Why Is It Illegal to Research the Impact of Gun Control on Public Health?

[marmar]

Why Is It Illegal to Research the Impact of Gun Control on Public Health?

Monday, 28 December 2015 16:51
By The Daily Take Team, The Thom Hartmann Program | Op-Ed


The US is in the midst of a full-blown public health crisis.

Around 282 people every day - more than 32,000 people every year - are dying from a totally preventable cause.

This totally preventable cause, by the way, just isn't a problem in most other developed nations.

They've either eliminated it altogether or responded to previous outbreaks in such a way as to make future ones rarer and much less deadly than the ones we have here.

I'm talking, of course, about gun violence.

Yes, that's right, gun violence.

.....(snip).....

Believe it or not, it's actually illegal for the Centers of Disease Control to conduct any research whatsoever into the impact of gun control on public health.

That's right - illegal!

This is all thanks to former Arizona Republican Congressman Jay Dickey, who in 1996 pushed for and helped pass an NRA-backed law that bans government research into the relationship between gun ownership and public health. ..............(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34202-why-is-it-illegal-to-research-the-impact-of-gun-control-on-public-health

[MisterP]

1. if you start looking for a problem after powerful people deny it happened, those powerful people

will look bad

some Central American countries after 1998 tried to expel Cuba's free doctors because they were going to areas that the local doctors had ignored for 70 years, because the Cubans were making them look bad

out of sight, out of mind

[beevul]

2. It isn't.

“None of the funds made available in this title may be used, in whole or in part, to advocate or promote gun control.”

Its a popular myth.

[Gormy Cuss]

5. The Dickey amendment language essentially shuts down any CDC research on the topic

because if the study outcomes suggest that more gun control would be beneficial, the center is in violation of the "advocate...gun control" stipulation. Without the Dickey amendment the CDC would be held to the default standard of all Federal agencies, namely they can not sponsor research with an implicit partisan or factional agenda.

So while the word 'illegal' is not part of the amendment the effective result is that the CDC can not, short of an executive order, fund research on gun violence.

[NobodyHere]

3. Nice bullshit title you got there

[X_Digger]

4. Umm, it's not actually illegal. Derp.

Then did the cops bust down the door of Doctors Leshner, Altevogt, Lee, McCoy, and Kelley?

http://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/1

NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.

This project was supported by awards between the National Academy of Sciences and both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (#200-2011-38807) and the CDC Foundation with the Foundation’s support originating from The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The California Endowment, The California Wellness Foundation, The Joyce Foundation, Kaiser Permanente, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and one anonymous donor. The views presented in this publication are those of the editors and attributing authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the organizations or agencies that provided support for this project.

That's an interesting report, you might want to actually read it, not just let someone like Thom Hartmann pre-digest it for you. (As he is wont to do, getting much of it wrong..)

[Gormy Cuss]

6. Brought to you by executive orders which supersede the Dickey amendment,

[X_Digger]

7. But OMGosh, it's illegal! Call the fuzz!

You might enjoy reading the CDC funded study, as well.

[Skittles]

8. so do tell us why it's not researched

[X_Digger]

9. Oh, you mean like this 2015 study?

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1047279714001471

Or this 2013 Journal of the American Medical Association paper? http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleID=1556167

Or this 2015 public health review? http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031914-122542

How about this 2007 study by the University of Chicago? https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=sQxNVhV-W7oC&oi=fnd&pg=PA33&dq=gun+violence+research&ots=M-aobBLSiA&sig=iAXrYaQrqSi6XSg76bnCD7Tp1o0#v=onepage&q=gun%20violence%20research&f=false

It is researched. Harvard's school of public health has a professor whose main focus is guns. Perhaps you've heard of David Hemenway?

[Skittles]

10. it's not illegal

but it is heavily discouraged by the gun humper lobby

think CDC

http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-02/quietly-congress-extends-ban-cdc-research-gun-violence

[X_Digger]

11. So the title of the OP (and Hartmann's blog entry) are bullshit. Thanks for agreeing.

The Joyce foundation has no problem funding such studies. How about Mike Bloomberg? He's all hot and bothered, throwing millions of dollars at his astroturf gun nanny groups.

No, gun research isn't 'discouraged', shady economists just got their easy grant money taken away. They might actually have to work on a real grant proposal! *gasp*

I mean shit, Kellerman claimed the infamous '43x risk' for homicide in households with guns-- only to revise that to '2.7x' a couple of years later. What changed between one "study" and the next? He refused to submit his research data to third-party review (usually required for peer review, but gunz in academia get a pass).

[Skittles]

12. if guns were as safe and magical as gun humpers say

they'd be funding the research themselves

fuck them all

*over and out; I DETEST wasting my time*

[X_Digger]

13. Ooh, that's a lovely straw man. Did you stuff it yourself, or did it come pre-stuffed?

Bye Felicia*.

(*for the inevitable jurors:

)

[Lizzie Poppet]

14. And then dashes off indignantly...

Comedy gold.

[friendly_iconoclast]

18. You might want to see someone about that factose intolerance...

[ileus]

20. They're safe, not magical.

[lancer78]

17. Hartmann

Is the left wings version of rush or hannity. Cherry picks stuff to fit his agenda.

[LanternWaste]

21. What then, was the precise and relevant reason that in the immediate aftermath

What then, was the precise and relevant reason that in the immediate aftermath of the massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, the US House of Representatives Appropriations Committee quietly rejected an amendment that would have allowed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the underlying causes of gun violence.

[BlueCheese]

15. This isn't GD-P...

... but our two leading candidates have different histories on this issue.

[lancer78]

16. isnt it

More like 90 people a day? Including suicides makes it look like people are fluffing the numbers to push an agenda. I know a gun makes suicide easier, but in japan, where it is almost impossible to get a gun, the suicide rate is sky high.

[ileus]

19. It's not.