Oddly, Removing Male NRA Members From the General Population Makes America Safer

On Thursday, a study released in the New England Journal of Medicine found that gun accidents nationwide fall by about 20 percent during the NRA’s yearly convention, an event during which approximately 80,000 of the organization’s members gather to talk about guns, buy guns, attend seminars about guns, and applaud female-gun-owner-in-chief Dana Loesch when she offers guns as a solution to the violent encroachment of the shadowy progressive left, with “their media, “their schools,” and “their movie stars.”

The study analyzed emergency room visits and hospitalizations for gun-related injuries between 2007 and 2015 nationwide, collecting incident reports during the convention and in the three weeks directly before and after the NRA’s signature event.

The NRA largely abandoned its emphasis on sporting and marksmanship in the ‘70s to favor radical Second Amendment agitation and lobbying. But it defaults to messaging about safety and training after mass shootings like Parkland— moments when advocating for more guns for every American becomes politically inconvenient. (And yet, the Parkland shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was on a rifle team that received a grant from the NRA.)

“But the drop in gun injuries during these large meetings attended by thousands of well-trained gun owners seems to refute the idea that gun injuries stem solely from lack of experience and training in gun use,” one of the study’s authors, Anupam Jena, a Harvard Medical School professor, wrote in a statement.

The study also found that during the NRA convention, the highest reductions of gun-related injuries happened among men. Who would have guessed that when the most zealous of male gun owners are gathered in a convention center—often one in which they are not allowed to carry—our country is far safer?