safely. But what explains why so many women hate guns and reject gun...

Sitting through last week's GunMeggedon (the all-day marathon of hearings on proposed anti-gun bills) in the California Senate's Public Safety Committee was enough to raise one's blood pressure to dangerous levels. The day culminated for Dr. Wheeler and me in the hearing of SB 1006 (Firearm Violence Research Center, Senator Wolk). That experience was already summarized previously by Dr. Wheeler. In her introductory remarks on April 19th, Senator Wolk said the University of California is "...

 "Was will das Weib?”  That's how Sigmund Freud put the question “What does woman want?”  There may still be other wants mysterious to man, but the answer is growing clearer, year by year within the world of firearms, shooting sports and self-defense. Women want what everyone needs: safety and security, love and fellowship, and self-realization.  (See What ‘Right to Feel Safe’?)  Historically, their identities have emphasized social and relational roles above self-realization, with the presum...

Sparks flew today in the California Senate Public Safety Committee as Committee Chair Sen. Hancock cut off Dr. Wheeler's testimony. DRGO was present at the the committee's hearing this afternoon on a slew of gun control bills, including SB 1006. You’ve seen the history of how national-level public health gun-grabbers leveraged the immense resources of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to finance and produce anti-gun rights junk science. You’ve seen how private institutions li...

Part of our mission at DRGO is to keep you up-to-date on research about the use and abuse of firearms.  We take some satisfaction in revealing when “research” turns out to be made of recycled memes, illogical methods and forgone conclusions. So when this year’s annual Epidemiologic Reviews (Vol. 38) was announced in March, we were thrilled by the opportunity to criticize 9 gun-related studies all in one convenient place.  Then we felt overwhelmed by the challenge that would be. (more&hell...

As the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals prepares for the latest round in the legal battle over Florida's Firearm Owners' Privacy Act (FOPA), one issue is being addressed in depth for the first time. An amicus curiae brief just filed by the Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms shows the real reason that Floridians were outraged when an Ocala, Florida pediatrician in 2010 kicked a young mother and her baby out of his practice for daring to obj...

Just this week we received the raw data, scanned files of the transcript of our testimony.  Recently I’ve written a lot about when an internal medicine specialist, a neurosurgeon, and I testified before the House Appropriations Committee recommending that Congress refuse to pay for gun control-motivated junk science.  We had all independently become aware of and alarmed by the trend of medical journals and societies using their prestige to generate results-oriented research articles that all...

In Part 1, we discussed the entertainment industry’s hypocrisy, claiming that its violent productions don’t influence behavior while using the same media to influence viewers against gun ownership. Part 2 reviewed a blatant example that aired 2 years ago, Young Guns, that purported to show that children cannot reliably grasp the danger of playing with real-seeming guns.  Of course, it was also a poor demonstration of how to teach kids. (more…)