Your Tax Bucks At Work

Conducting scholarly studies on the taxpayers dime is a longstanding way to produce PhD's and keep graduate students from starving. Sometimes this produces results that are useful in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes it doesn't.

Take this study of gun violence which may have been a bit too honest for its own good. Executive summary:

It took $2.6 million of taxpayers’ money to find out what could have been assumed for free: that teenagers who possess illegal guns, engage in underage drinking and hang out with other ne’er-do-wells are more likely to get shot. The agency also wasted $2 million to determine if there is a causal relationship between gun violence and the presence of bars and liquor stores.

That second part was presumable to boost efforts to bring back prohibition, striking success that that was.

It's good to see the small but regular successes the Republicans are having chipping away at the anti-gun thinking that goes on among Democrats although they try very hard to keep it "under the radar".