Alex Yablon Responds To Criticism Of His Fake Gun News With More Fake Gun News
BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago
I published a story on Monday that has generated some of the strongest pushback — indeed, ridicule — of anything I have reported for The Trace.
My piece examined how gun manufacturing trends influence the criminal market and what changes in the types of guns being produced might mean for public safety. Gun companies are producing a greater number of semiautomatic handguns of the sort used as police sidearms and military service weapons — those that shoot 9mm, .40, and .45-caliber bullets — than in decades past. They are selling them to civilians who increasingly buy firearms for the primary purpose of defending themselves from other people, and believe that more powerful guns will make them more safe.
The increasing prevalence of powerful guns also means that criminals encounter them, and acquire them, more often. I also found in my reporting evidence that illegal buyers prefer high-caliber guns for the same reasons as legal buyers.
Law enforcement officers are recovering more of these weapons at crime scenes, and fewer of the kinds of cheap, small guns that criminals favored during the crime waves of the late 20th century.
The story was based on publicly available data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which shows a sharp uptick in the number of high-caliber guns recovered by police in a short time period, just four years. The data makes clear that in the underground criminal market, the supply of semiautomatic handguns chambered to shoot 9mm, .40, and .45-caliber bullets is increasing faster than the supply of smaller calibers, like the .22.
Forensic evidence shows that larger bullets tear larger holes in human bodies, and thus are more likely to severely damage a vital organ or rupture an artery. Public health research indicates that an increasing number of people who get shot are dying from their wounds.
In an editorial on firearm news site Guns.com, Greg Camp said my article was “confusing.” Robert Farago of The Truth About Guns dismissed the piece as well. On his popular gun blog Bearing Arms, Bob Owens called the story “the second dumbest thing you’ll read about guns all day.” I’m not sure who crowded me out of the top spot.
Owens and others criticized my understanding of caliber and the gun industry’s last century and change of history. As they pointed out, the kinds of weapons at the center of my story have been around for more than a century. That’s true: the 9mm round was first designed in 1901, and the .45-caliber in 1904. My critics also argued that these rounds are far from the largest calibers available today. That’s also true: The weapons I wrote about don’t approach the power of the .50-caliber bullet shot by the Desert Eagle pistol so often favored by action movie villains.
As they made their criticisms, these gun writers did not engage with the point of my story. I never claimed that the calibers I wrote about were only recently invented, nor that they were the biggest rounds in history.
Rather, I pointed about that the production of more powerful handguns has surged, while production of others — revolvers and semiautomatic calibers considered too small for police sidearms, like .22, .25, and .32 — has grown comparatively slowly, or even withered away. The guns that make up an ever-greater share of the American arsenal often shoot larger, faster rounds than those weapons that are losing ground, and the handguns now most prevalent nearly universally accommodate higher capacity magazines.
I was ridiculed for noting these differences, cast as an ignorant fear-monger and outsider who lacked standing to comment on the gun world.
Ignored, in these critiques, are the public safety implications of a larger supply of more powerful guns flowing from the legal to the illegal market.
It seemed that they didn’t so much contest the conclusions I reached so much as they took offense that I would pose these questions about the relationship between the gun supply and crime in the first place.
I object that Alex didn’t interact with my assessment of their work. You can go assess the data for yourself. Alex is misrepresenting the data and isn’t quite at the point of truly understanding what he’s looking at because he isn’t a gunner. To repeat myself from the first analysis of this issue, he isn’t educated on his subject. Let’s take a closer look.
The data is only available on this site for the years 2012 – 2015. From a technical perspective (and given that I’m a PE, I’m qualified to make judgments concerning mathematics and statistics), I deny that this is enough data to develop a trend line with a reasonable correlation coefficient. In other words, the data isn’t statistically significant. Much more is needed before Alex can reach any conclusions like he did.
But to engage the data as if it’s meaningful, let’s outline what we know. In 2015, the following recoveries were made: 55,691 (9mm), 28717 (.40), 20,729 (.45 ACP), 9,417 (.357 magnum), and 35,382 (.22LR). This list isn’t complete.
In 2012, the following recoveries were made: 42,560 (9mm), 20,674 (.40), 17,280 (.45 ACP), 9,979 (.357 magnum), and 42,560 (.22LR).
This data doesn’t show what Alex wants it to show. First of all, it shows that more recoveries occurred (due to whatever reason, increased police work, presumably). It shows that approximately the same number of .22LR recoveries occurred in both years, while recoveries in 9mm and .40 went up in 2015 (although not significantly). But it also shows that recoveries in .45 ACP stayed about the same. It also shows that recoveries in .357 magnum decreased. No one would argue that the .357 magnum is a weak round. It has about the same bullet diameter as the 9mm but with approximately 400 FPS greater muzzle velocity than the 9mm. It packs a punch, enough to shatter windshields and keep moving, which is why LEOs transitioned to this round from the .38 Special.
