Because banning is a political question. Studying impact, causes, correlation, association, etc seems like the purview of science. Saying so we should repeal the 2nd and ban guns is not the purview of science - that’s politics and should be outside the scope of the CDC.
Not a study - the head of the CDC saying they want to ban guns. It seems like that wouldn’t be sufficient for you, is that right? That’s sufficient for me - no need to examine each one to be picked apart. Maybe there’s a fair study there, maybe not. But when the head of the group that studies guns says that they should be banned then they lose the benefit of the doubt.
Bone, I’m sure you have a link to the head of the CDC saying they want to ban guns, and full context of that statement. Can you link please?
IBne, I agree with you. Let’s have the scientific study, and then have the debate whether the scientific conclusions can be extrapolated and debate the impact on how we view the 2nd. Do you agree? And if not the CDC, who have a decent track record, then what government or private agency should do the study(ies)?
The issue is that the NRA has actively lobbied, and to a layman’s eyes, succeeded in convincing Congress to effectively not have the studies (not ban studies per say but pull all funding and threaten no related funding, ipso facto same fucking thing). No studies, then no data, then it’s opinion, and nothing advances one way or the other.
*
CDC Leaders Admit They Want to Ban Guns
In the late ’80s and early ’90s, the CDC was openly biased in opposing gun rights. CDC official and research head Patrick O’Carroll stated in a 1989 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, “We’re going to systematically build a case that owning firearms causes deaths.” This sounds more like activist rhetoric than it does scientific research, as O’Carroll effectively set out with the goal of confirmation bias, saying “We will prove it,” and not the scientific objectiveness of asking “Does it?”
‘It used to be that smoking was a glamour symbol — cool, sexy, macho. Now it is dirty, deadly — and banned.’
O’Carroll went on to deny he had said this, claiming he was misquoted. However, his successor and director of the CDC National Center of Injury Prevention branch Mark Rosenberg told Rolling Stone in 1993 that he “envisions a long term campaign, similar to tobacco use and auto safety, to convince Americans that guns are, first and foremost, a public health menace.” He went on to tell the Washington Post in 1994 “We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes. It used to be that smoking was a glamour symbol — cool, sexy, macho. Now it is dirty, deadly — and banned.”,CDC leaders were not shy about their intentions of banning guns from the public. Sure enough, they acted on their desires. In October 1993, The New England Journal of Medicine released a study funded by the CDC to the tune of $1.7 million, entitled “Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home.” The leader author was Dr. Arthur Kellermann, an epidemiologist, physician, and outspoken advocate of gun control./I]
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/261307-why-congress-stopped-gun-control-activism-at-the-cdc
Do note the CDC is not banned from research on shootings, only that federal funding could not be used to “advocate or promote gun control”.
I first wanted to see if it would be sufficient. There’s more but you get the idea from DrDeth’s post above.
I don’t know who would be trustworthy to study the issue today - it’s polarizing enough that it may be difficult to do so. It’s not the CDC though - they’ve forfeited that position. And even if they were to do reaseach, the idea that gun “violence” can be treated like a disease is wrong headed. The first problem is grouping suicide and homicide. The second is thinking that homicide can be treated like a disease. Suicide perhaps can be treated this way to the extent it’s a product of mental illness.
First off, your assertion is simply false. There are not more accidents or deaths by guns compared to cars, no matter how you manipulate the data. Extremely biased stories were “reported” by some “news” sources, but were quickly corrected by other sources.
Second, the number of accidental injuries and deaths is miniscule with guns compared to vehicles. Most gun deaths are suicides. As sad as some of these are, others are probably justifiable end-of-life decisions, but in any case, it is misleading to include them in honest data. And then you have justifiable homicides by police and people defending themselves. There are, of course, accidents and murders, but these represent a small fraction of the total.
But, in the end, the “health” data is irrelevant. By both natural and constitutional rights, people have the right to defend themselves. Gun control laws. in general, and “gun-free” killing zones, in particular, are immoral and reprehensible overreach by the government.
I’d like to read the full article for clarity. It’s not available for free from the Journal of American Medical Association. The only article I can find from that date is Epidemiologists Aim at New Target: Health Risk of Handgun Proliferation. Any of you have a link to the full article?
Second, based on the Congress blog and the Federalist appear to me to be a lot of extrapolation.
For example, from the federalist, In October 1993, The New England Journal of Medicine released a study funded by the CDC to the tune of $1.7 million, entitled “Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home.” In the study, Kellerman concluded that people who kept guns in their homes were 2.7 times more likely to be homicide victims as people who don’t.
