Study Claims People More Likely to Shoot Black Targets Than White

By Nick Leghorn

Let me just say this from the beginning: this “study” is complete BS. And I don’t say that from an ideological point of view, I say that as someone who respects things like truth and logic. NPR is touting this recent “study” (published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology) as proof that people are racist and more willing to shoot a black person than a white person, but there are a few major issues.

A new meta-analysis set out to answer that question. Yara Mekawi of the University of Illinois and her co-author, Konrad Bresin, drew together findings from 42 different studies on trigger bias to examine whether race affects how likely a target is to be shot.

“What we found is that it does,” Mekawi tells NPR’s Arun Rath. “In our study we found two main things: First, people were quicker to shoot black targets with a gun, relative to white targets with a gun. And … people were more trigger-happy when shooting black targets compared to shooting white targets.”

That is, shooters weren’t just faster to fire at black targets; they were also more likely to fire at a black target.

They also correlated the results …read more

Source:: Truth About Guns