Cherry picked ‘experts’

The John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health had a Gun Policy Summit in January. Of course with Michael Bloomberg involved you know it’s all about pushing an anti-gun agenda. I find it instructive to see how they accomplished this when their stated purpose was:

The Summit affords the opportunity for experts on gun policy and violence from the U.S. and selected other countries to summarize relevant research and its implications for policymakers and concerned citizens.

During the Summit, national and global experts, advocates, and leaders in gun policy, violence prevention, law enforcement, and mental health will gather to present research, analysis and their experience.

At the conclusion of the Summit, experts will put forth proposals for gun policies that will reduce gun violence, will have broad public support and will not violate constitutional rights.

As you can see their purpose had a bias to begin with. They were only concerned with “proposals for gun policies that will reduce gun violence”. They were not concerned for “proposals for policies that will reduce violent crime.” There is a big difference and that they carefully chose their words to focus on “gun violence” tells us what the inevitable outcome would be. With only a concern for “gun violence” with no concern for violence inflicted by hands, feet, clubs, or knives they are subtly telling us one of two things:

  1. They don’t care if violence in general increases as long as violence involving guns decreases.
  2. They are so stupid they believe violence inflicted with a gun is independent of violence inflicted without weapons or with some other weapon.

I don’t believe they are stupid. I believe they don’t care about violence in general because as near as I could determine they did not consider guns used as self-defense. As near as I can tell from the agenda there was no discussion of policy changes that would make guns, gun ranges, and self-defense training more accessible to those most in need. They only considered policy changes that made guns less accessible.

So who are the experts and how did they select them?

According to their FAQ they were selected as follows:

Faculty from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, along with University leadership, invited global experts on various policies relevant to gun policy and research to participate in the Summit.

Are you surprised the experts look like a virtual “Who’s Who” of the anti-gun world?

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Michael R. Bloomberg
Mayor of the City of New York.

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Ronald J. Daniels
President of The Johns Hopkins University.

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Martin O’Malley
Governor of the State of Maryland.

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Ted Alcorn
Senior policy analyst in the Office of the Mayor of New York City.

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Philip Alpers
Adjunct associate professor at the Sydney School of Public Health, The University of Sydney. His website is GunPolicy.org.

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Deborah Azrael
PhD, has been a member of the firearms research group at the Harvard School of Public Health.

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Antonio Rangel Torres Bandeira
Coordinator for Firearms Control, Viva Rio, Brazil. He has served as an advisor for the Parliamentary Front for Disarmament for the new firearms control law, the Disarmament Statute (2003).

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Colleen L. Barry
PhD, MPP, is an associate professor and associate chair for Research and Practice in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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Anthony A. Braga
PhD, is the Don M. Gottfredson Professor of Evidence-Based Criminology in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University and a senior research fellow in the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at Harvard University.

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David H. Chipman
Law enforcement consultant for Mayors Against Illegal Guns. In May 2012, Mr. Chipman retired from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) after 25 years. During Mr. Chipman’s work for ATF, he served first as a street agent, disrupting criminal organizations trafficking firearms from Tidewater, Virginia, to New York City and targeting the worst armed offenders in possession of illegal guns as a member of ATF’s Washington, D.C. Special Response Team (ATF’s version of SWAT). He later expanded his expertise to become a Certified Explosives Specialist and member of ATF’s National Response Team, where he participated in the on-scene investigations of the first World Trade Center bombing, the Branch Davidian raid near Waco, Texas, and the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

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Philip J. Cook
PhD, is ITT/Sanford Professor of Public Policy, and Professor of Economics and Sociology, at Duke University.

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Edward E. Cornwell, III
MD, FACS, FCCM, FWACS, is the LaSalle D. Leffall, Jr. Professor and Chairman of Surgery at Howard University College of Medicine.

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Shannon Frattaroli
PhD, MPH is an associate professor at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where she is affiliated with the Center for Gun Policy and Research.

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Linda K. Frisman
PhD, is a research professor with the University of Connecticut School of Social Work and a senior research scientist with the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.

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Pete Gagliardi is senior vice president for Forensic Technology Inc. He has more than 40 years of experience extracting useful investigative information from crime guns and related evidence in both the public and private sectors. He spent 30 of those years in law enforcement, most of which were focused on the investigation of firearms- and explosive-related crimes with the ATF.

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Mark Glaze, JD
Director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns as well as a principal at The Raben Group, a public policy consulting firm with offices in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C.

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Adil H. Haider
MD, MPH, FACS, is a trauma surgeon at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and an associate professor of Surgery, Anesthesiology, and Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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David Hemenway
PhD, is an economist and professor at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and a former James Marsh Visiting Professor at Large at the University of Vermont.

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Christopher S. Koper
PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University and a senior fellow and co-director of the evidence-based policing research program in George Mason’s Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy.