It appears to be a CDC funded study, but no details around that. And Kellerman’s conclusion appears to be his conclusion, rather than that of the CDC.
I’m seeing cherry picked examples that ***might ***be smoking guns, but IMHO that case has not be made well. Good enough for believers but not a good enough case that one would expect in a court of law or to persuade skeptics.
And, assuming the case that the CDC was biased in 1989 and 1993 (and I don’t think a good case has been made), but for the sake of argument, assuming the case was made, that was over 20 years ago. The CDC is a different place, different people running the place, and Congress did make it’s point via funding that the CDC should not make political conclusions. Shesh, if they were criminals they would have done the time and finished parole years ago. All that said, it would still be good for the CDC to be funded for some firearm studies, open up the data, the models, the assumptions, and based on the results, then we can have the public debate. This is far more healthy than the current situation of anecdotal data on all sides combined with WAG’s. Generally speaking, The US does have an order of magnitude greater firearm deaths (both suicide ***and ***violence) than any comparable first world nation.
And if not the CDC, then who? I’m not wedded to the CDC, although I think they are a decent choice. IMHO, this is over zealous firearm enthusiasts who believe there is a risk that real studies might actually find a smoking gun counter to the “good guy with a gun” argument. I get it, the NRA has zero upside to have any kind of credible study take place, and it’s the same slippery slope that there can be zero new firearm restrictions.
Methinks the anecdotal evidence, and compared with other first world countries, is that firearms are a problem. I uam nabashedly for doing the research, and I ***hope ***that the research supports my thesis that firearms are a problem. That doesn’t make the research biased. It simply is proving ***or ***disproving a thesis statement.
Forget the specific study. It’s not about one study - it’s about the leadership of the org exhibiting a clear bias. Try this article. I’m sure folkd can find it objectionable in some way but there is a tend that is displayed. It may be a person’s own bias that leads to various interpretation, but in any event, this is a decent case for the exhibition of bias. People on my side will ***never ***accept the CDC to study guns.
I’m sure there are circumstances when a “good guy with a gun” has saved the day. There are also circumstances in which someone who thought they were a “good guy with a gun” turned out to be a complete idiot with a gun.
Were gun carrying to become even more common and widespread, I’m very skeptical that we’d get more responsible and steady gun carriers than idiots, drunks, irresponsible people, jumpy people, and other folks who we probably would prefer not carry around a gun with them all day.
As far as the CDC, they have an amazing track record with improving public safety (including things like traffic safety). Even if some CDC researchers at some point were shown to be biased (and I’m far from certain this is the case), banning them from doing research on gun violence seems like overkill, and also seems like an extreme overreaction based on fear that they might actually find that some gun control measures might work.
We already know that at least some gun control measures work – fully automatic weapons are actually hard to acquire, and not very widespread. The Orlando guy didn’t have a machine gun. That’s thanks to gun control.
Not that I’m certain that every gun control measure would be effective (or even possible), but I think it’s reasonable to talk about things like magazine size restrictions, and it’s not reasonable to call advocates (or people who just want to talk about it) gun grabbers or the like.
They arent banned from doing research on *gun violence. *
Here’s what is banned: "None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”
Magazine size restrictions are reasonable as long as they are limited to buying/selling/manufacturing and not possession.
Bone, I read all three pages (which includes taking a short survey before being able to access page 2.)
With all due respect:
- It is full of “he said, she said” anecdotes with no real citations
- covers events in the 1980’s and early 1990’s
- Studies funded by the CDC are cited as proof made the conclusions. This is not proven. A critical question to ask is who owns the data from a CDC financed study, are the researchers able to make and publicize their own findings? There may be a convincing case to be made that the CDC is 100% responsible and the findings are those of the CDC, but in all the pro gun articles I’ve read including this one it is laid out as a judgement rather than proving a case.
- The Kellerman study funded by $1.7M in CDC money, concluded that people who kept guns in their homes were 2.7 times more likely to be homicide victims as people who don’t.
Your link criticizes this for
- “Kellermann used epidemiological methods in an attempt to investigate an issue dealing with criminology.” Without stating *why *epidemiological method is not a valid way to view firearm deaths or accidents. Maybe it is maybe it isn’t, but no case was made for why it isn’t.
- “Furthermore, the gun victims he studied were anomalies. They were selected from homicide victims living in metropolitan areas with high gun-crime statistics, which completely discounted the statistical goliath of areas where gun owners engage in little to no crime.” Again, this criticism is meaningless without highlighting what the scope of the study was. For the CDC funding, there had to be a scope. $1.7M certainly wouldn’t fund a full study across the US of all demographics. My WAG is that the study defined to focus on metropolitan areas with high gun crime stats. I don’t know this but sure seems logical.
