Democrats Propose Millions for Gun Control Research
What does the CDC have to do with guns?
Do you like the idea of tax dollars being used for research to support gun control?
Two Democrats introduced legislation last week for that very purpose.
The NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action reported:
Legislation Proposes $60 Million for Anti-Gun Research
On Monday, NRA F-rated Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) introduced legislation to authorize the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to give $60 million of the taxpayers’ money to anti-gun activists over the next six years, to conduct “research” promoting gun control. The two longtime anti-gun legislators say that their bill is necessary for two reasons, both of which are hokum:
First, they say, Congress in 1996 “almost halted entirely” all funding of gun control research, the operative word being “almost.” In 1996, Congress did stop the CDC from funneling millions of the taxpayers’ dollars to anti-gunners to conduct “research”–pitiful by academic standards–designed from the get-go to promote a political agenda against a constitutionally-protected right.
However, it didn’t shut off the spigot through which millions of dollars flow to the same anti-gunners from leftwing philanthropic foundations. For example, the Joyce Foundation alone has given several million dollars to a variety of anti-gun groups and individuals every year since 1996.
Second, Markey and Maloney say, anti-gun research is necessary to stop the “gun violence . . . epidemic,” which Maloney implies is increasing. Words have meaning, however. An epidemic is a sudden and severe outbreak of an infectious disease throughout a community, and “gun violence” isn’t a disease, it’s not widespread, it doesn’t affect all segments of the population equally, and it’s been decreasing, not increasing.
The left has had little success with the issue of gun control. Using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looks like a backdoor attempt to advance their agenda, but it isn’t surprising.
In an interview with National Public Radio in April, our new surgeon general Vivek Murthy seemed to suggest that gun violence is a public health issue:
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy On Gun Control, Vaccines And Science
SIMON: Dr. Murthy, your confirmation was held up in Congress after you had tweeted – I believe this is a quote – “guns are a health care issue.” What did you mean by that, more gun control laws, what?
MURTHY: Here’s what I would say – and here’s what I meant when I wrote that tweet – violence of all kinds is a public health issue. When you have large numbers of people dying from preventable causes, that’s a health care issue. That’s a public health issue. That’s what I said. That’s, in fact, what C. Everett Koop said when he was Surgeon General, and that’s what the leading medical and nursing organizations have said for many years. I want to find a way that we can reduce violence in America. And I think you wouldn’t be hard-pressed to find parents or families of victims or health care practitioners who would disagree.
SIMON: Do I properly note any significance to the fact that you don’t seem to be calling for more gun control laws?
MURTHY: Well, what I’m calling for is for more common sense. We may see various issues around violence as highly politicized because of how they’re covered or how they’re spoken about in public settings. These problems that we face are not problems that one party or one sector can solve on their own. But it’s going to take real partnership and working together across the community that will help us address the great health care challenges that our country is facing.
Can you even imagine how the framers of the Constitution would react to this discussion?
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Comments
Vivek Murthy is a stinking, cowardly Collectivist liar.
Which is why he’s serving Barracula.
Why not propose insane laws that oppress Constitutional liberties? The GOP will be happy to help pass them.
“And I think you wouldn’t be hard-pressed to find parents or families of victims or health care practitioners who would disagree.” I don’t think this sentence means what you think it means, Dr. Murthy.
Speaking as a Healthcare Practitioner I would like to say that I completely disagree with this academic who has probably never treated a real patient in his life.
Car accidents are completely preventable. Simply ban travel by cars and no more deaths from car accidents. Since there are more car accidents than gun deaths why are we not addressing this crisis?
I have to wonder if Sen Markey and Rep Maloney do in fact realize they are prime examples of why we have a Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms… and that’s why they fight so hard to remove that right.
Massachusetts and New York – two states in the thrall of the morally and ethically challenged Democrat Party. ‘Nuff said.
Or you could figure out which population demographic committs the most crimes involving guns and then exert more control over whichever group that is.
Heretic.
Sounds like someone’s pining for the glory days when the CDC really got its money’s worth with Dr. Arthur Kellermann.
Kellermann, the “father” of modern “junk science” gun-control propaganda, published several studies in the New England Journal of Medicine. Ante-Kellermann, the NEJM was an ultra-serious medical journal, in the same league as the English Lancet (at least until Lancet published that hysterical paper claiming that the Iraq war had killed something between 0 and 100,000 Iraqi civilians). Kellermann would team up with otherwise obscure medical examiners, using data the MEs had accumulated over the years to pretend that he had some data showing the quantitative efficacy of gun control re public safety. He’d dress the numbers up with “control samples” which were mathematically meaningless—and certainly, there are millions of Americans with enough command of math to spot the deception, but that’s only a few million votes, not enough to make a reliable difference in a Republic which reveres universal suffrage.
But the “junk” was so blatant that even Congress could see it, and one year someone estimated just how much of its budget the CDC had wasted on Dr. Kellermann and his ilk. Congress then cut the CDCs budget by that amount. Through the usual byzantine Congressional shenanigans, the cut amount was later put back in, so the CDC didn’t suffer that year, but it did sit up and take notice; rather than run such a dire risk again, it stopped funding junkmeisters like Kellermann.
But Kellermann’s work was already done, and done well. In particular, he’s the source of the notorious factoid that a gun in the home in 15 times more likely to kill a family member than an intruder. Those who have looked up and read the paper will find that Kellermann did not actually say any such thing; but after being reinterpreted by breathless reporters and Violence Policy Center press releases, that’s how it lodged in the popular imagination. In fact, the “15x” fantasy was such a success that Kellermann exceeded it in his next paper, maltreating the data until it showed a magnificent 43x rather than a paltry 15x. And that grandiose 43x figure is now enshrined as Gun Control legend—again, even though the original paper actually says no such thing.
The lesson? In the propaganda wars, where bogus implanted memes rule, you really get a lot of bang for your buck with the CDC and Arthur Kellermann. Kellermann is still around, though if he’s actively generating propaganda, he’s keeping it all relatively low profile. But the CDC is still with us, and—one presumes—still ready and able, though perhaps not so willing, considering possible threats to its funding. And fear of threats to the funding seems to be what Markey and Maloney are hoping to alleviate.
D’oh! Decimal point trouble there; the Lancet estimate of Iraqi deaths was something between 0 and a million.
Hey, one fictional number vs. another, sometimes they’re hard to keep straight.
This is not an appropriate topic for the CDC in the first place and any thing that they come up with is suspect since they will give whatever result will get them the most funding.
Didn’t we play a similar game after Sandy Hook?
http://www.ammoland.com/2013/11/cdc-data-refutes-new-anti-gun-studys-claims/
“What does the CDC have to do with guns?”
Same thing it has to do with child safety seats,seat belts, drunk driving, crib deaths etc. Absolutely nothing, it’s Mission creep to justify ever increasing spending between epidemics.
Yep, because they have their core mission so completely under control, as evidenced by their response to the Ebola outbreak.
Plus, when they are bought, they reliably STAY bought.
I’m perfectly fine with the likes of Markey and Maloney taking my guns.
They need only to come and get them.
Don’t we need “Control of Democrats” laws way more???????
Like no more Democrat stolen elections, no more Democrat illegal aliens, no more Democrats…….
Snark, Snark, for the “Humor-Bereft Disease” stricken such as the CDC!
END “Humor-Bereft Disease” (HBD) Today!