How Research Flipped One Writer’s Opinion On Gun Control

By Tom Knighton

Opinions can change over time. People often change their opinions over time and for a variety of reasons. It’s often productive to look at how these ideas shifted because they may give some guidance on how to get others to change their minds.

At the Washington Post, of all places, there’s a story of one writer’s journey away from being pro-gun control.

Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.

Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain …Read the Rest

Source:: Bearing Arms

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