WaPo: Congressional deal could fund gun violence research for first time since 1990s

"Congressional leaders reached a deal to fund research on gun violence for the first time in more than 20 years, a major legislative victory for Democrats, researchers and anti-gun-violence activists.

"The deal — still pending final approval as congressional negotiations continue over a must-pass, end-of-year spending bill — would send $25 million to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health to study gun violence, with each agency receiving $12.5 million, according to congressional aides....

"While gun violence is one of the country’s leading causes of death, it receives little research funding. As many people die because of gun violence, for example, as of sepsis infection, yet funding for gun research is less than 1 percent of that for sepsis, a 2017 analysis found.

" 'This is a deal of historic proportions,' said Mark Rosenberg, who was heading the CDC’s research on firearm violence in the 1990s when Congress abruptly cut off funding for the work....

"Rosenberg said he believed the work his staff members at the CDC were doing could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Their research came to a grinding halt when, along with passing the amendment, Congress took away $2.6 million from the CDC....

"In recent years, however, the political landscape has started to change with the steady, tragic and unending drumbeat of mass shootings. After a two-decade recruiting drought, gun researchers say they have seen a wave of young scientists entering their field. That new energy coincides with a resurgence of gun-control activism — led by the teenage Parkland student survivors — as well as increased interest from private foundations and state-level governments in funding such research....

" 'The hope is that this is the beginning and that people will see the benefits of investment,' Rosenberg said. 'That they’ll see saving lives from gun violence is a nonpartisan issue.' "
https://www.washingtonpost.com/heal...und-gun-violence-research-first-time-since-s/

This would be a major step forward.

 

There is nothing prohibiting the center for disease control from studying the matter. There never has been. They simply cannot use any funding for the purpose of advocating or promoting firearm-related restrictions. Meaning it cannot make calls for what firearm-related restrictions should be implemented in response to their findings, nor can it say which firearm-related restrictions they believe will yield a positive benefit. All it can legally do is present its findings, and not one thing more.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-104publ208/pdf/PLAW-104publ208.pdf

Page two hundred and forty five:

Provided further,That none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maybe used to advocate or promote gun control:

Advocate or promote. There is no prohibition from studying the matter. If the center for disease control cannot tell the difference between studying a matter, and promoting legislation, then it is not doing its job right, and has no one to blame but itself for being so dishonest and stupid.

Let it study the matter to whatever extent it wishes. It will find what previous studies have found countless times before. Firearm-related violence is largely concentrated in specific urban areas, with the perpetrators largely being convicted felons, of non-white minority status, poorly educated and with no traditional family structure, and who are engaged in illegal activity.

 

CDC has no business doing anything with guns. This is the worst concept ever. We actually have an agency that deals with firearms, why wouldn't such a study fall to ATF? CDC needs to concentrate on what they were intended for, and firearms aren't it...

 

I appreciate you admitting that this is a victory for Democrats and not a legitimate move to reduce violence. The truth is that the data is already available for anyone with a search engine. CDC has tons of research on drug use. How is that war on drugs going?

 

Well, the CDC can talk about lead poisoning

 

Kellermann's 1993 "Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home" study was funded by the CDC. After the Dickey Amendment the CDC stopped funding such research. Placing restrictions on what conclusions a study can reach is unreasonable. It's like allowing smoking to be researched as long as the conclusion that smoking is unhealthy is not reached.

 

The ATF does not conduct the necessary kind of research.

 

Its not what the CDC is for. ATF is the best equipped to do any relevant study on firearms. There is no justifiable reason to have CDC doing anything at all with firearms. They have enough on their plates with real diseases and health risks...

