New Astroturfing Effort?

I found a media release for a not-so-new-but-new-to-me anti-gun blog. As is usually the practice, Reasoned DiscourseTM is in full effect. It’s run by the geriatric author of some anti-gun books. A quick Whois search shows it is registered to him, but what kind of hobby blogger puts out a release on PR Newswire. That’s not free. I smell astroturf.

Related posts (automatically generated):

  1. Keeping After Politicians
  2. Another Astroturfing Effort
  3. Caught HSUS Astroturfing

19 thoughts on “New Astroturfing Effort?”

  1. Further suspicion comes from this “about the author” bit:

    “The Author

    Edward Green has written three books, including Guns on Trial, a documentary novel, and many articles in leading journals. He retired from Eastern Michigan University as professor of criminology. His point of view matured from forty years of teaching his subject. What he knows about guns also comes from his experience of five years in the United States Marine Corps in World WW II.”

    That 3rd person reference is very odd for a blog, but is common in published books. Then again, I’ve met ego-maniacs refer to themselves in 3rd person :)

  2. Edward Green has written three books, including Guns on Trial, a documentary novel, and many articles in leading journals. He retired from Eastern Michigan University as professor of criminology. His point of view matured from forty years of teaching his subject. What he knows about guns also comes from his experience of five years in the United States Marine Corps in World WW II.”

    In other words, he’s approximately 80 plus years old and a retired academic who’s been living in the ivory tower for the vast majority of his adult life.

    And we’re supposed to be surprised that he adopts the standard line? Really?

    I’ve perused his writing. The usual BS. Not very impressive. And yes, probably astroturf.

  3. Interesting to note that his “blog” has a total of eight posts over five months, and no comments. Not a very rigorous posting schedule for somebody so dedicated to gun control.

  5. I have attempted to comment on one of his earlier posts, wherein he references the JAMA study of gun deaths vs behaviors, by Kellerman. It appears to have posted.

  6. Oh, heck, I messed up. The Kellerman study is from 1986, NEJM.
    From http://www.fact-index.com/a/ar/arthur_kellermann.html

    Kellermann AL. and Reay DT. “Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearms-Related Deaths in the Home.” N Engl J. Med 1986. 314: 1557-60.

    In Kellermann’s 1986 study the “risk/benefit” ratio he calculated for owning a gun was 43:1, however, in the later study cited below that ratio had dropped to 2.7:1.

    Kellermann AL, Rivara FP, Rushforth NB et al. “Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home.” N Engl J Med. 1993; 329(15): 1084-91.

    From the above study, a chart shows “increased risk factors” as follows:
    Household illicit drug use 5.7 : 1
    Home rented 4.4 : 1
    History of Domestic violence 4.4 : 1
    Lived alone 3.7 : 1
    Gun in home 2.7 : 1
    Household arrest record 2.5 : 1

    In other words, you are much safer from gun death if: you don’t use illicit drugs, own your own home, aren’t an abusive person or an abused person, and live with others. You are still more likely to be shot if you have a gun in your home, although there is no explanation of how this statistic overlaps with the drugs, renting, abuse and solo living.

  7. IIRC In that study Kellerman failed to account for whether the gun ownership was lawful and if a prohibited person (versus merely a person with an arrest record) also resided in the home not just as home owner or renter of record but as a more than transient resident.

    Again as I recall, his failure to differentiate between lawful and unlawful ownership and existing criminally prohibited status of both perpetrators and victims of “gun violence” is/was a big problem with all his work.

  8. His bio sounds like it came from the back of one of his books. LIke it was written by his publisher.

    According to my press guy, it costs between $4-500 to run a release through PR Newswire unless you have a subscription release plan with them.

  9. I just wanted to add:
    He didn’t know that the Founders considered the militia to be EVERYONE, every male citizen capable of arms without religious objections; that the unalienable right to private, armed self-defense is enshrined in the Ninth Amendment; and he was ignorant of the FBI research that shows guns in the home save more lives than they take by a factor of thousands. But hey, he was a marine, so don’t question his present judgment (that’s my tongue you see in my cheek).

  10. Wow, you are 4.4 times more likely to be murdered if you rent? We should do whatever we can to turn those renters into homeowners. Interest free loans for everybody! Think of the lives it will save.

  11. And it appears to be intermittently down… Maybe they spent all their hosting money on the PR? :D

  12. Interesting.

    Tracee Larson posted a new entry on her blog, after only four months. Guess she’s ready to be back on NPR again.

  14. Considering the history of lying on the anti-rights side, I refuse to accept that Edward Green was in the Marine Corps purely on his word. He’ll have to show some documentation.

  15. The fact that he served his country honorably doesn’t mean he has anything useful to say about gun rights.

    His position as a professor of Criminology should grant him some points but I’ve been hovering only a few credits from a Justice (Crim) degree for almost two decades now (wait, does that -help- my argument?) and even I can see the serious methodological faults in the research he cites and can note that even people who dislike Lott and Kleck’s work haven’t actually found any significant flaws such as to call the basic findings into question in their entirety.

    Further, and finally, I’m aware that when discussing fundamental civil rights it doesn’t matter if their free exercise makes things better, or even if it makes things a bit worse. They’re rights, that is the trump.

    The burden of showing such exercise is so overwhelmingly dangerous as to justify restriction lies (properly) solely on the restrictor.

  16. Probably not worth thinking about… My comment has been “awaiting moderation” for over a day. I doubt he checks his own website.

  17. The new VBC / Brady claim…

    “See, we have multiple bloggers on our side TOO!”

  18. Lee Oswald also learned about guns in the USMC, and he too took a turn to the left afterwards.
    Edward Green is still making the now obsolete, militia argument. Given his old age, I suspect that he may be too daft to actually achieve the realization that the Supreme Court has discarded that twisted, leftist reasoning in favor of the individual right view. Maybe Green has been reciting the militia argument to his commie compadres in education for so many decades that he’ll never know anything else. Sorry, Ed, but it’s gone now. It departed the planet with the Heller decision, and is now only to be found in leftist lamentations of what might have been, that is, for those who are capable of realizing that it’s gone.
    Integrity of thought is not a requirement for opponents of gun rights to be given support from their commie compadres, but political correctness is mandatory, and all too often it is all that is necessary.
    Green has been gleefully impressing people with the idea that he was in the Marines during WWII, for what, 65 years now? So that means that he knows all about guns? Not to knock his military service, but what has he learned lately? I mean, at some point, any point, in the past 65 years.
    Green is such a comically, pathetic figure (Don Quixote comes to mind) that one hesitates to mount an argument against his nonsense, but anti-rights propaganda should be challenged, even when it’s so tired and weak as to be laughable.

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