Sorry, it posted halfway thru writing it. Here is the full monty:
Bone, I read all three pages (which includes taking a short survey before being able to access page 2.)
With all due respect:
- It is full of “he said, she said” anecdotes with no real citations
- covers events in the 1980’s and early 1990’s and nothing in the past 20+ years
- Studies funded by the CDC are cited as proof made the conclusions. This is not proven. A critical question to ask is who owns the data from a CDC financed study, are the researchers able to make and publicize their own findings? There may be a convincing case to be made that the CDC is 100% responsible and the findings are those of the CDC, but in all the pro gun articles I’ve read including this one it is laid out as a judgement rather than proving a case.
- The Kellerman study funded by $1.7M in CDC money, concluded that people who kept guns in their homes were 2.7 times more likely to be homicide victims as people who don’t.
Your link criticizes this for
- “Kellermann used epidemiological methods in an attempt to investigate an issue dealing with criminology.” China Guy: Without stating *why *epidemiological method is not a valid way to view firearm deaths or accidents. Maybe it is maybe it isn’t, but no case was made for why it isn’t.
- “Furthermore, the gun victims he studied were anomalies. They were selected from homicide victims living in metropolitan areas with high gun-crime statistics, which completely discounted the statistical goliath of areas where gun owners engage in little to no crime.”
China Guy: Again, this criticism is meaningless without highlighting what the scope of the study was. For the CDC funding, there had to be a scope. $1.7M certainly wouldn’t fund a full study across the US of all demographics. My WAG is that the study defined to focus on metropolitan areas with high gun crime stats. I don’t know this but sure seems logical, and not a reason to invalidate the study - Kellermann refuses to provide the full data for any of his studies so that scholars can evaluate his findings.
China Guy: This is a valid criticism if it is true. No cites that this ascertain is true (but it very well could be). Any study that will be used to influence public policy on such an important topic needs to be scientifically valid, and data open to outside analysis.
- Article cites “Gary Kleck’s encyclopedic Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America (1991) is universally recognized as the starting point for further research. Kleck, a professor of criminology at Florida State University, was initially a strong believer that gun ownership increased the incidence of homicide, but his research made him a skeptic. His book assembles strong evidence against the notion that reducing gun ownership is a good way to reduce violence. That may be why Point Blank is never cited in the CDC’s own firearm publications or in articles reporting the results of CDC-funded gun studies.”
China Guy: It may also be that Gary Kleck’s work suffers from lack of scientific rigor. In fact, the wiki page has this "David Hemenway at the Harvard School of Public Health Injury Control Research Center, said that Kleck’s estimates are difficult to reconcile with comparable crime statistics, are subject to a high degree of sampling error, and that “because of differences in coverage and potential response errors, what exactly these surveys measure remains uncertain; mere repetition does not eliminate bias.”
Are the above 5 points a reasonable critique? Some or all of those 5 may be valid but I don’t see where the case was made beyond unsubstantiated ascertations.
I’m not going to go on through the rest of it. I’m a skeptic, and the article preaches to the converted rather than trying to convert skeptics with actual facts. I find this a lot in the cites that get thrown up. And I don’t think looking at an article like this critically is being a jerk, it’s just being one of the teemings.
Ditto for the cite for the CDC saying they want to ban guns. I’m sorry, I don’t want the NRA giving the cliff notes version. I want to read the full article and the context, and make up my own mind. Especially since the person quoted said it was taken out of context. Again, maybe it was fully in context and maybe it wasn’t, but I reserve the right the read the whole damn thing and make up my mind instead sucking at the teat of propaganda. The NRA in fact may be correct, and cause me to change my views based on evidence. So far, I just see a shotgun approached of peppering with claims and factoids rather than a step by step takedown. I’m a cynical dude, since I don’t see the Straight Dope take down by the NRA, I am suspicious that they can’t make a case that stands up the broad light of day. If you’ve got a cite, I would love to read the full thing and we could even pick that one apart as a separate debate and see what comes out at the end. Gotta cite?
I’ve read the study - have you? Like I suspected - you’ll have w various reasons to doubt but it doesn’t matter really. Unless you can change congress the issue is dead and my side won. The reason article is just one piece but it does summarize multiple issues. The Kellerman study is just one of them. The head of the CDC that would conduct studies stated he wanted to ban guns. QED enough for me.
I read the links you gave me.
Again, for the head of the CDC stating they wanted to ban guns. Well, still waiting on the full article instead of what could very easily be an out of context cut and paste. We never seem to get beyond broad claims that never seem to have baking evidence.
