TFTC on Nostr: A new study found that electing a Republican prosecutor reduces all-cause mortality ...
A new study found that electing a Republican prosecutor reduces all-cause mortality among men aged 20-29 by 6.6%. The mechanism behind it is going to make both sides uncomfortable.
Researchers from Vanderbilt and Wellesley studied hundreds of closely contested partisan prosecutor elections between 2010 and 2019. In jurisdictions that narrowly elected a Republican over a Democrat, firearm-related deaths dropped significantly.
The effect is strongest among Black men, where firearm homicide falls sharply. Among White men, it shows up as a smaller reduction in firearm suicides and accidents. No effect on opioid deaths, which makes sense — prosecutors don't control drug supply chains.
Here's the part nobody wants to hear:
The lives aren't being saved by locking people up. Prison incapacitation only explains about one third of the reduction among Black men. The dominant mechanism is conviction-based firearms restrictions. A felony conviction strips your legal right to own a gun. Republican prosecutors secure higher conviction rates, which means more people in high-risk demographics lose legal access to firearms.
The right has to reckon with the fact that the mechanism saving lives is effectively a form of gun restriction. The left has to reckon with the fact that it only works when prosecutors actually pursue convictions instead of diversion programs.
Hundreds of elections. A decade of mortality data. The data doesn't care about your priors.
Published at
2026-02-27 15:27:10 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "A new study found that electing a Republican prosecutor reduces all-cause mortality among men aged 20-29 by 6.6%. The mechanism behind it is going to make both sides uncomfortable.\n\nResearchers from Vanderbilt and Wellesley studied hundreds of closely contested partisan prosecutor elections between 2010 and 2019. In jurisdictions that narrowly elected a Republican over a Democrat, firearm-related deaths dropped significantly.\n\nThe effect is strongest among Black men, where firearm homicide falls sharply. Among White men, it shows up as a smaller reduction in firearm suicides and accidents. No effect on opioid deaths, which makes sense — prosecutors don't control drug supply chains.\n\nHere's the part nobody wants to hear:\n\nThe lives aren't being saved by locking people up. Prison incapacitation only explains about one third of the reduction among Black men. The dominant mechanism is conviction-based firearms restrictions. A felony conviction strips your legal right to own a gun. Republican prosecutors secure higher conviction rates, which means more people in high-risk demographics lose legal access to firearms.\n\nThe right has to reckon with the fact that the mechanism saving lives is effectively a form of gun restriction. The left has to reckon with the fact that it only works when prosecutors actually pursue convictions instead of diversion programs.\n\nHundreds of elections. A decade of mortality data. The data doesn't care about your priors.\nhttps://blossom.primal.net/370b874a94735a70bbf2f050aea9de4eda1bd4fbfd0c6551bdbd5dea3803f0f1.jpg",
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