I think its a bad law but they’re not prohibited from collecting data. They are prohibited from promoting gun control. You’ve been lied to.
There is nothing to prevent them from collecting data on who gets shot to death and by who (when we know).
Virtually EVERY study on defensive gun use has concluded that there are a shitload of them. And yet this is not reliable because GUNS!!! These studies are considered reliable in virtually every other area of social science but not here because GUNS!!!
But for the sake of argument, how many do YOU think there are?
The lack of CDC activity in the area isn’t because they are prohibited.
They are prohibited from advocating or promoting gun control.
There is NOTHING to prevent them from collecting data. In fact they have been doing so all along.
I know people at the CDC who were around at the time and they are frankly embarrassed by the series of events that led up to the prohibition. The injection of personal policy preferences by CDC leadership in how they approached gun policy and how it manifested itself in research produced or supported by the CDC was inappropriate extension of personal preferences of CDC leadership.
Other than being wrong - the CDC is not prohibited from collecting data - did you know the CDC actually does collect data in this area? Shocking I’m sure. Start here. About half way down the page you can click the radio button for “firearms” and look at fatal injuries. If you back up from that page, you can find data on non-fatal injuries, intentional, non intentional, etc.
I agree that it’s inappropriate to insert personal policy preferences into such non-partisan policy recommendations, but the restriction by law on promoting gun control means that the CDC is effectively barred from making recommendations with any connection to regulation of firearms, even if the recommendation is based on sound research and not personal preferences. For example – if a safety feature on guns was found based on solid data to greatly reduce the likelihood of accidental shooting deaths (similar to how seatbelt usage results in fewer traffic deaths), then if I understand it correctly, the CDC could not recommend that such a safety feature be mandated. Considering all the good that the CDC has done beyond just “disease” – (motor vehicles safety comes most notably to mind) – this would seem to me to be well within the CDC’s purview.
Virtually EVERY study of alien abductions has concluded there are a shit ton of people getting abducted and anally probed. So what. I could sit here with a gun on my lap every night and claim I’ve successfully defended myself against all sorts of imagined horrors every single night of the year. Weird knock on the door? Hey, nothing happened so I defended myself with my gun! Weird noise in the backyard? Hey, I defended myself! Gun in my pocket? Hey, I didn’t get mugged today! Successful gun defense!
Funny, but I’ve had all those things happen (except the alien abduction, darn it) and I don’t own a gun so guess what? Successful non-gun defense! Yay me!
Not a single thing you wrote changes the point of the citation. A lack of direct legislative prohibition by Congress doesn’t mean that other roadblocks have not effectively been placed in the way of the CDC even doing the sort of research into gun violence that is, as iiandyiiii notes, well within their purview and their mandate.
A man saw his jeep being stolen, and rushed out of his house and fired several shots at it as the thieves drove away. He knew he hit it, because he saw the back window shatter. Teach those fuckers to steal my car.
What he apparently did not see was that there were other houses on his street. One of his bullets went through the window of a house on the next block, hitting a 61-year-old woman in the head and killing her.
No word on the car thieves, but at least the car was found.
Man pulls a gun on teenagers he thought damaged his Trump sign. Police say there is no evidence they damaged the sign. The man has been charged with seven felonies.
I agree that gagging the CDC in ANY way is counterproductive. The series of events that led to the prohibition was already so embarrassing enough for the CDC that the problem was unwinding itself without the need for legislation. I think, left alone, the bias at the CDC would have done more damage to the gun control side of the debate (and the CDC) than the legislation did.
The CDC can publish data related to the efficacy of a safety feature.
How many of those studies are conducted by the Department of Justice?
How many of those studies are published in peer reviewed scientific journals?
Are you under the impression that every study is like the Kleck/Gertz study?
And THAT is why the gun control side is losing the debate. They tilt at caricatures while the gun rights side is generally more serious and well informed
Umm… to defend himself against armed robbers like your precious son? Incredibly unsporting of him, I know. Why, it’s getting so you can’t just do a little stickup for some quick money anymore…
Someone accidentally fires a gun in the restroom of a Home Depot near St. Louis. From the Post Dispatch:
So a guy drops his gun in the restroom, it goes off (I keep hearing here on the SDMB that guns don’t just go off when you drop them, but here we are again), he hits some other poor schmoe just trying to use the john, and then he takes off.
I have no doubt that a gun was carelessly mishandled in this instance. I have serious doubts that it was dropped and went off is an accurate account of what happened. What you keep hearing here about guns not going off when dropped is true. Modern weapons are designed not to fire when dropped. It is possible that the gun was 50-ish or more years old made before Gun Control Act of 1968 made drop-safety tests mandatory for gun manufacturers. Also note that the victim was shot in the leg. Unlikely for a dropped shot which will be going up rather than sideways.
So more likely some idiot managed to squeeze the trigger and then fled the scene rather than sticking around to explain what happened.