Yep, your side won the battle to geld the CDC on gun studies. No offense, hope you lose subsequent rounds so we can actually get to some credible studies and see what the evidence actually is.
Here’s one of the quotes from the Reason article:
Some of the links in that article are dead since they are quite old. Here is the Rolling Stone article that it mentions:
Of course, that 43 times number is shit and was overshadowed by the 2.7 times figure that you referenced a short time later (which is also suspect).
Here is the Washington Postarticle that is mentioned by Reason:
There are many criticisms of Kellerman’s study. One of them was the group he focused on. He selected 3 high crime metro areas and based on the rest of the work that was also questionable, attempted to apply the findings to areas that did not fit the same demographic. It would be like me examining Chicago, Compton, and Detroit and then using the findings to conclude on places like, Sunnyvale, Belmont, or Charleston. I’m not super interested in rehashing the entire Kellerman study, but if there are specific items I may respond.
My main point was that Rosenberg expressed political opinions that should be outside the scope of the CDC. That, along with the other bad science that was practices, was why they were prohibited from advocacy. They could continue to do research. They were banned from advocating. Do you think they should be able to do advocacy?
How is it very very wrong?
In most states, the decline in crime happened BEFORE the introduction of concealed carry. For example, in Washington, D.C., homicides declined from 474 in 1990 to 104 in 2013, the year before the district’s total ban on carrying handguns in public was ruled unconstitutional.
My own state of Kansas had 170 murders in two different years in the mid 1990s, but had declined to 101 murders in 2005, the year before we introduced concealed carry (there were 91 in 2014). In neighboring Missouri, the rate of violent crime peaked at 763 per 100,000 people in 1991; by 2007 (when Missouri introduced concealed carry), it had declined to 504.9, and as of 2014 stands at 442. In Nebraska, the rate of violent crime peaked in 1998, at 451.4 / 100,000; in 2006, it had declined to 281.8. Nebraska legalized concealed carry on Jan. 1, 2007, and since then their rate of violent crime has been essentially flat, being 280.4 in 2014.
In fact, I haven’t located ANY examples of states where the crime rate was not already dropped precipitously before the introduction of concealed carry, although I’m sure some exist. Would you or MEBuckner care to identify them?
I’m also puzzled by repeated emphasis on low levels of crime among concealed-carry holders. Demographically, most concealed-carry licenses have been issued to white males aged 45 and up; that’s not a high-crime demographic in the first place, so certainly SHOULD have lower levels of crime than the general population. I would very much like to see some statistics on crime levels among licensees versus non-licensees of similar demographics, but I know of nobody compiling any.
Because spamforbrains claimed the rate would rise and has risen.
Do you have a cite for the demographic of CCW holders?
Apologies - I had missed your post #92 when I posted #93 from my phone and didn’t scroll back up to see it. I responded in post #95 to the latter question you posed. I’ll look at the rest in more detail later.
Again, I’d like to see the source Rosenburg article and then we can debate what it actually says instead of trying to debate different takes on cherry picked excerpts. As pointed out up thread, I’ve looked and it’s not obviously available for free on line.
CDC got this funding cut 100% so effectively they can’t do research, making the point moot. Second, it’s unclear for the few examples if the CDC was doing the advocacy or if it was the funded studies done by non CDC folks like Kellerman.
You’re going to have to define advocacy. And I don’t mean to be snarky. CDC sees the level of gun violence in the US versus any other first world country, and comes to the premise that the levels of individual gun ownership in the US is part of the cause. Then they set about proving or disproving that premise. So far, can we agree this is not advocacy?
The CDC then releases the data and methodology of studies done along with the findings. Can we agree that this is not advocacy?
If the CDC findings have strong scientific correlation borne out in a statistically relevant manner, and the CDC recommends some actions to congress based on that data. Is this advocacy or is it addressing a health risk?
If you take the example of smoking or seat belts, clearly smoking and not wearing seat belts was a health risk. Was the recommendation to restrict smoking, publicize the health risks, etc advocacy or addressing a health risk? Was the recommendation to make everyone buckle up advocacy or addressing a health risk?
If Kellerman, in fact, does not release his data, that is a huge black mark. Data has to stand on it’s own. Now, I haven’t dug into Kellerman’s study and don’t plan to, but several of the Kellerman criticisms such as “using epidemiological methods in an attempt to investigate an issue dealing with criminology” is opinion that hasn’t been substantiated.
Again, I find it frustrating dealing with the NRA positions because they never seem to be substantiated. Start to peel back the onion, and they toss out 3 more onions.
I linked directly to the Rolling Stone and the Washington Post articles in full. in post #95. That’s the source - was there more you were expecting?