If you're seeing this topic then another mass shooting hap…

On May 01 2013 04:13 FallDownMarigold wrote:
Thoughts on NRA vs. scientific research?

By the early 1990s, a series of CDC-funded studies had indicated that easy access to guns and keeping firearms at home increases homicide and suicide rates. "The fact that gun ownership was being identified as a risk factor for violent death legitimately raised the possibility" that gun policies might need to change, Wintemute says. The National Rifle Association (NRA) swung into action to stifle that threat. For gun-possession advocates, Wintemute says, "It made perfect sense to try to prevent that evidence from being collected in the first place." Contending that CDC was pursuing a gun control agenda rather than unbiased science, former U.S. Representative Jay Dickey (R–AR), who described himself then as "NRA's point person in Congress," convinced the House to cut $2.6 million from the CDC budget: the precise amount that the agency's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control was slated to spend on gun violence research that year. (In The Washington Post last July, Dickey, who lost his House seat in 2000, wrote that he has since become an advocate of research on preventing firearms injuries.)

The 1996 legislation prohibited CDC and the National Institutes of Health from conducting research that might "advocate or promote gun control." Coupled with the funding cut, the proscription cast a pall over the field, Teret says. Although his program has survived on private funding, the CDC ban "was devastating for the field of gun violence prevention," he says. Many young researchers, Teret says, ditched firearms studies in favor of other public health issues.

As a result, from 1996 to 2010, academic papers published on gun violence fell by 60%, according to a review released last week by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition led by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. Today, fewer than a dozen public health researchers in the United States focus primarily on gun-related violence, says Wintemute, who funds his group's research out of his own pocket. CDC and the teams it funded were not the only victims. Beginning in 2003, a series of riders on budget bills called the Tiahrt Amendments restricted the collection and distribution of gun-related crime data by the Department of Justice. Although some restrictions have since been removed, others remain. For example, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service must destroy background checks on gun buyers within 24 hours of using them, and journalists and researchers are not allowed to access data that the agencies collect.

On May 01 2013 04:21 FallDownMarigold wrote:
No no. NRA vs. scientific research...literally.



http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6118/381.long

There was a very good reason for the gun violence research funding ban. Virtually all of the scores of CDC-funded firearms studies conducted since 1985 had reached conclusions favoring stricter gun control. This should have come as no surprise, given that ever since 1979, the official goal of the CDC’s parent agency, the U.S. Public Health Service, had been “…to reduce the number of handguns in private ownership”, starting with a 25% reduction by the turn of the century.”

Ten senators who strongly supported the CDC gun research funding ban put their reasons in writing: “This research is designed to, and is used to, promote a campaign to reduce lawful firearms ownership in America…Funding redundant research initiatives, particularly those which are driven by a social-policy agenda, simply does not make sense.”

On May 01 2013 04:36 FallDownMarigold wrote:
Can you elaborate on the scientific flaws in the research? Or is it that one of the CDC's aim to reduce gun violence is sufficient proof that such studies were biased and flawed, as the republican senator claims? Quite a weak argument


The studies on guns and public health are science. Scientific method supported by peer review. That they may or may not be useful to gun control or freedom activists says nothing about their scientific merit, which is what you are saying. Are you familiar with scientific work and the process of unbiased peer review? I suspect not

]By calling gun violence a “public health crisis” on Wednesday, Mr. Obama echoed Mr. Clinton’s model. It’s a move that could cost lives, as shifting funding away from fighting disease creates severely misplaced priorities. In 2010, 780,213 Americans died from cardiovascular disease and 574,743 from cancer, compared with 11,078 firearm homicides.

Under the Bush administration, the CDC already conducted a two-year independent study of the laws, including bans on specified firearms or ammunition; gun registration; concealed-weapon carry; and zero-tolerance for firearms in schools. The scientists concluded in 2003 that there was “insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed for preventing violence.”

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/18/tax-dollars-for-gun-control/#ixzz2RyfJYkiX

On May 01 2013 04:50 FallDownMarigold wrote:
But was the research flawed from a scientific perspective? Are the results bad for any other reason than that they received, in part, funding from the CDC?


I don't agree with the OP/ED Forbes piece, as I 'literally' just explained

Lol @ Washington times. Perhaps there's insufficient evidence due to insufficient research funding into the matter. Slightly off topic but you should provide a better source than Washington Times/Forbes Op/Ed. To your credit though, they are slightly better than the gun freedom extremist website you linked before deleting last time. If agenda is your argument, I'll spit it back out with regard to Larry Bell's oped and Washington Times

On May 01 2013 05:01 Sermokala wrote:

The research is flawed beacuse its just confirming the organizations bias. As evident as it is the organizations agenda to be for more gun control.

On May 01 2013 05:07 Paljas wrote:
sadly, kmillz is kind of correct.
Any "agenda driven" research like this is, from a scientific viewpoint, worthless.

On May 01 2013 03:39 Thieving Magpie wrote:


If someone is attacking you, at 21 feet you don't have time to pull out your gun.

This leaves two options of shoot someone from a distance--Travyon case. Or get attacked.

he suggested you can pull out your gun while they're on top of you--in which case you have no hands to defend yourself and you're fucked.

In either case--self defense classes would be a better way to protect yourself than trying to brandish a weapon and hope you don't shoot someone who was just walking around.

On May 01 2013 04:37 Nachtwind wrote:
If weapons and all are so good for the society then why they need to whitewash or hide numbers the studies would have gathered? I don´t understand.

On May 01 2013 05:10 FallDownMarigold wrote:

But the CDC did not say "go find ways to show that gun control is needed" -- THAT would be agenda driven.

It's far more like: let's explore whether guns have effects on things that may influence policy.

On May 01 2013 05:16 FallDownMarigold wrote:
Can we stop shitting up this thread debating the Trayvon Martin murder thing? There is an entire thread devoted to it. Would make more sense to take that discussion there where there are plenty of interested people

On May 01 2013 05:10 FallDownMarigold wrote:

But the CDC did not say "go find ways to show that gun control is needed" -- THAT would be agenda driven.

It's far more like: let's explore whether guns have effects on things that may influence policy. Hopefully this research will allow policy makers to make scientifically informed decisions that may lead to reduction in gun violence, which is one of our goals

Since 1979, the official goal of the CDC’s parent agency, the U.S. Public Health Service, had been “…to reduce the number of handguns in private ownership”, starting with a 25% reduction by the turn of the century.”

On May 01 2013 05:22 Millitron wrote:

Totally agree, but Magpie was using it as a bludgeon to argue against gun rights. Its related as far as that goes.