NRA Gun Safety Research Restrictions Prevent Violence Solutions, Scientists Tell Biden

[marmar]

By Peter Henderson


SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Research restrictions pushed by the National Rifle Association have stopped the United States from finding solutions to firearms violence, more than a hundred scientists from virtually every major U.S. university told Vice President Joe Biden's task force on gun violence in a letter on Thursday.

In the wake of the December school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, and other mass homicides, the group of economists, health researchers, educators, doctors and criminologists said funding should be restored to a range of study areas, from gun safety to tracking illegal guns.

President Barack Obama has asked Biden to head a task force to come up with gun policy proposals, and Biden was to meet with NRA representatives on Thursday. He said the task force will have recommendations ready for the president by Tuesday.

"While mortality rates from almost every major cause of death declined dramatically over the past half century, the homicide rate in America today is almost exactly the same as it was in 1950," the academics wrote in a letter organized by scholars at the University of Chicago Crime Lab research center. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/10/nra-gun-safety_n_2449591.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

[Fresh_Start]

1. GOP tactic at its finest

prevent information, science and the spread of knowledge.
Of course, gun nuts will deny the facts anyway....but the non-gun nuts should know the facts so that they can make up their minds based on information instead of propaganda.

You are 400% more likely to be killed or injured by gun violence if you carry a gun.
So much for being safer.
And supposedly the rate is even higher if you try to defend yourself rather than merely carry a gun.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17922-carrying-a-gun-increases-risk-of-getting-shot-and-killed.html

[bossy22]

2. don't disagree with firearm research funding

but that is misleading (the 1950's quote). The murder rate since 1950 increased more than 100% in the 1980s and has declined since then. Murder rates have not stayed stable and for the last 20 years have been decreasing