September 19, 2023 • 34 mins
Are you ready to challenge long-held beliefs? Brace yourself as we take a hard look at the deeply ingrained myths of gun violence, with Devin Hughes, the founder and president of GVPedia, a nonprofit that specializes in gun violence research. Together we unpack and challenge the notion that defensive gun use is widespread and beneficial to society, trace back the origins of the myth "an armed society is a polite society" to the science fiction from which it came, and we dissect the inherent lethality of guns and the dangers of using this flawed narrative to shape public opinion and policy.
You can find GVPedia's substack here.
Further reading:
The NRA’s Biggest Back-to-School Sale: The Safety of Our Children (Armed with Reason)
GVPedia explains...Defensive Gun Use (GVPedia)
Debunking Myths the Gun Lobby Perpetuates Following Mass Shootings (CAP)
Guns in the Home Don't Make Us Safer (Colorado Ceasefire)
Countering the gun lobby's firehose of falsehood (the Hill)
The Defensive Gun Use Lie and the Gun Lobby’s Firehose of Falsehood (Armed with Reason)
Is an Armed Society a Polite Society? (Armed with Reason)
For more information on Brady, follow us on social media @Bradybuzz or visit our website at bradyunited.org.
Full transcripts and bibliographies of this episode are available at bradyunited.org/podcast.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255.
In a crisis? Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a Crisis Counselor 24/7.
Music provided by: David “Drumcrazie” Curby
Special thanks to Hogan Lovells for their long-standing legal support
℗&©2019 Red, Blue, and Brady
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Devin Hughes (00:00):
Hi, my name is Devin Hughes.
I'm the founder and presidentof GDPD, a nonprofit that
collects and disseminatesresearch on gun violence.
We have the Gun State database,which is the largest publicly
available in existence, withmore than 2,000 academic studies
.
We have GDP University, whichis a collection of white papers
(00:21):
and fact sheets on various gunviolence topics.
Several years ago, we releasedthe Facts about Fire and Policy
Initiative, which monks morethan 40 gun violence myths, and
then we also had the Counteringthe Fire Hose of Falsehood
project, which I was on earlierthis year to discuss, so it's
great to be back.
JJ Janflone (00:41):
And it's great to have you back.
I think I probably use GVPDresources at least once a day,
if not more.
Especially the like.
Being able to search all ofthose academic articles very
quickly as well is reallyhelpful, because I don't know
how listeners, how much time youspend on Google Scholar, but
that can be a nightmare tosearch through, so it's just
helpful to have everythingcollated in one spot.
Devin Hughes (01:03):
Yes, yeah, and all the resources are searchable.
So if you want to author ortitle or copy or even like what
journal it's from and what yearlike, you can search by those
factors to get things narroweddown very quickly On both that
and the Facts about Fire andPolicy Initiative.
JJ Janflone (01:21):
And so our conversation today is half
talking about those mythsthemselves, but also talking
about something that I've beengrappling with, which is how do
you convince people that a liethat they've really bought into
is actually a lie Like?
How do you even go aboutdebunking a myth?
Devin Hughes (01:39):
Yeah, and that's very much like one of the major
questions, because so often withall these myths, the initial
urge and my initial urge as wellis to go into.
It's like all right, here's this10 page statistical analysis
where all the end, the summaryof all the research, and I'm
going to get several books andthen bash you on the head with
(02:01):
them until you agree with me.
He's sort of thing.
And that approach just doesn'twork.
But at the same time, like juststicking with pure soundbites,
all you're getting is the NRAhas this soundbite and we have
this soundbite, but who's to saywhich is correct?
Oh, we'll never know.
And so there's trying to findthe middle ground between those
(02:23):
two extremes of here's all thedata and going into the weeds
versus how do we get placed on abumper sticker or in a TikTok
video?
And that's something that I'vebeen working on and I know a lot
of other people in the spaceare trying to figure out how
best to do that, becausecountering the gun, lobbies,
(02:44):
firehose or falset in thatfashion is crucial work and it's
definitely challenging to do.
JJ Janflone (02:52):
I think there's an added layer of difficulty too,
because I think the gun lobbyhad a lot of lead time Like
they've had decades to reallyperfect this messaging around
the myth that, like defensive,gun use is the most common form
of gun use and that it'seffective.
And not only have they had allthis lead time, they have way
more money and the message issexier, because if it's not a
nuanced message, as you said, mewith a bibliography, versus a
(03:17):
really slick ad campaign,unfortunately the ad campaign is
going to beat me with a sheetof paper every time.
Devin Hughes (03:23):
Yeah, and the gun lobby has spent decades honing
this message and there was Ithink it was released last year,
but the trace reported oninternal documents that had been
released from the NRA.
They have their own informationdivision director stating that
no matter what the policy is,they're always going to return
(03:45):
back to defensive gun use, andso they've been focused on this
singular narrative that a gunmakes you safer.
And very core of that is theidea that defensive gun use is
widespread, effective andbeneficial for society, and we
can get into each of thosepoints later, but it's all
centered around that and it hasthe bumper sticker slogan that
(04:10):
like, oh, this is the best wayto protect yourself.
And then there is the patina ofother academics that have went
some form of support for it.
But then you have a wholebroader literature that refutes
that.
But in those refutations you'regetting down into the weeds of
(04:33):
like how is defensive gun usesimilar to cocaine, which are
two things.
That that's bizarre, why areyou putting those together?
But is actually like a coreelement of the debate.
And if you go deeply into thoseweeds in a casual conversation,
half the audience's eyes isgoing to glaze over and the
(04:53):
other half is checking their tiptop sort of thing.
JJ Janflone (04:57):
Yeah, and I think OK, and so to take even a step
back, I think maybe before weeven dig into the lie you
pointed out, it's a threepronged thing that's coming at
us, which is one that defensivegun use works for one.
And what I say when I meanworks is that the defensive gun
use is common, that a gun in thehome makes you safer, that kind
of messaging right, and that'svalid.
(05:17):
So that's message one.
Message two is that it's goodfor society.
It's the whole, like an armedsociety is a polite society
which makes a great tweet, likethat sort of thing.
And then that defensive gun useis the best form of
self-defense.
It's not a dog, it's not a ringdoorbell, it's that again.
So we've got this three tieredthing of defensive gun use is
(05:40):
widespread, it's beneficial forsociety, it's an effective use
of self-defense.
Why those three?
Right, not even like how themyth works, but like why have?
Why has the gun lobby or whyhave gun manufacturers really
pushed for those three things tobe like accepted in the
American mythos as true?
Devin Hughes (05:58):
Right and to take even another step back and go
into an armed society is apolite society.
JJ Janflone (06:04):
And.
Devin Hughes (06:05):
I think this kind of story highlights the
ridiculousness of it.
It's often held up as a bumpersticker argument.
You'll often hear pokingadvocates like oh, an armed
society is a polite society,they say, is they wear the
T-shirt with that and glazedinto cross.
And what people generally don'tknow is where that comes from
(06:25):
and where the actual phrase anarmed society is a polite
society comes from is a sciencefiction book in the 1940s by
Robert Heimann, who's a famousscience fiction author, and the
society that he's describing inthere is this futuristic society
that you have a bunch ofgenetically altered super humans
(06:48):
who are bored with their livesand constantly go around armed
and have to be exceedinglypolite with each other,
otherwise they'll end up in agunfight.
And one of the classic casesfrom this is that two of the
characters in this novel aregoing out to dinner.
They're on this second floor ofthis elaborate restaurant.
(07:10):
They order their dinner andaccidentally they fling a crowd
leg off their table and falls ona table below them.
The people on the table belowthem almost have their guns
drawn because it's like how darethis insult?
And so the next page or so ofthe narrative is them trying to
talk each other down and makesure that this was in fact an
(07:31):
accident.
Nobody needs to shoot somebodyelse.
And then, after they resolve it, another guy from the table
across the way is like how dareyou cowards resolve this with
words?
And so then there actually is agunfight and once the gun
fights over, everybody laughsand goes back to eating.
That is the polite societybeing described in armed society
(07:55):
as a polite society, and weactually do have a post on our
sub stack.
Going into that and highlightinglike the source of the quote is
insane.
It was a work of fiction in thefictional society that was
being represented.
And yet here it is, as thiscrowned myth emblazoned in
(08:16):
pro-Gun rhetoric, and it serveshow little actual intellectual
support there is for the myth.
So then, to return to the whythose three points widespread,
effective and beneficial for thesociety.
