Kyle Wintersteen:
In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, President Obama issued a list of Executive Orders. Notably among them, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was given $10 million to research gun violence.
“Year after year, those who oppose even modest gun-safety measures have threatened to defund scientific or medical research into the causes of gun violence, I will direct the Centers for Disease Control to go ahead and study the best ways to reduce it,” Obama said on Jan. 16.
As a result, a 1996 Congressional ban on research by the CDC “to advocate or promote gun control” was lifted. Finally, anti-gun proponents—and presumably the Obama Administration—thought gun owners and the NRA would be met with irrefutable scientific evidence to support why guns make Americans less safe.
Mainstream media outlets praised the order to lift the ban and lambasted the NRA and Congress for having put it in place.
It was the “Executive Order the NRA Should Fear the Most,” according to The Atlantic.
The CDC ban on gun research “caused lasting damage,” reported ABC News.
Salon said the ban was part of the NRA’s “war on gun science.”
And CBS News lamented that the NRA “stymied” CDC research.
Most mainstream journalists argued the NRA’s opposition to CDC gun research demonstrated its fear of being contradicted by science; few—if any—cited why the NRA may have had legitimate concerns. The culture of the CDC at the time could hardly be described as lacking bias on firearms.
“We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes,” Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who oversaw CDC gun research, told The Washington Post in 1994. “Now [smoking] is dirty, deadly and banned.”
Does Rosenberg sound like a man who should be trusted to conduct taxpayer-funded studies on guns?
Rosenberg’s statement coincided with a CDC study by Arthur Kellermann and Donald Reay, who argued guns in the home are 43 times more likely to be used to kill a family member than an intruder. The study had serious flaws; namely, it skewed the ratio by failing to consider defensive uses of firearms in which the intruder wasn’t killed. It has since been refuted by several studies, including one by Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, indicating Americans use guns for self-defense 2.5 million times annually. However, the damage had been done—the “43 times” myth is perhaps gun-control advocates’ most commonly cited argument, and a lot of people still believe it to this day.
So, the NRA and Congress took action. But with the ban lifted, what does the CDC’s first major gun research in 17 years reveal? Not exactly what Obama and anti-gun advocates expected. In fact, you might say Obama’s plan backfired.
Here are some key findings from the CDC report, “Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence,” released in June:
The only ones who are surprised by this info are the liberals. The rest of use knew this already.
Once again, Obama violates the law by ‘executive ordering’ something specifically banned by congress.
While I’m only on page 37, it’s an iteresting read. Once you start to get into the meat of it. Of course the Marxists will never admit they’re wrong. Which is pretty much always.
Ok, what I got out of this whole things is, the gangstas are prone to gun violence, Kids tend to shoot themselves or others, people that want to commit suicide take the easy way out. The number of self-defense shootings is hard to quatify but seem to have a positive impact on crime reduction. There are a whole bunch of guns in the USA and in proportion darn little violence. Most homicides us a hand gun. The EVIL Black Rifle is a statistical blip.
I’m sure that those much smarter than I will gleen more from it. But it’s simply stating what we already know. Guns ain’t the problem.
Usually it’s a person that kills someone, not a gun.