Studying gun violence is the only way to figure out how to stop it – but we don’t

[deathrind]

1. We should be...

Studying gun violence but that would put real numbers to its impact on society which is something the NRA does not want. If we truly knew the entire scope of how much gun violence costs and impacts society we would have to act to reduce it the way we have done with many other aspects of society from transportation, food, weather, healthcare etc...

"Because the CDC funded the research, the NRA pushed Congress, in a 1996 omnibus bill, to state:

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.
The CDC broadly interpreted this as a bar on firearms research, with other federal funders following suit. This has had a chilling effect on gun research.

Ironically, the author of the amendment that cast this pall on firearm research, Congressman Jay Dickey, has since recanted, noting correctly in 2012 that “We won’t know the cause of gun violence until we look for it.”

Another excellent article linked from this one.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/six-snowballs-thrown-in-the-gun-control-debate-gopnik