Because defensive gun use needsto be all of those in order for
the pro-Gun narrative that gunsmake people side and safer to
(08:40):
be the case.
If defensive gun use is rare,then there's no real way that
it's going to be able to reducecrime.
If it's not effective than anyother mechanism, then the myth
will have the national baseballbat society for self-defense
instead.
Or if it's not beneficial forsociety, then it's harming
(09:01):
society, and all the pro-Gunarguments around that collect,
and so the pro-Gun narrativerelies on each of those points,
and, as it turns out, each ofthose points is completely false
.
JJ Janflone (09:17):
And I think and it articulates too that it's set up
, if a myth was set up with,that guns are either good or
they're bad.
They can't be a neutral item,and if they're not good, then
they're by default bad, and ifthey're bad you wouldn't buy
them.
But if everyone has one again,if a crab leg is the thing
that's going to set it off, thenyou should be hard to keep up,
(09:38):
yeah, and so one of theinteresting aspects of this is
just how unsupported it isnumber one.
Devin Hughes (09:57):
So Tobacco comes from the 1990s.
Gary Klutch research ondefensive gun use.
He conducted a series ofsurveys that found that they'd
survey 5,000 people and of those5,066 would say they'd had a
defensive gun use.
And he then extrapolated thatout to that means there's 2.5
million guns.
(10:17):
So gun use is in, which is theway to do it.
But it also quickly revealedthat the results were
mathematically impossible.
For example, his numbers onburglary predicted around
800,000 plus burglaries arestopped by defensive gun use.
(10:37):
And when you look at the numberof burglaries from verified
prime sources where people wereat whom and away at the time
with the burglary, it would turnout that you would have to have
people sleepwalking anddefending themselves of firearms
when they're sleepwalking inorder to make the numbers even
(11:00):
possible.
And that's before consideringthat only 42% or so of
households at the time had afire.
And also, the numbers were justfactually impossible.
JJ Janflone (11:12):
And it's also too, I think, remembering his survey
and the way that it broke down.
Also, when we talk about evenwhat defensive gun use is, it
was people self-reporting onwhat they felt the gun had had
an, or the presence of a firearmhad an impact on.
Devin Hughes (11:25):
Yes, and also it relies on the self-recording,
and so that kind of goes back tothe point where it's like well,
our gun's good, bad or neutral.
And the point that I wouldbring up is they're not really
any of those, they're lethal.
So it increases the lethalityof any encounters.
But having something be morelethal doesn't necessarily mean
(11:49):
it's going to prevent injury ordeter people even more.
It's just when you have thoseencounters it's going to be more
likely that somebody dies as aresult.
So the whole our guns good orbad, that's not really the
factor here.
They're lethal and we see thatcome up in the statistics where
(12:10):
I mean then the home doublesyour risk of homicide, triples
your risk of suicide, forinstance.
JJ Janflone (12:16):
Because I just think of when I used to live in
a rural area.
We would hear things in thenight on our back porch or
something, and if I ran outdidn't have a gun so I had pans.
If I ran out, banged a pan andwas like go away, and then
nothing happened, I could arguethat was defensive pan use
because then nothing badhappened.
But the reality is it couldhave been the house settling, it
(12:37):
could have been a raccoon, itcould have been a burglar.
Who am I to know?
Nothing happened.
You can't report on anon-occurrence.
Devin Hughes (12:46):
Right yeah.
And also let's say in thatdefensive pan use that there
actually was somebody there andthey were just walking down the
street and all of a sudden theysee somebody coming at them with
a pan.
JJ Janflone (12:59):
With a pan.
Devin Hughes (12:59):
yeah, With a headache and they run away.
Is that a defensive pan use oran offensive pan use?
And so one story that weencountered when doing this
research comes from Mark Bryantof the Gun Violence Archive, and
he was talking about how he wasperusing one of the innumerable
gun forums out there and he ranacross this story and this was
(13:23):
several years back, where thisguy had posted on there a story
of like you won't believe whathappened to me.
So last night I was at themovies with my wife.
We were exiting the movies itwas in the small mid-western
town we were coming out and allof a sudden three black men were
approaching us and they, in hiswords, looked up to no good and
(13:46):
so he went ahead and brandishedhis firearm.
They scattered and hecongratulated himself on
preventing a crime that day.
Mark Bryant's on a call with theassistant district attorney for
this same small town in themid-west and he was like yeah,
so you won't believe what justhappened to me.
(14:08):
Last night, me and two mybrother and his friend from
Vanderbilt, who are medicalstudents there were going to
this movie and as we'reapproaching the movie, all of a
sudden this crazed white, thiswhole white guy, pulled his gun
on us and we didn't know whatwas happening, so we just ran
away because we didn't want tofigure out.
(14:29):
Now, if Gary Klatt had surveyedor anybody had surveyed the old
white guy in this encounter,we'd been like absolutely I had
a sense of gun use, I probablysaved lives with my action.
And yet when the full contextis revealed, it's pretty obvious
that was an aggravated assaultand offensive gun use.
(14:51):
And one of the more importantstudies out there actually
looked at the responses in thesesurveys.
So it took the survey responsesand then sent them to a panel
of judges and told the judgesall right, assume this person
can carry here and take them attheir word.
For what happened?
Are these cases likely offensiveor defensive?
(15:12):
And they're only looking atcases of report defensive gun
use in the survey.
And the judges came back andfound that in over half of these
cases the defensive gun usesweren't reality crunch or
offensive gun uses.
And so even when looking at thedefensive gun use numbers
(15:33):
themselves, I reported, whenhe's here, 2.5 million or
figures like that more than halfof those are gun crimes.
And so even in that case,solely looking at defensive gun
uses, there's more offensiveuses than defensive uses.
And when you look at any otherdata source with guns, including
(15:55):
both record offensive anddefensive.
There are vastly more offensiveuses than defensive uses.
JJ Janflone (16:03):
Do you then see, when you're looking at this
three-ponged myth, the rise offolks that we've seen reported
across the US being shot whenthey pull in someone's driveway
to turn around, or they come tothe wrong house because they're
lost, or someone knocks on thewrong door and they're shot by
the homeowner or the tenant?
Do you see a correlation therebetween this push of messaging?
Devin Hughes (16:27):
It's hard to tell whether there's an official
correlation or causation there,but there have definitely been
an uptick in those stories wherejust what would otherwise be a
misunderstanding or even harshwords leads to a terrible
tragedy and people constantlybeing on guard thinking, oh, the
(16:49):
bad guys are right around thecorner.
And it turns out the bad guysin this case is a fifth grader
who's looking to pick up as theunder brother, and basically the
added lethality of the firearmmeans that what would otherwise
be an interaction that would bepassed over becomes a lethal
interaction.
JJ Janflone (17:10):
So, instead of being a lady in glasses holding
a pan chasing you from a backporch, it's somebody with a
firearm.
Devin Hughes (17:16):
Yeah, yeah, it's a lot harder to run from a
firearm than a pan typically.
JJ Janflone (17:23):
So one of the things that you've mentioned a
few times now is that, as we'vebeen talking, we pointed out bad
academic studies and I want tobe really clear.
It's not bad because the gunviolence prevention movement
disagrees with the findings.
It's straight up badmethodology in a lot of these
places.
I'm wondering if we can talkabout and you just had a
beautiful piece on Substack thatI think actually was an up of
(17:44):
an old block you had done butI'm wondering if you could
explain for our listeners howcan they, in the world where
maybe they don't have a longacademic background or they
don't have time to look up, whenthey hear a study from Harvard
and they go okay, then this mustbe valid.
That's an impressiveinstitution.
That like how to tell good, agood study, a good stat, like
(18:08):
how to tell a good from the bador the poorly done.
Devin Hughes (18:12):
Yeah, yeah.
It is challenging, I do think,for individuals.
You want to see if something'speer reviewed, but even that's
not going to catch everything,and so then it's a question of
whether it sounds plausible.
If you take the 2.5 milliondefensive gun use, for example,
(18:32):
and put that on a per day basis,you're getting something in the
realm of 6,000 or so per day.
If there's that many, somebodywould have noticed There'd be
empirical evidence of some sortfor that.
JJ Janflone (18:46):
From law enforcement, from insurance
agency from your local newspaper, it'd be somewhere.
Devin Hughes (18:52):
Yeah, somebody somewhere would be picking that
up, not all of them perhaps, butsay 50%, as may the surveys
themselves indicate maybe 25%,maybe 10%, but we have that data
from the Gun Violence Archiveand it's under 2,000 verified
defensive gun uses annually.