But buyers are rejecting this round in favor of the much weaker 9mm (a judgment I reject given my love for the .357 magnum round). The higher ratio of 9mm to .22LR recovered in 2015 versus 2012 is analogous to the higher ratio of 9mm to .45 ACP in both years, meaning that buyers favor the weaker 9mm over the much stronger .45 ACP.
It’s what I told you in my earlier analysis without looking at the data. That’s how sure I was of my judgment – I didn’t even look at the data to write my analysis. And I was right. No one has ever preferentially selected the .22LR for self defense (although I’ve argued that the .22 magnum is a feasible self defense round even if not superior). Shooters may use it (including criminals) if it happens to be around.
But buyers are preferentially selecting medium calibers (9mm, .38 ACP) over larger rounds and rounds with higher muzzle velocity like the .357 magnum. Buyers simply are not purchasing higher caliber weapons (.40, .45 ACP, .44 magnum) or weapons with higher muzzle velocity (e.g., .357 magnum) in the same quantity as the 9mm. Instead, the 9mm is the ubiquitous round in America today. That’s why, during the ammunition shortage a few years ago, I could always buy .45 ACP, and when I looked for 9mm just to see what the other guys are doing, I could never find any.
Ironically, it isn’t the guns that have changed. Yes, technology has developed to some degree, but the real development has occurred in ammunition. So for example, the development of high performing personal defense ammunition has made buyers more confident in purchasing the 9mm (e.g., open tip bullets where the jacket is chemically bonded to the lead core, ensuring symmetrical expansion of the bullet).
Alex is wrong in his analysis. Just wrong. He’s trafficking in fake news. He has misread the data, and he is seeing what he wants to see. We firearms experts are always around to help him out before he writes the next gun piece, but remember, Google considers folks like me to be “fake news.” So Alex better be careful associating with folks like us. He may lose his reputation.
On December 9, 2016 at 1:06 am, johngalts_brother said:
The difference of chosen calibers can only be attributed to history marching on. The only people I know that own .25 or 32 calibers have inherited the weapons passing down through families or are using it only as a concealed weapon, not a recreational gun. No one ever talks about their .25 or .32 handguns. The ammunition is still available but this writer should have researched ammunition manufacturers to compare market streams. .22 calibers will always be with us. If a .357 magnum weapon was not a sister round to a .38, the .38 would be fading also. The .38 is just more or less a target round today.
On December 9, 2016 at 1:15 am, Mark Dietzler said:
You are assuming he has a reputation to begin with.
No reporter does, in my book, not after the way they behaved during the run up to the election.
On December 11, 2016 at 3:15 pm, Josh said:
Yablon works for The Trace, which is a non-profit outfit dedicated solely to Leftist gun propaganda. They even beg for donations on their website. All the authors are NYC urbanites that forgot “fly-over” country existed and were bit in the ass for it in November.
Let that sink in: these propogandists, who likely also forgot there were stars in the night sky, beg for money to feed their fake news when there is legitimate suffering in the world needing funding and support.
Gross.
On December 9, 2016 at 1:28 am, Josh said:
Remember, folks: Alex Yablon is demonstrating the rhetoric and lack of critical analysis that our universities are churning out, and they’re paying good money to be made this stupid.
On December 9, 2016 at 2:03 pm, Duke Norfolk said:
His argument is just a variant of the anti-gun left’s go-to argument that none of us need guns and the only reason criminals have guns (or can get them) is because we gun nuts have them (especially so many, of course).
And even if he concedes that we might need a gun, well surely we don’t need these big, nasty, killer guns (disregard the fact that the police prefer them for saving their lives, etc.). And again, the only reason criminals have these big nasty guns is because we gun nuts have opted for them; in our crazy, paranoid, irrational manner, of course.
If we would just unilaterally disarm, surely the criminals would stop doing bad things (and the State would not be tyrannical). Yawn.
On December 9, 2016 at 2:13 pm, Archer said:
I disagree with his conclusions, but for a different reason than you, Herschel (although I believe your statistical analysis is correct; what I’m about to say doesn’t refute it).
