Possibly.
Yes, it is as it should be. The CDC is there to control diseases, not act a a political platform for the opinions of some of it’s members.
Except that the vast vast majority of people with mental health problems don’t shoot anyone.
It is as obvious as – as the most obvious thing you can possibly think of – that the major reason there is a huge chasm between US gun violence of every kind from toddlers shooting their siblings to White Loners ™, and the rest of the world, is the sheer number of guns. I remember recently reading that US citizens, with around 4% of the world’s population, own around 65% of the world’s guns. Why wouldn’t there be all kinds of problems, Sherlock?
Actually it’s goal is to “protect public health and safety through the control and prevention of disease, injury, and disability”.
Prohibiting, and barring the funding, of open-ended studies is making it a political platform. If there’s a way that thousands of americans are dying or being injured each year, then the CDC should study it.
And I know what you are going to say “Open-ended studies are fine, it’s advocating one side that’s the problem!” except the broad design of the amendment basically has stopped all studies, period. Plus of course congress has blocked funding time after time.
It is the CDCs own fault. If they hadnt done such a blatantly bogus study, with the result decided upon in advance and so very biased, they might have been able to do more. But they cant be trusted to do a legit scientific study.
If it is so obvious it should be trivial to demonstrate a linear relationship between gun ownership and deaths.
But it is also intellectually dishonest to ignore the reality that just as the vast vast majority of people with mental health problems don’t shoot anyone; that the vast vast majority of gun owners don’t shoot anyone.
Many of the challenges around mental health relate to discrimination, stigma and shame. If I could control government policy that would be one of the areas that I focused immediate attention. But in the US cultural biases limit much movement on that topic today.
As an example on how extreme the impact this is on say suicide rates consider the examples of transgender individuals suicide rate.
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](http://scholarworks.uni.edu/rcapitol/2017/all/9/)
Another Cite:
This also mirrors the gender differences in suicides,
Note how the rate differs so greatly and how “stable” women numbers are. Unless you can explain how women somehow have different levels with a similar amount of exposure the subject is not nearly as cut and dry as you claim.
The other issue that is important to consider is the impact of the war on drugs. Drug-related homicides account for as much as 50 percent depending on the year.
But that is another subject that seems to be off limits, but it does demonstrate that at least in the US, prohibition efforts typically don’t limit access but have huge negative effects. The same thing happened during Prohibition.
To argue that firearms are the primary reason murders and suicides is sophistry.