 

Hopefully, some of you have realized that trolls abound in this section of the forum. The CDC, ATF, and FBI have plenty of research and the only thing they cannot define is the term "gun violence". Search engines are not your friend as Bloomberg's groups have bought their way to the top of the list.
"There are 30,000 gun related deaths per year by firearms, and this number is not disputed. The U.S. population is 324,059,091 as of June 22, 2016. Do the math: 0.00925% of the population dies from gun related actions each year. Statistically speaking, this is insignificant. What is never told, however, is a breakdown of those 30,000 deaths, to put them in perspective as compared to other causes of death:
65% of those deaths are by suicide, which would never be prevented by gun laws.
15% are by law enforcement in the line of duty and justified.
17% are through criminal activity, gang and drug related or mentally ill persons – better known as gun violence.
3% are accidental discharge deaths.
So technically, "gun violence" is not 30,000 annually, but drops to 5,100. Still too many? Now let's look at how those deaths spanned across the nation.
25% of which occur in just four cities.
80 homicides (9.4%) were in Chicago
344 homicides (6.7%) were in Baltimore
333 homicides (6.5%) were in Detroit
119 homicides (2.3%) were in Washington D.C. (a 54% increase over prior years)"
Enough said.

Go here for facts from the government and elsewhere. http://www.gunfacts.info/
And stop feeding the trolls.

 

Simply because the so-called "study" by Arthur Kellermann went on to detail that firearms present within the home were not the main contributing factor in homicides within the home, but rather criminal histories and behaviors, such as dealing in illicit narcotic substances.

And how does the center for disease control know for certain which firearm-related restriction will have what legal outcome on criminal behavior?

 

In conclusion, murderers can read minds and only target those with the ability to defend themselves. Guns have a magic vibe emanating from them making those exposed more likely to commit murder. The CDC also concludes that those who are murdered by anything other than a gun are less dead than those who were killed by someone with a gun.

 

Yeah that's still scary.

Imagine them doing a study where they looked at people who lost firearms and public safety. They find the lack of firearms improves public safety. They can't argue or defend their conclusion because they would be advocating for gun control. It's injecting politics into science in an unhealthy way that makes working in the field harder to do.

 

Call me inhumane, but I would not be in favor of banning something important if it causes 30 deaths per year. If violent Rock-n-Roll music causes extra 30 murders per year, that is not the reason to repeal the First Amendment.

But 30,000 to 40,000 deaths per yer is a tragedy.

 

Indeed, the Second Amendment is too costly.

 

There is no red line ...

30 per year for something as needed as Free Speech -- do not ban

30,000 per year by guns -- ban
50,000 per year by tobacco -- I would ban most would disagree

 

I wonder how they came up with "one of the country’s leading causes of death". Anyone know how they are defining "leading" in this sense? I would never consider myself leading anything if I was in 18th place. That is where gun deaths come in when compared to death from all causes. If gun deaths are broken down into three parts, as they should be, then they fall even further down the list. When looking at three separate types of gun fatalities; suicide comes in at the 23rd leading cause of death, homicide comes in at 32nd and accidents come in so far down the list that it is insignificant to most anyone but roughly 500 dead and their families.

While most of the nearly 40,000 deaths per year by firearms might be preventable, the way to figure out how to prevent them is not to study "gun violence" but to study the actual problem of violence; to figure out why there are so many suicides. With suicides and homicide the gun is the tool not the reason.

 

Then perhaps they should not be studying a matter that relates exclusively to human behavior, and does not actually relate to disease.

 

Take it back to the other thread that has been reserved for such.

 

Such is freedom. The opposite is less palatable.

 

Do you drive an automoible?
Do you drink Alcohol?

 

This is part of the $1.4 trillion spending package that Trump is expected to approve today. He'll have to do it in order to avoid another government shutdown. So it's pretty much a done deal.

 

And ultimately what will such actually accomplish? How will the findings of the center for disease control be of any value? How will they differ from its findings under the administration of Barack Obama, when it found legal firearms use for purposes of self-defense were far more extensive than originally estimated?

 

You know, maybe it is a disease they should research.

Seeing as how it typically only occurs in specific places in the US, someone should test the water.

 

This is the truth the anti-gun left does not want spread.
This 'funding' only matters to them because they assume the CDC will reach conclusions that more gun control laws are necessary; if they thought the CDC would reach some other conclusion, they would fight said funding tooth fang and claw.