How the gun lobby shut down gun violence research

[Redfairen]

The Journal of the American Medical Association takes on the gun lobby and the members of Congress who do its bidding.


The nation might be in a better position to act if medical and public health researchers had continued to study these issues as diligently as some of us did between 1985 and 1997. But in 1996, pro-gun members of Congress mounted an all-out effort to eliminate the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Although they failed to defund the center, the House of Representatives removed $2.6 million from the CDC's budget—precisely the amount the agency had spent on firearm injury research the previous year. Funding was restored in joint conference committee, but the money was earmarked for traumatic brain injury. The effect was sharply reduced support for firearm injury research. [...]

When other agencies funded high-quality research, similar action was taken. In 2009, Branas et al published the results of a case-control study that examined whether carrying a gun increases or decreases the risk of firearm assault. In contrast to earlier research, this particular study was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Two years later, Congress extended the restrictive language it had previously applied to the CDC to all Department of Health and Human Services agencies, including the National Institutes of Health.

These are not the only efforts to keep important health information from the public and patients. For example, in 1997, Cummings et al used state-level data from Washington to study the association between purchase of a handgun and the subsequent risk of homicide or suicide. Similar studies could not be conducted today because Washington State's firearm registration files are no longer accessible.



When the gun lobby and the members of Congress bought off by it try to change the subject from the obscene availability of automatic and assault weapons to the state of our health system and how we need to focus on that, remember that they have systematically shut down the necessary research to do just that.


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/29/1173623/-How-the-gun-lobby-shut-down-gun-violence-nbsp-research

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. Multiple prior posts

[jimmy the one]

2. the john lott mary rosh olin winchester gun & ammo study

The Journal of the American Medical Association takes on the gun lobby and the members of Congress who do its bidding.

I think one dr david hemenway is part of this, a fine guncontrol advocate who publishes much good work & surely can't stand the nra as much as I don't.
Another point here, is that whenever JAMA or other medical study was done, nra would harp on them as if they were out of their league, as 'doctors don't know anything about firearms' - or - go to a doctor if you're ill go to a statistician if you want a study', specious reasoning forgetting mark twains scold, as well as just lambasting the source;, gun lobby would then put up gun guru charlatans like john lott & kopel & volokh to create & or fabricate 'gun studies'.

The nation might be in a better position to act if medical and public health researchers had continued to study these issues as diligently as some of us did between 1985 and 1997.

Quite. I proudly stand in the ranks of 'some of us' referred to above.

While charlatan gun guru john lott is on the mind, you might not know that his book 'more guns less crime' about how crime goes down when concealed carry laws are passed, packed full of john's manipulated progun statistics btw; well, turns out lott's study was funded by one olin foundation, a sister company of winchester ammunition. Glory be, john set out to find out for olin/winchester if carrying guns & ammo reduced crime & whattaya know, it didded! Course since Olin did not actually manufacture ammo or guns, just was winchester's pet company, gun lobby swore up & down that the study wasn't funded by winchester ammo, nor have any ties to the guns & ammo industry. Riiiiiight.
.. john lott then became creepy a decade or so later, created a pseudo screen name 'mary rosh', & went online onto amazon book website & promoted his own books! and himself! 'best professor I ever had was john lott' wrote jhn lott, er, mary rosh.
They found him out somehow, poor john ducked saying something like 'I shouldn't've done it', butcha did, trying to increase sales & profits, for john lott.

A great time for ---- MORE GUNS MORE LIES

[jimmy the one]

3. reinstate gunrights for mentally ill, says janus mouthed nra

Across the country, states are increasingly allowing people like Mr. French, who lost their firearm rights because of mental illness, to petition to have them restored.
A handful of states have had such restoration laws on their books for some time, but with little notice, more than 20 states have passed similar measures since 2008. This surge can be traced to a law passed by Congress after the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech that was actually meant to make it harder for people with mental illness to get guns.

As a condition of its support for the measure, the National Rifle Association extracted a concession: the inclusion of a mechanism for restoring firearms rights to those who lost them for mental health reasons.

The intent of these state laws is to enable people to regain the right to buy and possess firearms if it is determined that they are not a threat to public safety. But an examination of restoration procedures across the country, along with dozens of cases, shows that the process for making that determination is governed in many places by vague standards and few specific requirements.
States have mostly entrusted these decisions to judges, who are often ill-equipped to conduct investigations from the bench. Many seemed willing to simply give petitioners the benefit of the doubt. The results often seem haphazard.
At least a few hundred people with histories of mental health issues already get their gun rights back each year. The number promises to grow, since most of the new state laws are just beginning to take effect. And in November {2011}, Dept of Veterans Affairs responded to the federal legislation by establishing a rights restoration process for more than 100,000 veterans who have lost their gun privileges after being designated mentally incompetent by the agency.

The issue goes to the heart of the nation’s complicated relationship with guns, testing the delicate balance between the need to safeguard the public and the dictates of what the Supreme Court has proclaimed to be a fundamental constitutional right.

[link:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/us/03guns.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0|

The last sentence leads into a truer reason for this current gun lobby propaganda which blocks reasonable gun control legislation. The election of GWBush in 2000. For he appointed alito & roberts to the supreme court giving it enough votes to subvert the 2ndA into an individual right to arms. Had Gore been president, guncontrol would be years ahead of the dismal & ignored state it's in now, thanks to the nra.
Tho had Gore been president, a current assault rifle ban would not be under consideration, since the existing ban would have been renewed in 2004 when it expired.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/us/03guns.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. They fake the statistics, then demand a "reasonable conversation" about their dummied up data

Needless to say, the 'reasonableness" of an assertion will depend on how closely it sticks to their own dummied up data. They're fucking liars, and so are their gun nut flunkies.