(19:12):
So even if you make the reallyextreme assumption that, oh, the
police, media, the NRA, allpro-gun groups are only picking
up 10% of cases which, to beclear, all of the surveys done
on this indicate that 50% ormore of these cases are the
(19:33):
police find out about, if youtake that, you get to 20,000
defensive gun uses annually,which is still a far cry from
the 2.5 million that is beingadvertised.
And to illustrate thedifficulties with figuring out
what's factual, what's not, evenacademics have a problem with
(19:55):
this.
So one of the things that weuncovered in our deep dive on
defensive gun use which you cansee at both GBPDIA and the armed
with threes and sub-stack wasthe 2013 National Academy of
Sciences report.
This was commissioned in thewake of Sandy Hook, when
President Obama pushed out anexecutive order saying, hey, we
(20:18):
need to review what the currentevidence suggests and where
there should be more research.
Now, typically, these sort ofcommittee-based reports from the
government agency take a coupleyears to put together.
This was pushed together in acouple months, given that they
wanted to put something outquickly after this take, and so
(20:38):
they convened a committee andproduced this 100-page report,
which received very littlefanfare, as maybe these 100-page
government reports do.
However, there was one pagethat was seized upon, and that
was the one page on defensivegun use, and pro-gun advocates
pointed to it and said look, itagrees with us that there's lots
(21:01):
of defensive gun uses.
And when you look at it, itsummarizes the research and says
, hey, there's the potential for2.5 million defensive gun uses.
There's a national crimevictimization survey that
produces a lower estimate, butthen it said that there are
almost all sources that showedthat there are more defensive
(21:25):
gun uses than offensive gun uses.
And, to be clear, this is a lie.
There are zero sources, usingthe same methodology, that look
at offensive and defensive gunuses and find more defensive
uses.
If you look at private surveys,all of them find more offensive
uses than defensive uses.
If you look at the nationalcrime victimization survey, it
(21:48):
finds more offensive thandefensive.
If you look at empirical dataor gun violence data, again more
offensive than defensive.
So how did this objective lieget into a government report
that was then cited by theSupreme Court of the United
States as well as the CDC goingon to last year?
And the reason this happened,as it turns out, was that Gary
(22:13):
Cleck himself, the author of the2.5 million defensive gun use
claim, was on the committee, andso it's like where did it come
from?
He cited himself.
JJ Janflone (22:24):
Gary, why Come on?
Devin Hughes (22:27):
Yeah, and how did it pass through everybody else?
They only had a couple of daysto review the entire project, as
I found out from interviewingother academics involved with it
, and they did see this, andthey provided criticisms of this
defensive gun use section wherethey're like where are you
doing here?
This is an unbalanced summaryand inaccurate, and those
(22:49):
concerns just did not carrythrough In.
The leading theory among thepeople I talked to and I
interviewed like 10 academicsinvolved with it was that this
was a consensus-based reportwhere all of the committee
members had to agree on it.
This basically gave Gary Kleppthe topel over this one section
(23:11):
and so he was able to keep theseinaccuracies, these objective
lies that then influenced theSupreme Court of the United
States, the CDC and data-sensething.
Going back to the originalquestion is like how do you tell
whether something is goodscience or bad science?
Even the government andacademics themselves
(23:31):
occasionally don't catch thisstuff.
It can have profound impactsyears and decades later.
JJ Janflone (23:39):
And it seems to.
Once that misinformation traingets going with academics, it's
really dangerous, because thensomeone like Lot can cite Klepp
and someone like Klepp can citeLot, and then it just becomes a
self-referential, bad academicwork machine that is largely
based on survey data.
Devin Hughes (23:58):
Yes, yeah, it all comes back to these small
private surveys, and even somethat are slightly larger.
So before the Supreme Courtdecision in Bruin, there was
another survey conducted by anacademic by a name of William
English of Georgetown who, to myknowledge, I was saying
anything on guns before, but heproduced a couple amicus briefs
(24:23):
for the Supreme Court with hisown research indicating that
there's no use of defensive gunuses.
And basically he took GaryKlepp's approach in the 90s and
then made it work.
Because Gary Klepp asked peopleover the last year, did you
have a defensive gun use?
He asked over your wise time,have you had defensive gun use?
(24:45):
And as anybody who studiedpsychology for a bit and I was
like, our memories get hazyafter a while of previous events
.
So let's say you wanted toreport defensive pan use, for
example, and 10 years later, notonly was it just a sound, there
was actually two guys trying tobreak down my door and I
(25:06):
fendent the law off with my pain.
Now you might not know thatyou're lying Looking back on the
memory.
That's how it appears, butmemories evolve over time, they
aren't snapshot, and it madethis whole false positive
problem that's endemic in thesesurveys even worse, and yet
again it's being cited bySupreme Court justices.
JJ Janflone (25:28):
The reboot is always worse than the original.
It's just what I'm learning.
It's the complicated nature ofthis, though, because I could
see how maybe someone listeningto this, who maybe is new to gun
violence prevention or sees thework that maybe Brady does or
GDP does, and says, ok,fundamentally, those people are
gun grabbers.
They're not interested in thereal science that says that it's
(25:48):
safe, and I don't know how toarticulate to people that, for
example, after I know in thelast few years that there's been
a peer reviewed studies thatsay that lots initial argument
that more guns make us safer waswrong, that there's been
multiple peer reviewed studiesthat say that guns don't deter
(26:09):
crime from happening in an area.
But, as we talked about withthe bibliography, I can say that
and then start sharing theseother pieces of work that are
from very well respectedacademics, but what I'm going to
get back, I'm sure, is they'rejust part of the liberal
education machine.
Does that make sense?
Devin Hughes (26:25):
Yeah, it definitely is a problem.
And if somebody tries to havethis conversation on Twitter or
X or whatever it's called, withsomebody with like five users
and this airs.
JJ Janflone (26:36):
I'm sure it'll have a different name, but yeah.
Devin Hughes (26:38):
Yes, yeah, but like having that sort of
conversation there, neitherperson's going to change the
other's mind.
It's just not going to happen.
And for the effect of changingsomebody's mind there has to be
an element of trust and kind ofmutual respect beforehand, and
if there isn't that, it's goingto be incredibly hard to change
(26:58):
somebody else's mind.
Now that doesn't mean thatpotentially debates can't be
productive, to where there's anaudience that gets to hear both
sides of the evidence and thenmake up your mind if you
genuinely don't know.
But if somebody is hearted intheir belief that, yes, there
are millions of defensive gunuses each year, first you're
going to have to build up recordwith that person understanding
(27:23):
and then what I find tends towork is asking them directly.
So is there any evidence thatwould change your mind?
And if there is no evidencethat would change your mind, the
conversation is like they'vejust admitted that they're not
willing to change your mind andthere's nothing you can do about
that.
But there are lots of otherpeople out there who might be.
Oh yes, if you could show meempirical data that can show
(27:46):
this number or actual flaws withthese surveys or stuff, then
you have room to figure out allright.
Where's the false beliefstemming from?
And how can we correct thatfalse belief without causing the
other person to feel bad aboutbeing misled about?
You can't go.
Oh, you're just a neanderthaland a complete idiot for
(28:09):
believing this.
And how dare you?
And here's my book of facts andtake that.
JJ Janflone (28:14):
Yeah, Sort of Like your rub.
Who bought into the line?
It's your fault.
Devin Hughes (28:18):
As opposed, you got wet because this is the
water that falls on us.
JJ Janflone (28:20):
It happens.
Devin Hughes (28:22):
Yeah, if you start out insulting somebody's core
identity, you're never going toget anywhere.
But if you're figuring out thetruth together and piecing
together where their specificfalse beliefs are coming from
and then exploring together whythey might be false and
highlighting the absurditiesthat come up with that, and to
(28:42):
provide an example, withdefensive gun use, if somebody's
yeah, I believe it, and 2.5millions, clearly the case, it
comes from these peer reviewedstudies, and there's 80 the
credit and surveys that show thesame thing.
Like one of the things is likeall right, where's the hard
evidence?
And so the media is trying tohide it?
(29:02):
Okay, so all the policedepartments are trying to hide
it too, and that might be, ohyeah, since, okay, the NRA
itself trying to hide it.
Because, let's be clear, ifthere are 6,000 defensive gun
uses every single day, somebodysomewhere's going to notice and
there's a massive lobby outthere with a major incentive to
(29:25):
find every single possible caseof defensive gun use that there
is out there and touted to highheaven.