Alex’s conclusion seems to say that gun manufacturers’ preferences are shaping the criminal firearm market. On the surface, my initial reaction can be summed up in two words: “Well, DUH!” [sarcasm] What a shock, that the guns manufacturers are making more of are increasingly represented in the criminal market. It’s almost like criminals are using whatever they can find, and if more medium-caliber guns are around generally, more medium-caliber guns will be used in crime! [/sarcasm]
But deeper than that, contrary to what the anti-gun lobby has been saying for years, the “gun lobby” doesn’t dictate what gun buyers have available. The free market does. Gun manufacturers are making what their buyers want to buy (again, “DUH!”). Ammunition technology has put the lighter, faster 9mm round on approximately equal “knock-down power” ground as the .45. It’s (generally) cheaper, it’s (generally) available, and it’s (generally) easier to handle, and a given model of gun chambered in 9mm will (generally) hold 20-30% more rounds than the same model of gun chambered in .45. So buyers want it. And so gun manufacturers are making it. This is the beauty of the free market in action.
(Note: This is not to disparage the .45 or [re-]start a caliber war. It’s a matter of personal preference. My carry gun is a 9mm; I chose 9mm because that’s what I’d learned on. Since then I’ve fired a couple .45s and I like them, too, but the only .45 I, personally, happen to have available is a family heirloom 1911 that I love to shoot but won’t ever carry. That’s just the nature of my limited gun collection. YMMV.)
But Alex can’t handle it because 9mm semi-autos are appearing in criminal hands, for the exact same reasons they appear in law-abiding citizens’ hands. He just can’t handle that when criminals steal guns from law-abiding gun owners, criminals end up with the types of guns that law-abiding gun owners have. It’s a stupid thing to get upset over, but nobody here is accusing Alex of being particularly intelligent.
On December 9, 2016 at 4:05 pm, enoriverbend said:
I believe you missed one major — and striking — error. According to his original chart, 12-gauge is not a large caliber. (Well, OK, gauge is not caliber, but you know, that’s just stupid…)
On December 10, 2016 at 12:54 pm, Bill Funk said:
@
enoriverbend The chart shows the number of guns traced by the ATF, not power or caliber size. So the rankings are by the numbers of how many guns of those calibers were traced.
The reason the 12 gauge is lower than those above it is because not that many were traced, not because the 12 gauge isn’t powerful.
The reason the 12 gauge isn’t marked as large caliber is because, to those who are ignorant, a shotgun isn’t as scary as even a 9mm, because they were probably aware of the shotgun being used to gather food, not shoot people. The word “powerful” means different things to different people. They have the .38 and the .380 as not a large caliber, while they have the 9mm (essentially the same bore diameter) as a large caliber. Obviously the writer doesn’t know what he’s talking about, because he’s ignorant about guns, and equates “power” with “caliber,” an obvious mistaken opinion. The 12 gauge isn’t “powerful” (and thus not a large caliber) because he’s more familiar with it as a utility tool, not as a weapon.
That’s how hoiplophobes act.
On December 10, 2016 at 11:20 am, Alan Brady said:
The other reason would be duh! Gun control. For years they have denigrated small caliber guns as being Saturday Night Specials an restricted their import. Naturally the import market is limited to large frame, larger caliber guns. Living in California, in Los Angeles I cannot buy a SW Shield or Ruger LC9. They will only allow of a certain larger size.The minute I leave the city, I can buy anything on the that is still on the roster.
On December 10, 2016 at 2:56 pm, Ned Weatherby said:
Another reporter misinterprets the facts…
On December 10, 2016 at 10:08 pm, TexTopCat said:
More 9mm is around because it was almost as cheap as .22LR during most of this time. You could always find 9mm to shoot and finding .22LR was not easy in many places and at times the price if you found it was in the .20 per round.
On December 11, 2016 at 7:27 am, Roger Jerry said:
As a kid during the 1960s, I remember when cheap imported .25 semiautos and .22 revolvers were plentiful. Many of these guns sold for $20 to $30 retail. They were the choice of the average street thug because they were small, cheap, and practically disposable. Many of the armed robbery reports at the time featured a “small silver automatic” or “small black revolver.” There was almost no legal concealed carry, so the victim could be reasonably assumed to be unarmed. Pros, of course, preferred quality and a more powerful cartridge. The Gun Control Act of 1968 ended the importation of these little guns through the ATF’s “sporting purposes” test. That was supposed to “cure” the gun crime problem. Time and attrition have made the little .25 and .22 imports now rather unusual. They are prime “gun buyback” material. I’ve only seen one in the last 10 years. Is it any wonder that the same penny-ante criminals who used to carry a .25 auto are now packing a 9mm (probably stolen)? Yet another Unintended Consequence of “commonsense” gun legislation: better-armed criminals.
On December 11, 2016 at 3:09 pm, Josh said:
This is a really insightful comment. It’s, frankly, better “journalism” than Yablon’s trash. Goes to show what I’ve been saying for a while: old media is dead because as it turns out, all it takes to do good journalism is to be well read, have some critical thinking skills, and a WordPress install.
The only thing university journalism programs provide any more is indoctrination in to the Church of the Left.