The New York Times has an unhealthy obsession with firearms. Recently the paper came in for mockery for a signed editorial that actually attacked the National Rifle Association for featuring guns in its gun museum. On Wednesday it trustingly latched on to a dubious study showing a correlation between gun ownership and road rage killings. Christopher Mele penned “Firearms and Drivers, A Lethal Combination – Rapid Rise in Road Rage Since 2014."
When the former N.F.L. player Joe McKnight was shot and killed last year in what the authorities described as a case of road rage, it was a high-profile example of what has been a marked increase in the use of guns in such confrontations, a new analysis shows.
The analysis was published by The Trace, a nonprofit news organization focused on gun violence. It found that cases of road rage involving a firearm -- where someone brandished a gun or fired one at a driver or passenger -- more than doubled to 620 in 2016, from 247 in 2014.
The Trace compiled its data from the Gun Violence Archive, which inventories and catalogs episodes of gun violence in the United States based on news and police reports and other sources.
News reports? Is that the most reliable methodology?
There were at least 1,319 road rage episodes involving firearms during the three-year period examined, with at least 354 people wounded and 136 killed, The Trace reported.
The National Rifle Association, the leading defender of gun rights, did not respond to two emails and a phone message left since Thursday seeking comment about the specific report. The N.R.A.’s Institute for Legislative Action has generally insisted that most Americans support gun ownership for defensive purposes and that legally concealed weapons deter crime. Indeed, the group claims that the nation’s murder rate has dropped because of firearm ownership.
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There is no way to pinpoint what caused the increase in reported road confrontations involving firearms. The Trace reported that states with large numbers of concealed-carry permit holders and relaxed gun laws -- such as Florida and Texas -- had a higher number of cases.
Florida was No. 1, with 147; followed by Texas, 126; California, 82; Tennessee, 68; and Pennsylvania, 62. Louisiana was No. 10.
It was left unsaid whether Florida’s loose open records law, which makes arrest and crime records very accessible, had anything to do with the number of reports hailing from Florida.
Mele did find an opposing voice noting that the media may be driving the supposed rise in road rage involving firearms.
And while the N.R.A. did not comment, a professor who has studied crime and gun control said he was skeptical of The Trace’s findings. Gary Kleck, a professor emeritus of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University in Tallahassee said the analysis would have been influenced by more news reports of cases of road rage involving firearms because when a topic or trend becomes a “media theme” it tends to lead to even more coverage.
“I’m skeptical any time I hear that any kind of crime or violence more than doubled in a three-year period,” he said. “The media tends to focus on a subject when it fits a pre-existing theme.”
Professor David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, said he was surprised by the reported increase, attributing that to more and better reporting of such episodes.
Undaunted, Mele dug up an old report that psychoanalyzed the guns-in-cars issue.
Another research paper, “Is an Armed Society a Polite Society? Guns and Road Rage,” which Dr. Hemenway co-wrote in 2006, noted that cars offer an environment where people feel safe displaying hostility.
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The report analyzed data from more than 2,400 licensed drivers who were surveyed in 2004. It found that after controlling for variables, such as age, gender, geography and driving frequency, drivers with guns in their cars were more likely to make obscene gestures and aggressively follow another car.
Mele was much less sympathetic to a conservative project from November 2016. Under the headline, “Website Targeting ‘Leftist’ Professors Raises Fears of Threat to Academic Freedom” he fretted in the lead sentence: “A new website that accuses nearly 200 college professors of advancing “leftist propaganda in the classroom” and discriminating against conservative students has been criticized as a threat to academic freedom.”