JJ Janflone (29:31):
Yeah, because it's such a beautiful ad and so do
not use it.
Devin Hughes (29:35):
Yeah.
So if you believe that, oh,nobody's recording on it, first,
you don't believe the verysurveys that indicate that
there's 2.5 million defensivegun uses.
And two, the conspiracy goesfar deeper than just the liberal
media and the Brady podcasttrying to make us believe myths
and stuff Like no, like the NRAwould have to be in on it, gun
(29:57):
owners for America would have tobe in on it, because there's no
way something happens 6,000times a day that involves a
lethal weapon and people don'tknow about it or can't find
evidence for it.
And if there's, like, all right, nobody's really trying.
Yeah, there are people trying,and it's.
If you think the gun bonesarchive is missing thousands of
(30:18):
defensive gun uses every day, itshould be trivially easy to
prove the rule.
Like I'm going to accept that Icould be wrong on defensive
guns.
All I'm asking for provenpeople who tell, like the 2.5
million defensive venues is findme hard, empirical evidence for
1% of your claims, just 1%.
(30:38):
I'm not even requiring the full, 100% or 50%, just 1.
That should not be difficult.
And yet nobody has.
And when you point to theempirical evidence, you'll get
claims by certain programacademics like oh, surveys are
the only way, even thoughthere's lots of evidence that
surveys on defensive gun use andoutside defensive gun use have
(31:02):
these flaws, and so justpointing out the inherent
absurdities of what thosenumbers would actually mean if
they were true, I think can chipaway at the oh yeah, that might
not actually be the case.
JJ Janflone (31:18):
And it makes me.
I think probably one of thethings too is that I think it's
really hard because I get upset.
I have an emotional responsebecause I'm like, how dare you?
To the folks who put thesestudies out.
Because I'm like you have arespected position in society,
people trust you, you haveletters after your name and,
whether intentionally orunintentionally, you're putting
out bad information.
It's like being a snake oilsalesman in the old time.
(31:41):
You asked.
Only, instead of selling liquidopium, you're selling something
, I guess, equally lethal.
Devin Hughes (31:47):
But yeah, or even more.
JJ Janflone (31:49):
Yeah, I haven't played the Oregon Trail game in
a while, so I might be, I mightbe off on that.
I think that these are allreally good.
One of the things that I'veenjoyed about reading your sub
stack is I think that again, itgives a nice approachable thing
to link people to say no, thisis the actual information.
Here's how this particularacademic report that gets cited.
(32:13):
A lot is wrong, but I wonder ifyou have any sort of just
general tips and tricks forfolks out there in the world for
that, if they see something togo immediately, okay, no, that's
just wrong.
Like where should they go?
What should they do?
Yeah, just solves.
America Devin.
Devin Hughes (32:29):
Yeah, and the next step, one to fixing America,
yeah, and this is one of thethings that the GPD is strung
with as well, because we producethese very long, carefully
researched documents that, inthe end, maybe a couple hundred,
a couple thousand people willread in their entirety, and so
(32:52):
that's nice.
There's 300 million people inthe United States and there's
definitely a struggle betweenthe TikTok version or the bumper
sticker version and then thecareful research portion, and so
with GVPD, what we try to do isprovide the careful research
portion and then try to breakdown that down further into bite
(33:13):
size pieces, so like ourdefensive gun use report overall
is 30 pages, which we justpublished on GVPD itself, but
before that we had published itin 12 parts on the Arma 3's and
sub-stat, under the kind ofNetflix theory of would you
watch a 12 hour movie?
Of course, and I'm alreadysaying, will you watch a 10 hour
(33:34):
mini series?
Oh, and when was it in theshowing?
Absolutely, of course I will.
JJ Janflone (33:38):
Yes, happily, I will pay extra for the privilege
to do yes.
Devin Hughes (33:42):
Yeah, and so trying to break it down there.
And then one of the thingswe're going to be working on
over the coming months is can webreak it down even further to
short videos or graphics thathighlight points even further?
So it's building this pyramidof knowledge where the top of
the pyramid is the bite sizelike infographic or just
(34:02):
statistic or TikTok video, andthen below that is the fact
sheet, that where you cangenerate that bite size thing,
and below that is the paperoutlining things and below that
is the actual research itself.
And every single element ofthat pyramid needs to be in
place, because if all you haveis the talking point and
somebody's, where's the proof?
(34:23):
I saw a TikTok video that's notvery persuasive, whereas if
it's okay, here's the fact sheetand people are like that's just
citing these, how do we know ifthey're fat acts?
Here's the research on why weknow that research is case.
Here's the logical explanationsin detailing why this is true
(34:43):
and why other alternativeexplanations don't hold longer.
It's really hard work oncalving the firehose of Halstead
because you have to have all ofthose elements in place in case
somebody does try to figure outthe actual truth of something.
Now, it might be the case insome conversations after the
fact sheet somebody's like allright, yeah, I'm convinced, but
(35:05):
you want to have the fullbackground as well in order to
have that intellectual supportif needed.
And one of the things we try todo at GBPD is providing the
lower levels of that pyramid.
So if somebody's pushed on,where do you get that statistic?
Or what's the case here?
People can find that and beassured that the correct
(35:25):
information is there.
By the way, one of the importantthings there and that's quite
helpful is to know the otherperson's argument in a way
better than they do themselves.
Because, like with the FBInumber, it's not from the FBI
and but if you don't know that,that's oh, did he find something
?
How am I supposed to know this?
(35:46):
How am I supposed to check thisGoogling FBI defensive gun use
number, not getting it there?
Whereas if you know the otherside's argument, generally, it's
okay, this is where they'recoming from, here's why it's
mistaken.
It can one provide a sense ofcalm of oh okay, this is where
this person's coming from,here's why they're mistaken so
(36:06):
far.
So you know, freeze during thatinteraction, but then it also
allows you to, in a way, turnthe table.
So oh, that's interesting whydo you think that he lead me
through this and being able tohear them out what they think
their evidence is and then, oncethey provide that evidence
rather than having to guesswhere did they get this Then
(36:28):
being able to say, oh, would yoube interested in hearing this
that disagrees with thosenumbers?
And if they're not, then it'sokay.
There's no way that thisperson's open persuasion anyway.
But if they are, then there'sroom for a conversation,
potentially changing someone'smind.
JJ Janflone (36:46):
I just yeah.
And then I just I think of theStephen Colbert meme of you came
into my house, tried to talkabout Lord of the Rings of the
Heat.
Then you're prepped, you'reprepped, you're ready to go,
you're not afraid to say it.
And again, when the gun lobbieshad decades and more money than
I wanna even try toconceptualize to make this
argument seem cohesive, it'sreally good to know to have
(37:10):
those kind of points ready,along with that deep
underpinning.
So I really appreciate it.
I appreciate all the work thatGVPDIA does.
I'm hoping it makes people feela little bit more empowered to
speak out about nonsense.
So not sure how you do that ina TikTok while dancing and make
it compelling.
I'm trying.
I'm trying to figure it out.
(37:31):
It's hard.
Devin Hughes (37:31):
Well, the moment somebody cracks that, yeah, be
sure to let me know because I'llbe quiet and cheap as well.
And part of it as well isrecognizing that, yes, like
Caldering the Firehose of Falcetis hard work.
There have been studies thathave shown that people are
willing to actively pay in ordernot to hear the other side's
argument, and that's on both theleft and the right.
(37:54):
There is a very strong urge tojust be like nope, that person's
wrong, I'm not gonna listenanymore and shut oneself off in
the knowledge that I'mcompletely right and living on,
whereas actually listening towhat the other side has to offer
while it's oftentimes annoyingsometimes it's barely legible
(38:14):
and it's just painful work ingeneral but it shows where the
other people are coming from andthe mistakes there.
And that's going to be crucialin terms of Caldering the
Firehose, because it's not likeyou can just provide your top
level talking point and expectit to work.
This is like their top leveltalking point is not going to
(38:36):
work On either.
You have to be able to delvedeeper in order to have these
longer term conversations thatcan eventually change mine.
But as soon as somebody developsthe TikTok quarantine that
takes that entire process into30 seconds.
Everything will be fixed.
The world will be better.
JJ Janflone (38:54):
I don't know how to do that yet.
So hopefully someone figures itout.
Thank you so much, Devin.
If folks want to be sure thatthey don't just stay in their
bubble, that they learn, thatthey know how to deepen their
understanding and share it,where can they find you?
