Assault Weapons Ban Proponents Caught Pushing Fake Stats
Jon Stokes 03.01.18
I just put out an op-ed piece in the LA Times picking apart a chart that’s being circulated that purports to show that the 1994 Assault Weapon Ban was responsible for 37% drop in fatalities during the ban period.
This chart shows no such thing, and is basically the result of cherry picking and p-hacking. I do a full takedown in the editorial, but here’s the crux of it:
But there’s a serious flaw in Klarevas’ result: There are few actual “assault weapons” of any type in his dataset, either pre- or post-ban. Klarevas and his allies are taking an apparent drop in fatalities from what are mostly handgun shootings (again, pre-ban as well as post) and attributing this lowered body count to the 1994 legislation.
Yes, you read that correctly: gun controllers are trying to use an apparent drop in handgun fatalities to argue that banning pistol grips and telescoping stocks on rifles made guns less lethal. And I say “apparent,” because even that drop is the result of careful manipulation of the date. Anyway, read the whole thing.
