Published recently in the American Medical Association’s JAMA Network Open journal, it was called “bogus” and “inherently-biased” by a National Rifle Association (NRA) writer.

Here's a snippet from JAMA:

This study adds new evidence to the literature on firearm presence and gun violence by using variation in the timing of deer hunting season across US counties. Throughout much of the rural US, the start of deer hunting season is a major annual event that leads to an abrupt increase in the number of people with firearms in public and private spaces. 

The timing of deer hunting season, or the date when residents can begin hunting deer with modern firearms, varies across states and, in some cases, across counties within states. This variation provides a natural experiment for assessing whether the opening of deer hunting season is associated with the number of shootings in rural US counties.

While I'm not a deer hunter, I have multiple friends in several states who are, several of whom I've known for decades. Anecdotally, I've heard zero stories from any of them about "gun violence" related to the start of deer season, or gun violence, period. Just sayin'.

The authors further wrote:

The findings highlight the role of firearm prevalence in gun violence and suggest the need for focused policies designed to reduce firearm violence in areas with substantial hunting activity during the first weeks of deer hunting season.

NRA writer and Second Amendment advocate Mark Chesnut called the authors' conclusion “laughable.” On Wednesday Chesnut wrote in a column at NRA Hunters’ Leadership Forum:

In my 25-plus years of reporting on bogus, inherently-biased anti-gun studies meant to turn the public, via the so-called “mainstream” media, against private firearm ownership, I’ve never seen one quite as laughable as a recent piece of "research" led by Princeton University and posted online by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

While the so-called “study” is obviously designed to tell the “dangers” of civilian gun ownership and guns in public, it comes up with a brand new, and very surprising, villain — American deer hunters in rural areas.

[T]his “study” was nothing more than a ridiculous waste of money and time. It did not prove that any of the increased shootings were committed by deer hunters or even had anything to do with deer hunters or deer season. It did not “find a linear association between hunting licenses per capita and shootings.” Plus, “The start of deer hunting season was associated with null effects on overall crime, as well as a reduction in alcohol-related arrest,” according to police data.

In fact, since the first three weeks of deer season likely encompasses Thanksgiving weekend in the vast majority of those counties, it would be just as easy to conclude that shootings go up in rural counties around the Thanksgiving holidays.

Nailed it. In addition, Lee Williams, writing at TheTruthAboutGuns.com, slammed the study even harder.

In what may be the most poorly conceived and horribly researched study ever published by The Journal of the American Medical Association during its entire 141-year history, a trio of anti-gun researchers now claims deer hunting is associated with a substantial increase in firearm violence. 

To arrive at their laughable conclusion, the authors used data from the infamous Gun Violence Archive, which has been debunked dozens of times and is well known for its shoddy research and biased statistics. 

Even the authors admitted there were problems with the GVA data. “Our study relies on shooting data from a single source, the GVA. Data from GVA have been shown to have a bias toward incidents that receive more media attention and do not include comprehensive counts of firearm suicides,” the report states.

Despite these inherent biases, the researchers used the GVA data anyway. They didn’t allow the facts to interfere with their preconceived and biased narrative. 

The last sentence captured the essence of left — and, of course, the Democrat Party: "They didn’t allow the facts to interfere with their preconceived and biased narrative."

They never do, whether they're pushing their gun-control narrative, illegal aliens narrative, abortion narrative, transgender narrative, climate change narrative — the list is never-ending. 

As luck would have it, I got into a political "discussion" with my favorite aunt last Saturday. She had zero idea what she was talking about. At one point, she said to me, verbatim: "You're smart and you know the facts, but I don't care." That is the essence of the majority of Democrat voters, in my experience.

Chesnut wasn't finished torching the study.

Why anyone even would have started with such a bone-headed premise in the first place is truly unfathomable. But, of course, the authors managed to “find” just what they were looking for.

[...]

The results, not surprisingly, shined a bad light on deer hunters, gun owners and private firearm ownership overall. While so-called “gun violence” increased substantially in rural counties during the first few weeks of deer season, the conclusion got down to the nuts and bolts of what the “researchers” wanted to “prove” from the beginning.

Exactly. Again, this is quintessential leftism: a conclusion in search of "facts."

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris continues to flip-flop on whether she supports mandatory gun buyback schemes, banning non-existent "assault rifles" (AR-15s et al.), and other threats to the Second Amendment and law-abiding gun owners.

Stay safe out there, deer hunters. Apparently, deer season is much more violent than we thought.