Where can they find all ofGVPD's stuff?
Devin Hughes (39:09):
Yeah, so you can find us on gvpediaorg in
armwithreasonsumstackcom.
Please subscribe.
Subscribing is free If you wantto access some of the older
content that is behind thepayroll, but that allows us to
get even more people engaged andmore authors on there.
So, on those on Twitter or X orwhatever it's going to be
(39:33):
called, whenever this isreleased, you can still find us
at GV underscore pedia, andwe're also on Facebook and
Instagram.
We're not yet on TikTok becauseI don't know how to dance.
JJ Janflone (39:48):
I'm sure you'll figure it out.
Devin Hughes (39:50):
I have my doubts, but thank you.
JJ Janflone (39:52):
Thank you All right .
Hi, my name is Devin Hughes.
I'm the founder and presidentof GDPD, a nonprofit that
collects and disseminatesresearch on gun violence.
We have the Gun State database,which is the largest publicly
available in existence, withmore than 2,000 academic studies
.
We have GDP University, whichis a collection of white papers
(00:21):
and fact sheets on various gunviolence topics.
Several years ago, we releasedthe Facts about Fire and Policy
Initiative, which monks morethan 40 gun violence myths, and
then we also had the Counteringthe Fire Hose of Falsehood
project, which I was on earlierthis year to discuss, so it's
great to be back.
JJ Janflone (00:41):
And it's great to have you back.
I think I probably use GVPDresources at least once a day,
if not more.
Especially the like.
Being able to search all ofthose academic articles very
quickly as well is reallyhelpful, because I don't know
how listeners, how much time youspend on Google Scholar, but
that can be a nightmare tosearch through, so it's just
helpful to have everythingcollated in one spot.
Devin Hughes (01:03):
Yes, yeah, and all the resources are searchable.
So if you want to author ortitle or copy or even like what
journal it's from and what yearlike, you can search by those
factors to get things narroweddown very quickly On both that
and the Facts about Fire andPolicy Initiative.
JJ Janflone (01:21):
And so our conversation today is half
talking about those mythsthemselves, but also talking
about something that I've beengrappling with, which is how do
you convince people that a liethat they've really bought into
is actually a lie Like?
How do you even go aboutdebunking a myth?
Devin Hughes (01:39):
Yeah, and that's very much like one of the major
questions, because so often withall these myths, the initial
urge and my initial urge as wellis to go into.
It's like all right, here's this10 page statistical analysis
where all the end, the summaryof all the research, and I'm
going to get several books andthen bash you on the head with
(02:01):
them until you agree with me.
He's sort of thing.
And that approach just doesn'twork.
But at the same time, like juststicking with pure soundbites,
all you're getting is the NRAhas this soundbite and we have
this soundbite, but who's to saywhich is correct?
Oh, we'll never know.
And so there's trying to findthe middle ground between those
(02:23):
two extremes of here's all thedata and going into the weeds
versus how do we get placed on abumper sticker or in a TikTok
video?
And that's something that I'vebeen working on and I know a lot
of other people in the spaceare trying to figure out how
best to do that, becausecountering the gun, lobbies,
(02:44):
firehose or falset in thatfashion is crucial work and it's
definitely challenging to do.
JJ Janflone (02:52):
I think there's an added layer of difficulty too,
because I think the gun lobbyhad a lot of lead time Like
they've had decades to reallyperfect this messaging around
the myth that, like defensive,gun use is the most common form
of gun use and that it'seffective.
And not only have they had allthis lead time, they have way
more money and the message issexier, because if it's not a
nuanced message, as you said, mewith a bibliography, versus a
(03:17):
really slick ad campaign,unfortunately the ad campaign is
going to beat me with a sheetof paper every time.
Devin Hughes (03:23):
Yeah, and the gun lobby has spent decades honing
this message and there was Ithink it was released last year,
but the trace reported oninternal documents that had been
released from the NRA.
They have their own informationdivision director stating that
no matter what the policy is,they're always going to return
(03:45):
back to defensive gun use, andso they've been focused on this
singular narrative that a gunmakes you safer.
And very core of that is theidea that defensive gun use is
widespread, effective andbeneficial for society, and we
can get into each of thosepoints later, but it's all
centered around that and it hasthe bumper sticker slogan that
(04:10):
like, oh, this is the best wayto protect yourself.
And then there is the patina ofother academics that have went
some form of support for it.
But then you have a wholebroader literature that refutes
that.
But in those refutations you'regetting down into the weeds of
(04:33):
like how is defensive gun usesimilar to cocaine, which are
two things.
That that's bizarre, why areyou putting those together?
But is actually like a coreelement of the debate.
And if you go deeply into thoseweeds in a casual conversation,
half the audience's eyes isgoing to glaze over and the
(04:53):
other half is checking their tiptop sort of thing.
JJ Janflone (04:57):
Yeah, and I think OK, and so to take even a step
back, I think maybe before weeven dig into the lie you
pointed out, it's a threepronged thing that's coming at
us, which is one that defensivegun use works for one.
And what I say when I meanworks is that the defensive gun
use is common, that a gun in thehome makes you safer, that kind
of messaging right, and that'svalid.
(05:17):
So that's message one.
Message two is that it's goodfor society.
It's the whole, like an armedsociety is a polite society
which makes a great tweet, likethat sort of thing.
And then that defensive gun useis the best form of
self-defense.
It's not a dog, it's not a ringdoorbell, it's that again.
So we've got this three tieredthing of defensive gun use is
(05:40):
widespread, it's beneficial forsociety, it's an effective use
of self-defense.
Why those three?
Right, not even like how themyth works, but like why have?
Why has the gun lobby or whyhave gun manufacturers really
pushed for those three things tobe like accepted in the
American mythos as true?
Devin Hughes (05:58):
Right and to take even another step back and go
into an armed society is apolite society.
JJ Janflone (06:04):
And.
Devin Hughes (06:05):
I think this kind of story highlights the
ridiculousness of it.
It's often held up as a bumpersticker argument.
You'll often hear pokingadvocates like oh, an armed
society is a polite society,they say, is they wear the
T-shirt with that and glazedinto cross.
And what people generally don'tknow is where that comes from
(06:25):
and where the actual phrase anarmed society is a polite
society comes from is a sciencefiction book in the 1940s by
Robert Heimann, who's a famousscience fiction author, and the
society that he's describing inthere is this futuristic society
that you have a bunch ofgenetically altered super humans
(06:48):
who are bored with their livesand constantly go around armed
and have to be exceedinglypolite with each other,
otherwise they'll end up in agunfight.
And one of the classic casesfrom this is that two of the
characters in this novel aregoing out to dinner.
They're on this second floor ofthis elaborate restaurant.
(07:10):
They order their dinner andaccidentally they fling a crowd
leg off their table and falls ona table below them.
The people on the table belowthem almost have their guns
drawn because it's like how darethis insult?
And so the next page or so ofthe narrative is them trying to
talk each other down and makesure that this was in fact an
(07:31):
accident.
Nobody needs to shoot somebodyelse.
And then, after they resolve it, another guy from the table
across the way is like how dareyou cowards resolve this with
words?
And so then there actually is agunfight and once the gun
fights over, everybody laughsand goes back to eating.
That is the polite societybeing described in armed society
(07:55):
as a polite society, and weactually do have a post on our
sub stack.
Going into that and highlightinglike the source of the quote is
insane.
It was a work of fiction in thefictional society that was
being represented.
And yet here it is, as thiscrowned myth emblazoned in
(08:16):
pro-Gun rhetoric, and it serveshow little actual intellectual
support there is for the myth.
So then, to return to the whythose three points widespread,
effective and beneficial for thesociety.
Because defensive gun use needsto be all of those in order for
the pro-Gun narrative that gunsmake people side and safer to
(08:40):
be the case.
If defensive gun use is rare,then there's no real way that
it's going to be able to reducecrime.
If it's not effective than anyother mechanism, then the myth
will have the national baseballbat society for self-defense
instead.
Or if it's not beneficial forsociety, then it's harming
(09:01):
society, and all the pro-Gunarguments around that collect,
and so the pro-Gun narrativerelies on each of those points,
and, as it turns out, each ofthose points is completely false
.
JJ Janflone (09:17):
And I think and it articulates too that it's set up
, if a myth was set up with,that guns are either good or
they're bad.
They can't be a neutral item,and if they're not good, then
they're by default bad, and ifthey're bad you wouldn't buy
them.
