America’s foremost gun lobby doesn’t want us to know more about guns.
That’s the allegation of gun violence experts and former officials at the National Center for Injury Control and Prevention, or NCICP, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that used to function as the leading federal agency supporting firearms studies.
As reported by The New York Times, because of fierce opposition from the National Rifle Association to the NCICP’s work, funding has significantly dried up, and the agency is unable to tackle the sorts of issues raised by recent violence in Tucson. “We’ve been stopped from answering the basic questions,” said Mark Rosenberg, former director of the NCICP.
Chris Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist, says that his group isn’t against research, but accuses the NCICP of a bias against guns.
“Our concern is not with legitimate medical science,” he said. “Our concern is they were promoting the idea that gun ownership was a disease that needed to be eradicated.”
The dispute between the agency and the gun lobby dates to the 1990s, when Rosenberg and others sought to increase the study of guns as a public health issue. One study, for instance, found that the presence of a handgun in a home didn’t make inhabitants safer, but rather increased the likelihood of a murder using the weapon.
In 1996, lawmakers first moved to strip the NCICP budget of its $2.6 million for gun-related studies and later redirected the funds to other research. Congress also put in place an extraordinary restriction on the parent agency barring it from using funds “to advocate or promote gun control.”
The National Institute of Justice, part of the Justice Department, also used to finance firearms research but that money has dwindled as well. The Times said Stephen Teret, founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, estimated that the amount of money available for firearms research was a quarter of what it once was.
As a result, many pertinent questions –for example, how effective are stricter background checks on gun buyers?– remain unanswered.
Related Posts:
Gun Magazine Sellers Have Ammo to Influence National Rifle Association
Despite Outcry over Tucson Rampage, Prospects for Gun Control Are Dim
What part of SHALL NOT INFRINGE are you having trouble with?
“One study, for instance, found that the presence of a handgun in a home didn’t make inhabitants safer, but rather increased the likelihood of a murder using the weapon.”
Ah yes, Dr. Kellerman’s ugly study rearing its head again. If you are going to bring this piece of work up, you should address some of its gross methodological flaws. The one I like best is the fact that, using Dr. Kellerman’s own numbers, it has been shown that while in households with a firearm you are 42 times more likely to be killed as you are to kill an intruder, in households *without* firearms you are more that 90 times as likely to be killed as you are to kill someone in self-defense.
The NRA spokespersons love to prattle on about “freedom”. Let me explain something to you: A people who live in mortal terror wondering when and where the next massacre of innocents will take place may be many things – no argument there. “Free” they are not. Let’s just stop kidding ourselves here and now, okay?
Get used to living in a country in ruins.
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Thanks for highlighting this issue.
The problem with the CDC funding was that it was exclusively used to generate support gun control. Take that study you are referencing – “One study, for instance, found that the presence of a handgun in a home didn’t make inhabitants safer, but rather increased the likelihood of a murder using the weapon.”
That is not actually what the study concluded. You are talking about one of the infamous Kellerman studies, where homicides “in” a home were somewhat correlated with whether a firearm was kept “in or around” a home. Gun presence was actually #5 on the homicide correlation list :http://guncite.com/gun-control-kellermann-3times.html . A reading of the raw data shows that firearm homicides were actually a slight minority of home homicide causation (49%). And the study never identified if the firearm kept “in or around the home” was the weapon used to commit the homicide. But the study authors’ conclusion was that guns in or around a home were a serious homicide risk and should be removed.
Plus, the NYT article describes a whole host of gun control researchers to whom the CDC was shoveling money until Congress cut them off. What serious research funding source only gives money to advocacy groups in the name of “neutral research?” Imagine the outcry if the CDC was shoveling money to anti-abortion groups to fund their research into prenatal or OB care? Cutting of those taxpayer funds was the right thing to do.
Sounds like Tom is either going thru an attack of the vapors or a legitimate, full-blown paranoia episode. Let’s really stick it to Tom and remind him that the three largest massacres of innocents in the country had nothing to do with guns. Actually, the Happyland murders where almost 100 innocents died was done with a gallon of gasoline that had been bought ten minutes earlier. Tom, Tom, when you see someone at the gas station filling up a can of gas… watch out… he’s coming to get you. Booga, booga
“Tom Degan
January 27, 2011 at 1:22 am | Permalink
The NRA spokespersons love to prattle on about “freedom”. Let me explain something to you: A people who live in mortal terror wondering when and where the next massacre of innocents will take place may be many things – no argument there. “Free” they are not. Let’s just stop kidding ourselves here and now, okay?
Get used to living in a country in ruins.”
The only countries in ruins that I have seen upon this world were countries where the Governments disarmed the people.
Tom: “Let me explain something to you: A people who live in mortal terror wondering when and where the next massacre of innocents will take place may be many things – no argument there. “Free” they are not.”
I conpletely agree. Lets arm them so they don’t have to worry. They can defend themselves.
I’m armed, I’m free, and I’m not afraid. You should try it. Living in mortal terro is no way to live.