Over at The Trace, though, they’ve got a study that’s suggesting otherwise.

Researchers from Rutgers University have found evidence that, in disadvantaged neighborhoods, shootings tend to occur closer to gun stores. The study, published on February 4 in the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, comes amid a federal push to crack down on problem gun dealers as part of President Joe Biden’s gun violence prevention agenda.

The researchers used shooting and demographic data to explore the relationship between gun stores and violence in Atlanta between 2016 and 2018. In neighborhoods facing high rates of poverty and unemployment, shootings were more likely to take place near gun shops. In better-off neighborhoods, the opposite was true, with gun stores exerting an almost repellent effect on shootings.

Daniel Semenza, a Rutgers sociologist and the study’s lead author, said the data could not explain why shootings concentrate in this manner, but the analysis suggests certain gun dealers increase access to firearms in ways that make disadvantaged neighborhoods more violent. “At the end of the day, almost every gun that is used in a shooting starts off at a federally licensed firearm retailer,” he said. “We hope our study redirects some focus to that point of origin rather than the necessary but significantly more difficult process of interrupting gun trafficking networks.”

Well, that’s interesting, right?

It is and it isn’t.

Let’s note Semenza’s comments right there at the end. It’s clear he sees lawful gun ownership as some kind of contributing factor to violent crime. This betrays his biases, which should raise questions about his study from the start.

Semenza’s research notes that the violence that takes place near these particular gun stores are manslaughters and assaults, which is supposedly suggestive of impulsivity.

However, what he hasn’t been able to do is tie these weapons to the stores in question. It doesn’t appear law enforcement did either.

So what gives?

Well, let’s remember that the only type of business Semenza looked at were gun stores. Gun stores in poorer neighborhoods are likely to be located very closely with other businesses, places like liquor stores, or nightclubs. Alcohol has long been known to decrease inhibitions, making people more impulsive.

Could that be playing a factor?

We don’t know. Semenza’s research apparently didn’t look at that. Further, something The Trace failed to note is that this was only in one city.

That’s right, boys and girls, Semenza only looked at data in Atlanta, not anywhere else in the nation. This is what we call “insufficient sample size.”

Even if his data is 100 percent accurate and gun stores really are somehow responsible for the violence in these areas, that only necessarily applies to Atlanta and not anywhere else because there was no data gathered from anywhere else.

Had he gathered information from a dozen major cities and a dozen smaller ones and found the same thing, then maybe we could believe this to at least be a valid correlation for the rest of the nation.

Then, of course, is the fact that this is just a correlation. As I noted before, all he’s done is shown that violent crime clusters in areas that also happen to contain a gun store.

But this raises the question of whether there were clusters anywhere else?

Semenza’s focus on gun stores was like a laser beam, but what he needed was something more akin to a flashlight. He needed to take a broader look to find actual answers.

That’s not what he wanted to do. He didn’t look at other businesses located in the area to see if there was any correlation there. He didn’t do anything because it’s clear he had an agenda and wanted his research to conform to that idea.

This isn’t science. It’s activism in scientific drag.