But if everyone has one again,if a crab leg is the thing
that's going to set it off, thenyou should be hard to keep up,
(09:38):
yeah, and so one of theinteresting aspects of this is
just how unsupported it isnumber one.
Devin Hughes (09:57):
So Tobacco comes from the 1990s.
Gary Klutch research ondefensive gun use.
He conducted a series ofsurveys that found that they'd
survey 5,000 people and of those5,066 would say they'd had a
defensive gun use.
And he then extrapolated thatout to that means there's 2.5
million guns.
(10:17):
So gun use is in, which is theway to do it.
But it also quickly revealedthat the results were
mathematically impossible.
For example, his numbers onburglary predicted around
800,000 plus burglaries arestopped by defensive gun use.
(10:37):
And when you look at the numberof burglaries from verified
prime sources where people wereat whom and away at the time
with the burglary, it would turnout that you would have to have
people sleepwalking anddefending themselves of firearms
when they're sleepwalking inorder to make the numbers even
(11:00):
possible.
And that's before consideringthat only 42% or so of
households at the time had afire.
And also, the numbers were justfactually impossible.
JJ Janflone (11:12):
And it's also too, I think, remembering his survey
and the way that it broke down.
Also, when we talk about evenwhat defensive gun use is, it
was people self-reporting onwhat they felt the gun had had
an, or the presence of a firearmhad an impact on.
Devin Hughes (11:25):
Yes, and also it relies on the self-recording,
and so that kind of goes back tothe point where it's like well,
our gun's good, bad or neutral.
And the point that I wouldbring up is they're not really
any of those, they're lethal.
So it increases the lethalityof any encounters.
But having something be morelethal doesn't necessarily mean
(11:49):
it's going to prevent injury ordeter people even more.
It's just when you have thoseencounters it's going to be more
likely that somebody dies as aresult.
So the whole our guns good orbad, that's not really the
factor here.
They're lethal and we see thatcome up in the statistics where
(12:10):
I mean then the home doublesyour risk of homicide, triples
your risk of suicide, forinstance.
JJ Janflone (12:16):
Because I just think of when I used to live in
a rural area.
We would hear things in thenight on our back porch or
something, and if I ran outdidn't have a gun so I had pans.
If I ran out, banged a pan andwas like go away, and then
nothing happened, I could arguethat was defensive pan use
because then nothing badhappened.
But the reality is it couldhave been the house settling, it
(12:37):
could have been a raccoon, itcould have been a burglar.
Who am I to know?
Nothing happened.
You can't report on anon-occurrence.
Devin Hughes (12:46):
Right yeah.
And also let's say in thatdefensive pan use that there
actually was somebody there andthey were just walking down the
street and all of a sudden theysee somebody coming at them with
a pan.
JJ Janflone (12:59):
With a pan.
Devin Hughes (12:59):
yeah, With a headache and they run away.
Is that a defensive pan use oran offensive pan use?
And so one story that weencountered when doing this
research comes from Mark Bryantof the Gun Violence Archive, and
he was talking about how he wasperusing one of the innumerable
gun forums out there and he ranacross this story and this was
(13:23):
several years back, where thisguy had posted on there a story
of like you won't believe whathappened to me.
So last night I was at themovies with my wife.
We were exiting the movies itwas in the small mid-western
town we were coming out and allof a sudden three black men were
approaching us and they, in hiswords, looked up to no good and
(13:46):
so he went ahead and brandishedhis firearm.
They scattered and hecongratulated himself on
preventing a crime that day.
Mark Bryant's on a call with theassistant district attorney for
this same small town in themid-west and he was like yeah,
so you won't believe what justhappened to me.
(14:08):
Last night, me and two mybrother and his friend from
Vanderbilt, who are medicalstudents there were going to
this movie and as we'reapproaching the movie, all of a
sudden this crazed white, thiswhole white guy, pulled his gun
on us and we didn't know whatwas happening, so we just ran
away because we didn't want tofigure out.
(14:29):
Now, if Gary Klatt had surveyedor anybody had surveyed the old
white guy in this encounter,we'd been like absolutely I had
a sense of gun use, I probablysaved lives with my action.
And yet when the full contextis revealed, it's pretty obvious
that was an aggravated assaultand offensive gun use.
(14:51):
And one of the more importantstudies out there actually
looked at the responses in thesesurveys.
So it took the survey responsesand then sent them to a panel
of judges and told the judgesall right, assume this person
can carry here and take them attheir word.
For what happened?
Are these cases likely offensiveor defensive?
(15:12):
And they're only looking atcases of report defensive gun
use in the survey.
And the judges came back andfound that in over half of these
cases the defensive gun usesweren't reality crunch or
offensive gun uses.
And so even when looking at thedefensive gun use numbers
(15:33):
themselves, I reported, whenhe's here, 2.5 million or
figures like that more than halfof those are gun crimes.
And so even in that case,solely looking at defensive gun
uses, there's more offensiveuses than defensive uses.
And when you look at any otherdata source with guns, including
(15:55):
both record offensive anddefensive.
There are vastly more offensiveuses than defensive uses.
JJ Janflone (16:03):
Do you then see, when you're looking at this
three-ponged myth, the rise offolks that we've seen reported
across the US being shot whenthey pull in someone's driveway
to turn around, or they come tothe wrong house because they're
lost, or someone knocks on thewrong door and they're shot by
the homeowner or the tenant?
Do you see a correlation therebetween this push of messaging?
Devin Hughes (16:27):
It's hard to tell whether there's an official
correlation or causation there,but there have definitely been
an uptick in those stories wherejust what would otherwise be a
misunderstanding or even harshwords leads to a terrible
tragedy and people constantlybeing on guard thinking, oh, the
(16:49):
bad guys are right around thecorner.
And it turns out the bad guysin this case is a fifth grader
who's looking to pick up as theunder brother, and basically the
added lethality of the firearmmeans that what would otherwise
be an interaction that would bepassed over becomes a lethal
interaction.
JJ Janflone (17:10):
So, instead of being a lady in glasses holding
a pan chasing you from a backporch, it's somebody with a
firearm.
Devin Hughes (17:16):
Yeah, yeah, it's a lot harder to run from a
firearm than a pan typically.
JJ Janflone (17:23):
So one of the things that you've mentioned a
few times now is that, as we'vebeen talking, we pointed out bad
academic studies and I want tobe really clear.
It's not bad because the gunviolence prevention movement
disagrees with the findings.
It's straight up badmethodology in a lot of these
places.
I'm wondering if we can talkabout and you just had a
beautiful piece on Substack thatI think actually was an up of
(17:44):
an old block you had done butI'm wondering if you could
explain for our listeners howcan they, in the world where
maybe they don't have a longacademic background or they
don't have time to look up, whenthey hear a study from Harvard
and they go okay, then this mustbe valid.
That's an impressiveinstitution.
That like how to tell good, agood study, a good stat, like
(18:08):
how to tell a good from the bador the poorly done.
Devin Hughes (18:12):
Yeah, yeah.
It is challenging, I do think,for individuals.
You want to see if something'speer reviewed, but even that's
not going to catch everything,and so then it's a question of
whether it sounds plausible.
If you take the 2.5 milliondefensive gun use, for example,
(18:32):
and put that on a per day basis,you're getting something in the
realm of 6,000 or so per day.
If there's that many, somebodywould have noticed There'd be
empirical evidence of some sortfor that.
JJ Janflone (18:46):
From law enforcement, from insurance
agency from your local newspaper, it'd be somewhere.
Devin Hughes (18:52):
Yeah, somebody somewhere would be picking that
up, not all of them perhaps, butsay 50%, as may the surveys
themselves indicate maybe 25%,maybe 10%, but we have that data
from the Gun Violence Archiveand it's under 2,000 verified
defensive gun uses annually.
(19:12):
So even if you make the reallyextreme assumption that, oh, the
police, media, the NRA, allpro-gun groups are only picking
up 10% of cases which, to beclear, all of the surveys done
on this indicate that 50% ormore of these cases are the
(19:33):
police find out about, if youtake that, you get to 20,000
defensive gun uses annually,which is still a far cry from
the 2.5 million that is beingadvertised.
And to illustrate thedifficulties with figuring out
what's factual, what's not, evenacademics have a problem with
(19:55):
this.
So one of the things that weuncovered in our deep dive on
defensive gun use which you cansee at both GBPDIA and the armed
with threes and sub-stack wasthe 2013 National Academy of
Sciences report.