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Hsiu-Ju Lin
PhD, MA, is an associate research professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Connecticut, and the principal data analyst for the Research Division at the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.

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Jens Ludwig
PhD, MA, is the McCormick Foundation Professor of Social Service Administration, Law, and Public Policy at the University of Chicago, director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab and co-director of the University of Chicago Urban Education Lab.

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Beth McGinty, MS, is a research assistant and fourth-year PhD candidate in Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research interests include mental illness, gun violence and the role of the news media in public policy. Her dissertation research examines the effects of news media coverage of gun violence by persons with serious mental illness on the public’s support for gun control policies and stigma towards persons with serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

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Matthew Miller
MD, ScD, MPH, is deputy director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and associate professor of Injury Prevention and Health Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Miller, a physician with training in internal medicine, medical oncology, medical ethics, health policy and management, epidemiology and pharmacoepidemiology, has authored more than 100 journal articles and op-ed articles on suicide, interpersonal violence and unintentional injuries, many of which focus on the relationship between firearms and lethal violence.

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Michael A. Norko
MD, is a forensic psychiatrist and serves as director of Forensic Services for the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS), where he oversees all public sector forensic services. He manages DMHAS reporting to the FBI of persons ineligible for gun purchase due to mental health adjudications.

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Mick North, PhD, was a faculty member in Biochemistry at the University of Stirling in Scotland when, in March of 1996, his only daughter was killed in a mass shooting at Dunblane Primary School. Following that event, he became a tireless advocate for gun control. He participated in the Snowdrop Campaign for a handgun ban and helped to launch the Gun Control Network (GCN) to campaign for tighter gun legislation in the UK.

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Rebecca Peters
A violence prevention specialist who has worked for more than 20 years on arms control, women’s rights, public health and human security. A lawyer and a journalist, she was the first director of the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), the global movement against gun violence.

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Allison Gilbert Robertson
PhD, MPH, is assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine.

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Lawrence E. Rosenthal
JD, is a professor at Chapman University School of Law in Orange, California.

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Janey Rountree
JD, is the firearms policy coordinator for New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and chief operating officer for the bipartisan coalition Mayors Against Illegal Guns. The coalition has more than 800 U.S. member mayors who came together around the idea that it is possible to respect the Second Amendment while doing more to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. With more than one million grassroots supporters, the coalition is the largest gun violence prevention organization in the country.

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Jeffrey Swanson
PhD, is a professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine.

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Marvin S. Swartz
MD, is professor and head of the Division of Social and Community Psychiatry and director of Behavioral Health for the Duke University Health System.

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Stephen P. Teret
JD, MPH, is a professor of Health Policy and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Law and the Public’s Health.

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Jon S. Vernick
JD, MPH, is an associate professor and associate chair in Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.

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Katherine A. Vittes
PhD, MPH, is a research associate at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. Her research focuses on evaluating policies designed to prevent gun violence.

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Daniel Webster
ScD, MPH, is a professor in Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He serves as director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, as well as deputy director of research for the Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence.

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Adam Winkler
JD, MA, is a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a specialist in American constitutional law, known primarily for his research on the right to bear arms and on corporate political speech. His work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous federal and state courts. His recent book, “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms, was called “provocative” and “illuminating” by The New York Times; “a fascinating survey of the misunderstood history of guns and gun control in America” by The Wall Street Journal; and “an antidote to so much in the gun debate that is one-sided and dishonest” by the Los Angeles Times.

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Garen J. Wintemute
MD, MPH, is the inaugural Susan P. Baker-Stephen P. Teret Chair in Violence Prevention and director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis. He practices and teaches emergency medicine at UC Davis Medical Center, Sacramento (a level I regional trauma center), and is professor of emergency medicine at the UC Davis School of Medicine. Dr. Wintemute’s research focuses on the nature and prevention of violence and on the development of effective violence prevention measures and policies. Selected studies include assessments of risk for criminal activity and violent death among legal purchasers of handguns, evaluations of the effectiveness of denying handgun purchase to felons and violent misdemeanants, in-depth studies of gun dealers who are disproportionate sources of crime guns, and the first empirical study of gun shows. He is the author of two books: Ring of Fire (1994), a study of the handgun makers of Southern California, and Inside Gun Shows: What Goes on When Everybody Thinks Nobody’s Watching (2009).

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April M. Zeoli
PhD, MPH, is an assistant professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. In her research, she uses public health methods and models to increase the understanding of violence and homicide.

I kept thinking of Ellsworth Toohey and his selection of experts as I read the list of participants.

Where is just one expert that has published an article or paper or worked for one pro-rights organization? Why wasn’t Alan Gura, David Hardy, Don Kates, or David Kopel there to tell them many of their recommendations were clearly unconstitutional? Why wasn’t Gary Kleck or John Lott there to tell them private gun ownership has benefits? Why wasn’t someone there from the NRA or SAF to tell them of the millions of people that exercise their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms responsibly?

