House Democrat Majority Leader Duran misleads the public on her gun control measure with the assistance of the Post's Nick Coltrain.
Democrat Majority Leader Duran's misleading statement on her gun control bill which, of course, is blithely shared by the Post.
The Post article linked first below was breaking news on the day that Polis signed Rep Duran's gun control bill (see the second link below) which added to the requirements to get a concealed carry permit in Colorado.
In that article, Rep Duran says the following about her legislative effort (link left intact)
“'States that have eliminated their live-fire training requirements to receive a concealed-carry permit saw a 32% increase in gun assaults,' said House Majority Leader Monica Duran, a Wheat Ridge Democrat who was one of the lead sponsors, in a news release. 'The data is clear — live-fire gun training can save lives. This important legislation will ensure that Coloradans with concealed-carry permits are properly trained before they bring their firearm into their communities.'”
That link, originally not there but which Post "reporter" Nick Coltrain added after an email exchange he and I had where I asked for the study which Duran was referencing (I received the same link from Rep Duran in an email which I also sent to her at about the same time, confirming this was indeed the study informing her words), is to a study which supposedly shows that states which have no live fire training for concealed-carry see an uptick in assaults.
The study supposedly informs Duran's contention that her bill, with its expanded training requirements, will make us safer.
Except, that this quote is misleading. The study she references does not make that claim and it does not, in any way, show that Coloradans will be safer with her new requirements.
This is a claim that, of course, the Denver Post was happy to thoughtlessly share with us all without taking the 5 minutes it took me to figure out the holes in Rep Duran's claim. When I asked Mr. Coltrain whether or not he noticed these holes, he didn't provide any reply.
In the following two posts today, I will outline the problems with Rep Duran's claim so that you can be better informed than the Post wants you to be and so that you can be better informed when you see claims like these in the future.
https://www.denverpost.com/2024/06/05/colorado-law-concealed-carry-permits-legislature-gun-owners-training/
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb24-1174
This post is a continuation of the header post above about Rep Duran's misleading statements on her gun control bill. If you've not yet, go read the first post.
The study linked in the Post article above, the one that Rep Duran sent me in reference to her statement about her bill, is linked first below for your reference and it provides a cautionary tale for why you should go back to sources when evaluating claims made by politicians (something that is apparently not policy for the Denver Post -- I suppose at least not if the politician has a D after their name).
In previous posts, I've discussed how to read what is presented as science skeptically, and this study provides a good way to touch on that again, tying together three previously separate posts into one example.
In this post I will briefly touch on the issue of how this study is an example of what Feynman termed "Cargo Cult Science", something that resembles science in its appearance but is anything but. I will also briefly touch on the issue of this study's relevance to Colorado. I will link to more context below that for interested readers.
In the post that follows I will talk about putting percent increases in context.
Let's turn to the abstract of the study because we really needn't look too far beyond that (you're welcome to read more into the paper) for our purposes. I attached it as a screenshot with some colored highlighting.
I am not certain, but I believe that Rep Duran gives her quote from the part I underlined in red. I am certain that Mr. Coltrain, the Post reporter, used that lined from the abstract as his "check" on Rep Duran's claims because this was copied and pasted into an email in response to my question of whether he investigated Rep Duran's claim.
This claim is, as I wrote above, misleading at best.
Turn again to the screenshot and look at what I highlight in blue. You will note that the researchers say they used a "...SYNTHETIC differenced-in-difference method .." to estimate the effects of changes to concealed carry permitting policy [emphasis mine].
This is what I reference above as Cargo Cult Science. If you are interested in more context, I refer you to my earlier posts on synthetic controls linked below as Cargo Cult 1 and Cargo Cult 2.
The shorter version is that no modeling, no social science statistical research can establish causality. The only thing that can establish causality is experiment. Some things, due to either the complexity or immorality of the situation, do not allow for genuine experiment.
For example, you cannot feasibly (or ethically) randomly assign people to different groups and allow some to have certain kinds of permits and others not and then see whether or not gun violence is effected.
That being the case, what the researchers here (and what Rep Duran) do is play a nice little game of creating an fake experiment involving two made-up groups, one of which is a custom and purpose-built control group, and then they draw a conclusion from that fake experiment.
