Would murder and/or death rates rise, or lower, if the 2nd Amendment was abolished?

[HurricaneDitka]

@Mijin

In context that doesn’t make sense.

We were talking about the Dickey Amendment, and how that had basically shut down gun research by the CDC. You disagreed, saying all it does is prevent advocating a particular position. How can you now agree that yes, it has shut down research?

The original post I responded to was this:

@Sjoe

Sounds like some nationwide gun research is needed, OOPS, for some reason is it not allowed . . .

Your post, that you asked if I had seen, was this (I believe):

@Mijin

Yeah, it turns out that the somewhat subjective nature of that rule (if the data shows a correlation between gun ownership and something we both agree is a bad outcome, is that advocating gun control?), coupled with the funding cuts that came in at the same time, have basically killed research in this area. …

I see some important distinctions between Sjoe’s claim (“not allowed”) and your more carefully-qualified claim (“subjective nature”, “coupled with”, and “basically”). In short, I’m not interested in contesting the claim that (please forgive if you feel this is mis-stating your position) the Dickey Amendment and other factors have combined to have a chilling effect on gun research, but I do protest the claim that it is flat-out “not allowed”. That may seem like hair-splitting to you, but it seems like a worthwhile distinction to make to me.

Also please note that “not interested in contesting” does not necessarily mean I am convinced by a claim or that I agree with it. It might, probably often does in fact, mean simply that I don’t want to take the time to try to argue against a position, either because I think supportive cites will be difficult or time-consuming to track down, or I simply lack the time or interest to do it properly.

@Mijin

Do you recall any of the salient points?

I found it:

@DrDeth

Yes, and the guy buying the gun also.

Why Can't the U.S. Treat Guns as a Public-Health Problem? - The Atlantic like that of Mark Rosenberg, then the director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. In response to the early ’90s crime wave, Rosenberg had said 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.”…

that is only one of several.
*We’re going to systematically build a case that owning firearms causes deaths. We’re doing the most we can do, given the political realities.” (P.W. O’Carroll, Acting Section Head of Division of Injury Control, CDC, *http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/261307-why-congress-stopped-gun-control-activism-at-the-cdc

Yes, and so why doesnt it run gun studies? Maybe because the few CDC studies were biased and based on bad science.

@Mijin

So in summary, you don’t want research on this topic.
$100,000 a year, for an agency this big, in a country the size of the US, on a topic this far-reaching is as close to zero as it’s practically possible to be. It’s basically hiring a guy to periodically tell the press “Yeah, we got nothin’”.

My question went unanswered. Do you know if Congress has specified that they cannot spend additional funds on gun research, or is it just that the CDC has decided it has different priorities? I’d be just fine with the CDC pulling funds from whatever else they’re spending their 6 or 7 billion dollar budget on to study this, as long as they comply with Congress’ mandate(s).

@Mijin

You’re fine with us flying blind, and working from ignorance on this issue, because at least that way you won’t hear something that challenges your view.

I don’t think this is even remotely representative of my position. It’s got nothing at all to do with me not hearing something that challenges my view. To restate the obvious, I’m a conservative and a regular poster on the SDMB. I hear things that challenge my views most days. This is the just about the lamest possible charge that could be leveled against me.