I think I know the answer. The organizers knew what they wanted the conclusions to be and they cherry picked the ‘experts’ who would give them the answers they wanted.

That’s not science. That’s evidence to be used at their trials.

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20 thoughts on “Cherry picked ‘experts’

  1. Obviously racist. Clear disparate outcome in the invitees.
    Blacks commit more violent crimes, and are the victims of more violent crimes, than any other ethnic group. The experiences of a criminal who used a gun in a crime would be directly relevant to their stated purpose. The experiences of victims would be directly relevant.

    Outright conspiracy to defraud the government – junkets like this are always taxpayer funded.

  2. I notice there’s no pistol instructors, no certified range safety officers, nobody who has certainly fired a gun.

    And Garen Wintemute!? Really!? He doesn’t lack enough credibility already?

    And the left’s political machine wonders why we refuse to allow the CDC to use tax-payer dollars to “research” “gun violence”.

  3. Lob the rhetorical grenade. Point out that a significant percentage of gun violence is conducted by police. Note that the easiest way to dramatically reduce the amount of gun violence is to disarm the police.
    Kick your feet up, and eat popcorn.

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  5. This is pretty much like all other public policy “research” that’s ever been done. It’s a very old trick. You may as well hire the KKK to do “research” on “racial, religious and sexual orientation demographics for public policy” but then, the highly regarded Progressive and Eugenics promoter, Margaret Sanger was very tight with the KKK. Come to think of it, Hillary Clinton described herself as a “Proud, early 20th century Progressive” too. The whole Progressive movement is very incestuous— you see the same names popping up over and over, for decades. One of them gets exposed and discredited one day, and you see him pop up in some other “focus group”, or hired on as faculty somewhere, or with his own program on TV, years later. There’s nothing new under the sun. So long as they have trillions of our dollars to play with, it will never change.

  6. Not that the results of any “research” by any group should matter a whit. See; I fell for the distration myself there for a minute.

    The second amendment, the inate rights of all people, do not change with the crime rates, the domographics, the weather, or the political whims and power lust of the day. They are a constant.

    The Progressive twits view humanity as their very own farm, in which they can breed, cull, feed, care for and eventually harvest for their own purposes. Not playing that game. No thanks.

      • Well you got me there. It matters insofar as it will make good future evidence against them, just like Hillary’s comment.

  7. Johns Hopkins is a PRIVATE institution and, as such, should be allowed to formulate whatever policies they want to.

    Does the NRA invite people from the gun control side to help shape their policies and agenda? I don’t think so.

    • They can formulate whatever policies they want for their own internal use. But they have no business cherry picking their experts and data then calling it science or constitutional and advocate the conclusions be imposed on the rest of the country.

      The NRA does not claim to be anything other than an advocate for and defender of the Second Amendment. If John Hopkins were to openly state they are attempting to destroy the specific enumerated right to keep and bears arms then you would have a point.

      And do you really think they should be allowed to formulate whatever policies they want? Does that include advocating the torture of animals, slavery for people of color, and performing on-the-spot clitorectomies of women snatched off the street?

      • Yup. We’re talking about Progressives (incremental communists) claiming they’re doing “research” while we all know that their true intentions are anti liberty. It’s a ruse. A very transparent ruse. A lineup of retards and Useful Idiots with PHDs is a very pathetic sight to behold, on several levels.

      • What does private mean to you? They can advocate for whatever they want to. You can too. So can the NRA. That’s what freedom is.

        • As a private institution, they can research whatever and however they want, come up with whatever conclusions they want, and implement any policies they want … effective only on their own property. Private property is private property.

          If they cherry-picked “experts” on racial sub-cultures by hiring former KKK members, current and former Aryan Nation members, Neo-Nazis, and other white-supremacist groups, you could reliably predict their pseudo-scientific group would find that black people (for example) are too violent when left on their own, and that slavery should be reinstated “for their own protection” and “to increase public safety”.

          As a private institution, they can say that, but no amount of PhDs and MDs after the “researchers'” names will automatically make it good public policy. The rest of the country – still America last time I checked – would rightfully be outraged, and Johns Hopkins would soon find itself without any credibility, students, faculty, or public monies for more “research”. And that, in my opinion, is exactly what should happen to those who peddle junk science as “important research”.

          • But they should have the freedom to do that, right? This is the USA, isn’t it? Joe is saying that they shouldn’t have the freedom to do whatever they want. I think he’s wrong.

          • There are limits to what people can advocate. Advocating riots, lynchings, and other criminal behaviors cross the line. I’m suggesting that advocating the violation of the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms may also cross the line.

            I’ll try to make a blog post on this topic tomorrow night.

        • Johns Hopkins gets a ton of government money.

          They got over a billion federal dollars back in FY2002; the number is surely higher today. It isn’t really a private institution if its funded by the government, is it?

          • Getting government money doesn’t determine if something is private or public.

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