This was commissioned in thewake of Sandy Hook, when
President Obama pushed out anexecutive order saying, hey, we
(20:18):
need to review what the currentevidence suggests and where
there should be more research.
Now, typically, these sort ofcommittee-based reports from the
government agency take a coupleyears to put together.
This was pushed together in acouple months, given that they
wanted to put something outquickly after this take, and so
(20:38):
they convened a committee andproduced this 100-page report,
which received very littlefanfare, as maybe these 100-page
government reports do.
However, there was one pagethat was seized upon, and that
was the one page on defensivegun use, and pro-gun advocates
pointed to it and said look, itagrees with us that there's lots
(21:01):
of defensive gun uses.
And when you look at it, itsummarizes the research and says
, hey, there's the potential for2.5 million defensive gun uses.
There's a national crimevictimization survey that
produces a lower estimate, butthen it said that there are
almost all sources that showedthat there are more defensive
(21:25):
gun uses than offensive gun uses.
And, to be clear, this is a lie.
There are zero sources, usingthe same methodology, that look
at offensive and defensive gunuses and find more defensive
uses.
If you look at private surveys,all of them find more offensive
uses than defensive uses.
If you look at the nationalcrime victimization survey, it
(21:48):
finds more offensive thandefensive.
If you look at empirical dataor gun violence data, again more
offensive than defensive.
So how did this objective lieget into a government report
that was then cited by theSupreme Court of the United
States as well as the CDC goingon to last year?
And the reason this happened,as it turns out, was that Gary
(22:13):
Cleck himself, the author of the2.5 million defensive gun use
claim, was on the committee, andso it's like where did it come
from?
He cited himself.
JJ Janflone (22:24):
Gary, why Come on?
Devin Hughes (22:27):
Yeah, and how did it pass through everybody else?
They only had a couple of daysto review the entire project, as
I found out from interviewingother academics involved with it
, and they did see this, andthey provided criticisms of this
defensive gun use section wherethey're like where are you
doing here?
This is an unbalanced summaryand inaccurate, and those
(22:49):
concerns just did not carrythrough In.
The leading theory among thepeople I talked to and I
interviewed like 10 academicsinvolved with it was that this
was a consensus-based reportwhere all of the committee
members had to agree on it.
This basically gave Gary Kleppthe topel over this one section
(23:11):
and so he was able to keep theseinaccuracies, these objective
lies that then influenced theSupreme Court of the United
States, the CDC and data-sensething.
Going back to the originalquestion is like how do you tell
whether something is goodscience or bad science?
Even the government andacademics themselves
(23:31):
occasionally don't catch thisstuff.
It can have profound impactsyears and decades later.
JJ Janflone (23:39):
And it seems to.
Once that misinformation traingets going with academics, it's
really dangerous, because thensomeone like Lot can cite Klepp
and someone like Klepp can citeLot, and then it just becomes a
self-referential, bad academicwork machine that is largely
based on survey data.
Devin Hughes (23:58):
Yes, yeah, it all comes back to these small
private surveys, and even somethat are slightly larger.
So before the Supreme Courtdecision in Bruin, there was
another survey conducted by anacademic by a name of William
English of Georgetown who, to myknowledge, I was saying
anything on guns before, but heproduced a couple amicus briefs
(24:23):
for the Supreme Court with hisown research indicating that
there's no use of defensive gunuses.
And basically he took GaryKlepp's approach in the 90s and
then made it work.
Because Gary Klepp asked peopleover the last year, did you
have a defensive gun use?
He asked over your wise time,have you had defensive gun use?
(24:45):
And as anybody who studiedpsychology for a bit and I was
like, our memories get hazyafter a while of previous events
.
So let's say you wanted toreport defensive pan use, for
example, and 10 years later, notonly was it just a sound, there
was actually two guys trying tobreak down my door and I
(25:06):
fendent the law off with my pain.
Now you might not know thatyou're lying Looking back on the
memory.
That's how it appears, butmemories evolve over time, they
aren't snapshot, and it madethis whole false positive
problem that's endemic in thesesurveys even worse, and yet
again it's being cited bySupreme Court justices.
JJ Janflone (25:28):
The reboot is always worse than the original.
It's just what I'm learning.
It's the complicated nature ofthis, though, because I could
see how maybe someone listeningto this, who maybe is new to gun
violence prevention or sees thework that maybe Brady does or
GDP does, and says, ok,fundamentally, those people are
gun grabbers.
They're not interested in thereal science that says that it's
(25:48):
safe, and I don't know how toarticulate to people that, for
example, after I know in thelast few years that there's been
a peer reviewed studies thatsay that lots initial argument
that more guns make us safer waswrong, that there's been
multiple peer reviewed studiesthat say that guns don't deter
(26:09):
crime from happening in an area.
But, as we talked about withthe bibliography, I can say that
and then start sharing theseother pieces of work that are
from very well respectedacademics, but what I'm going to
get back, I'm sure, is they'rejust part of the liberal
education machine.
Does that make sense?
Devin Hughes (26:25):
Yeah, it definitely is a problem.
And if somebody tries to havethis conversation on Twitter or
X or whatever it's called, withsomebody with like five users
and this airs.
JJ Janflone (26:36):
I'm sure it'll have a different name, but yeah.
Devin Hughes (26:38):
Yes, yeah, but like having that sort of
conversation there, neitherperson's going to change the
other's mind.
It's just not going to happen.
And for the effect of changingsomebody's mind there has to be
an element of trust and kind ofmutual respect beforehand, and
if there isn't that, it's goingto be incredibly hard to change
(26:58):
somebody else's mind.
Now that doesn't mean thatpotentially debates can't be
productive, to where there's anaudience that gets to hear both
sides of the evidence and thenmake up your mind if you
genuinely don't know.
But if somebody is hearted intheir belief that, yes, there
are millions of defensive gunuses each year, first you're
going to have to build up recordwith that person understanding
(27:23):
and then what I find tends towork is asking them directly.
So is there any evidence thatwould change your mind?
And if there is no evidencethat would change your mind, the
conversation is like they'vejust admitted that they're not
willing to change your mind andthere's nothing you can do about
that.
But there are lots of otherpeople out there who might be.
Oh yes, if you could show meempirical data that can show
(27:46):
this number or actual flaws withthese surveys or stuff, then
you have room to figure out allright.
Where's the false beliefstemming from?
And how can we correct thatfalse belief without causing the
other person to feel bad aboutbeing misled about?
You can't go.
Oh, you're just a neanderthaland a complete idiot for
(28:09):
believing this.
And how dare you?
And here's my book of facts andtake that.
JJ Janflone (28:14):
Yeah, Sort of Like your rub.
Who bought into the line?
It's your fault.
Devin Hughes (28:18):
As opposed, you got wet because this is the
water that falls on us.
JJ Janflone (28:20):
It happens.
Devin Hughes (28:22):
Yeah, if you start out insulting somebody's core
identity, you're never going toget anywhere.
But if you're figuring out thetruth together and piecing
together where their specificfalse beliefs are coming from
and then exploring together whythey might be false and
highlighting the absurditiesthat come up with that, and to
(28:42):
provide an example, withdefensive gun use, if somebody's
yeah, I believe it, and 2.5millions, clearly the case, it
comes from these peer reviewedstudies, and there's 80 the
credit and surveys that show thesame thing.
Like one of the things is likeall right, where's the hard
evidence?
And so the media is trying tohide it?
(29:02):
Okay, so all the policedepartments are trying to hide
it too, and that might be, ohyeah, since, okay, the NRA
itself trying to hide it.
Because, let's be clear, ifthere are 6,000 defensive gun
uses every single day, somebodysomewhere's going to notice and
there's a massive lobby outthere with a major incentive to
(29:25):
find every single possible caseof defensive gun use that there
is out there and touted to highheaven.
JJ Janflone (29:31):
Yeah, because it's such a beautiful ad and so do
not use it.
Devin Hughes (29:35):
Yeah.
So if you believe that, oh,nobody's recording on it, first,
you don't believe the verysurveys that indicate that
there's 2.5 million defensivegun uses.
And two, the conspiracy goesfar deeper than just the liberal
media and the Brady podcasttrying to make us believe myths
and stuff Like no, like the NRAwould have to be in on it, gun
(29:57):
owners for America would have tobe in on it, because there's no
way something happens 6,000times a day that involves a
lethal weapon and people don'tknow about it or can't find
evidence for it.
And if there's, like, all right, nobody's really trying.
Yeah, there are people trying,and it's.