Given that this experiment didn't happen in the real world and that the researchers got to choose and refine their control group, any result from this type of research has limited to no applicability to the actual, real world.
Beyond that, we have the critical issue of whether or not any of this research would, even if you grant that it is viable (which I do not), apply to Colorado.
If you want more context on this particular issue, I point you to an earlier post which I link to as "Relevance" below.
The upshot here is that when you read any sort of study, you should be asking yourself whether or not the study is relevant to you. For example, if you read a study that seems to show that eating a pound of ground dried worms every month seems to help people lose weight, but this study was done on 60 year old natives who live in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, it likely doesn't mean much for you living in Colorado (esp if you're a girl or younger than 60).
Return to my screenshot and look again at the parts highlighted in green (and in blue). These researchers studied the effect of going from a permitted concealed carry regime to a PERMITLESS regime. They deregulated their system.
Duran's bill increases regulation in Colorado. Even if this study were solid research and not the fake science that it is, it studies something not at all relevant to Colorado. It's results are meaningless here.
Rep Duran, with the assistance and amplification of the Denver Post is telling us about a result involving oranges and we all live in a world of apples.
These lapses point to an intent to mislead by Duran and to (at best) shoddy reporting by Nick Coltrain of the Post.
Rep Duran should be ashamed of what she is passing off as fact to the citizens of Colorado and Nick Coltrain and the Post should be ashamed of what they are passing off as journalism.
In part 3 I'll wrap up the day with a look at one more element or reading research skeptically: thinking critically about percent increases.
https://pure.johnshopkins.edu/en/publications/deregulation-of-public-civilian-gun-carrying-and-violent-crimes-a
Cargo Cult 1
Cargo Cult 2
Relevance
This post is the third installment referenced in the header post above about Rep Duran's misleading statements on her gun control bill. If you've not yet, go read the first and second post.
I again link to the study that Rep Duran sent me for convenience.
Let's wrap up with a look at one more element or reading research skeptically: thinking critically about percent increases.
If you want more context, I put a link to an earlier post with more detail below, labeled as "Percent Increase".
I attached another screenshot of the abstract from the study as a screenshot, albeit with different highlighting. This is, as it was in earlier posts, the claim that Duran makes.
The notable thing here is the startling 32% increase in gun assaults that the researchers found in their synthetic** populations when you go from having some sort of permit to no permit for concealed carry.
32% is what Rep Duran quoted and 32% is what Post reporter Nick Coltrain blithely added to his article. Both give you this number sans context. I will help you get the context they leave out.
Return to the screenshot and look at the numbers to the left of the 32%. You will see that the researchers predict an increase of 21 gun assaults per 100,000 population. This means that they predict that deregulation of concealed carry laws would mean going from about 66 gun assaults per 100,000 to 87 gun assaults per 100,000.
I do not mean to minimize any harm to anyone, but proper context on this number requires a couple additional notes:
--This is not ACTUAL harm, this is predicted harm and it is arrived at by building a synthetic population and a synthetic control group. No one knows what, if any, effect deregulation of concealed carry laws would actually have on actual populations. And, just because it's important, Colorado HAS NOT AND WILL NOT BE deregulating concealed carry. Duran's bill INCREASED regulations.
--You need to put this additional predicted harm against other things. The third link below is to a CDC "FastStats" site about heart disease. The CDC puts heart disease's death rate at about 211 per 100,000. Again, not to minimize the real harm that guns can do to innocent people, but this predicted increase in assaults (not fatalities), doesn't look as big compared to heart disease. Heart disease being something, I would remind you, that the Colorado Democrats and Duran herself have chosen not to address at all this legislative session while they eat away at your Second Amendment rights.
When you hear percent increase claims, do what the Post didn't: take a second and consider both the absolute numbers and where those numbers fit in with other causes of harm.
I hope this series was helpful. Please do keep the pointers about reading skeptically handy in your brain and use them regularly because, unfortunately, our world is full of politicians seeking to manipulate you and reporters who do not and will not take the time to examine some of their claims critically.
**if you haven't yet, go read post 2.
https://pure.johnshopkins.edu/en/publications/deregulation-of-public-civilian-gun-carrying-and-violent-crimes-a
Percent Increase
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/heart-disease.htm