If you think the gun bonesarchive is missing thousands of
(30:18):
defensive gun uses every day, itshould be trivially easy to
prove the rule.
Like I'm going to accept that Icould be wrong on defensive
guns.
All I'm asking for provenpeople who tell, like the 2.5
million defensive venues is findme hard, empirical evidence for
1% of your claims, just 1%.
(30:38):
I'm not even requiring the full, 100% or 50%, just 1.
That should not be difficult.
And yet nobody has.
And when you point to theempirical evidence, you'll get
claims by certain programacademics like oh, surveys are
the only way, even thoughthere's lots of evidence that
surveys on defensive gun use andoutside defensive gun use have
(31:02):
these flaws, and so justpointing out the inherent
absurdities of what thosenumbers would actually mean if
they were true, I think can chipaway at the oh yeah, that might
not actually be the case.
JJ Janflone (31:18):
And it makes me.
I think probably one of thethings too is that I think it's
really hard because I get upset.
I have an emotional responsebecause I'm like, how dare you?
To the folks who put thesestudies out.
Because I'm like you have arespected position in society,
people trust you, you haveletters after your name and,
whether intentionally orunintentionally, you're putting
out bad information.
It's like being a snake oilsalesman in the old time.
(31:41):
You asked.
Only, instead of selling liquidopium, you're selling something
, I guess, equally lethal.
Devin Hughes (31:47):
But yeah, or even more.
JJ Janflone (31:49):
Yeah, I haven't played the Oregon Trail game in
a while, so I might be, I mightbe off on that.
I think that these are allreally good.
One of the things that I'veenjoyed about reading your sub
stack is I think that again, itgives a nice approachable thing
to link people to say no, thisis the actual information.
Here's how this particularacademic report that gets cited.
(32:13):
A lot is wrong, but I wonder ifyou have any sort of just
general tips and tricks forfolks out there in the world for
that, if they see something togo immediately, okay, no, that's
just wrong.
Like where should they go?
What should they do?
Yeah, just solves.
America Devin.
Devin Hughes (32:29):
Yeah, and the next step, one to fixing America,
yeah, and this is one of thethings that the GPD is strung
with as well, because we producethese very long, carefully
researched documents that, inthe end, maybe a couple hundred,
a couple thousand people willread in their entirety, and so
(32:52):
that's nice.
There's 300 million people inthe United States and there's
definitely a struggle betweenthe TikTok version or the bumper
sticker version and then thecareful research portion, and so
with GVPD, what we try to do isprovide the careful research
portion and then try to breakdown that down further into bite
(33:13):
size pieces, so like ourdefensive gun use report overall
is 30 pages, which we justpublished on GVPD itself, but
before that we had published itin 12 parts on the Arma 3's and
sub-stat, under the kind ofNetflix theory of would you
watch a 12 hour movie?
Of course, and I'm alreadysaying, will you watch a 10 hour
(33:34):
mini series?
Oh, and when was it in theshowing?
Absolutely, of course I will.
JJ Janflone (33:38):
Yes, happily, I will pay extra for the privilege
to do yes.
Devin Hughes (33:42):
Yeah, and so trying to break it down there.
And then one of the thingswe're going to be working on
over the coming months is can webreak it down even further to
short videos or graphics thathighlight points even further?
So it's building this pyramidof knowledge where the top of
the pyramid is the bite sizelike infographic or just
(34:02):
statistic or TikTok video, andthen below that is the fact
sheet, that where you cangenerate that bite size thing,
and below that is the paperoutlining things and below that
is the actual research itself.
And every single element ofthat pyramid needs to be in
place, because if all you haveis the talking point and
somebody's, where's the proof?
(34:23):
I saw a TikTok video that's notvery persuasive, whereas if
it's okay, here's the fact sheetand people are like that's just
citing these, how do we know ifthey're fat acts?
Here's the research on why weknow that research is case.
Here's the logical explanationsin detailing why this is true
(34:43):
and why other alternativeexplanations don't hold longer.
It's really hard work oncalving the firehose of Halstead
because you have to have all ofthose elements in place in case
somebody does try to figure outthe actual truth of something.
Now, it might be the case insome conversations after the
fact sheet somebody's like allright, yeah, I'm convinced, but
(35:05):
you want to have the fullbackground as well in order to
have that intellectual supportif needed.
And one of the things we try todo at GBPD is providing the
lower levels of that pyramid.
So if somebody's pushed on,where do you get that statistic?
Or what's the case here?
People can find that and beassured that the correct
(35:25):
information is there.
By the way, one of the importantthings there and that's quite
helpful is to know the otherperson's argument in a way
better than they do themselves.
Because, like with the FBInumber, it's not from the FBI
and but if you don't know that,that's oh, did he find something
?
How am I supposed to know this?
(35:46):
How am I supposed to check thisGoogling FBI defensive gun use
number, not getting it there?
Whereas if you know the otherside's argument, generally, it's
okay, this is where they'recoming from, here's why it's
mistaken.
It can one provide a sense ofcalm of oh okay, this is where
this person's coming from,here's why they're mistaken so
(36:06):
far.
So you know, freeze during thatinteraction, but then it also
allows you to, in a way, turnthe table.
So oh, that's interesting whydo you think that he lead me
through this and being able tohear them out what they think
their evidence is and then, oncethey provide that evidence
rather than having to guesswhere did they get this Then
(36:28):
being able to say, oh, would yoube interested in hearing this
that disagrees with thosenumbers?
And if they're not, then it'sokay.
There's no way that thisperson's open persuasion anyway.
But if they are, then there'sroom for a conversation,
potentially changing someone'smind.
JJ Janflone (36:46):
I just yeah.
And then I just I think of theStephen Colbert meme of you came
into my house, tried to talkabout Lord of the Rings of the
Heat.
Then you're prepped, you'reprepped, you're ready to go,
you're not afraid to say it.
And again, when the gun lobbieshad decades and more money than
I wanna even try toconceptualize to make this
argument seem cohesive, it'sreally good to know to have
(37:10):
those kind of points ready,along with that deep
underpinning.
So I really appreciate it.
I appreciate all the work thatGVPDIA does.
I'm hoping it makes people feela little bit more empowered to
speak out about nonsense.
So not sure how you do that ina TikTok while dancing and make
it compelling.
I'm trying.
I'm trying to figure it out.
(37:31):
It's hard.
Devin Hughes (37:31):
Well, the moment somebody cracks that, yeah, be
sure to let me know because I'llbe quiet and cheap as well.
And part of it as well isrecognizing that, yes, like
Caldering the Firehose of Falcetis hard work.
There have been studies thathave shown that people are
willing to actively pay in ordernot to hear the other side's
argument, and that's on both theleft and the right.
(37:54):
There is a very strong urge tojust be like nope, that person's
wrong, I'm not gonna listenanymore and shut oneself off in
the knowledge that I'mcompletely right and living on,
whereas actually listening towhat the other side has to offer
while it's oftentimes annoyingsometimes it's barely legible
(38:14):
and it's just painful work ingeneral but it shows where the
other people are coming from andthe mistakes there.
And that's going to be crucialin terms of Caldering the
Firehose, because it's not likeyou can just provide your top
level talking point and expectit to work.
This is like their top leveltalking point is not going to
(38:36):
work On either.
You have to be able to delvedeeper in order to have these
longer term conversations thatcan eventually change mine.
But as soon as somebody developsthe TikTok quarantine that
takes that entire process into30 seconds.
Everything will be fixed.
The world will be better.
JJ Janflone (38:54):
I don't know how to do that yet.
So hopefully someone figures itout.
Thank you so much, Devin.
If folks want to be sure thatthey don't just stay in their
bubble, that they learn, thatthey know how to deepen their
understanding and share it,where can they find you?
Where can they find all ofGVPD's stuff?
Devin Hughes (39:09):
Yeah, so you can find us on gvpediaorg in
armwithreasonsumstackcom.
Please subscribe.
Subscribing is free If you wantto access some of the older
content that is behind thepayroll, but that allows us to
get even more people engaged andmore authors on there.
So, on those on Twitter or X orwhatever it's going to be
(39:33):
called, whenever this isreleased, you can still find us
at GV underscore pedia, andwe're also on Facebook and
Instagram.
We're not yet on TikTok becauseI don't know how to dance.
JJ Janflone (39:48):
I'm sure you'll figure it out.
Devin Hughes (39:50):
I have my doubts, but thank you.
JJ Janflone (39:52):
Thank you All right .
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