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Health See other Health Articles Title: Stealth Agencies for Gun Control An October 19, 2009 article in the Washington Times examined federal health agencies that have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to study gun "safety." According to the article, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is currently financing research “to investigate whether having many liquor stores in a neighborhood puts people at greater risk of getting shot." The Times reports: The NIH, which administers more than $30 billion in taxpayer funds for medical research, defended the grants. "Gun related violence is a public health problem - it diverts considerable health care resources away from other problems and, therefore, is of interest to NIH," Don Ralbovsky, NIH spokesman, wrote in an e-mail responding to questions about the grants. Certainly, more liquor stores are operated in neighborhoods where residents are poor because they are consumers who tend to generate brisk business for the liquor industry — especially liquor convenience stores, since they desire easy access to cheap liquor and beer. These liquor stores are also magnets for armed robberies. So the NIH will attempt to discover whether or not more crimes are committed in these low-income neighborhoods that play host to liquor stores. The American Journal of Public Health, in its November 2009 issue, will publish the results of a completed study, also funded by the NIH, which attempted to determine whether gun possession safeguards against harm or promotes a false sense of security. The media reports of the results of that study were predictable — people with a gun were 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those who were not in possession of a gun, and therefore, carrying a gun really doesn’t offer protection at all. After looking at the details of how the study was conducted, it is important to recall that correlation does not imply causation. Moreover, the correlation-and-effect approach to scientific inquiry is often used to yield biased results that politicize critical issues. The author of the study, Charles C. Branas, PhD, Associate Professor of Epidemiology, was quoted as saying: Learning how to live healthy lives alongside guns will require more studies such as this one. This study should be the beginning of a better investment in gun injury research through various government and private agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control, which in the past have not been legally permitted to fund research 'designed to affect the passage of specific Federal, State, or local legislation intended to restrict or control the purchase or use of firearms.' Champions of the anti-gun movement, along with the anti-gun biased media, often use study results to plant fear and doubt among the uninformed masses on this particularly tempestuous issue. Notice the reference to more research being needed, with specific mention of a government — not private — agency. Yet Eugene Volokh, a prominent UCLA law professor and popular writer, promptly dissected the ScienceDaily.com headline, which had been repeated throughout the media. In an October 5, 2009 post at the Volokh Conspiracy, Volokh notes the correlation/causation problem, and he also points out that the study left a wide range of factors uncontrolled. Additionally, he notes “the research model works only to the extent that you actually know who possesses guns and who doesn’t,” and he goes on to show how this could not be known in all cases utilized in the study. In terms of trying to determine whether gun possession leads to protection or peril, the study doesn’t clearly support either theory, but as Volokh observes, “yet it is publicized, and it’s reported, as if it did robustly show the causal relationship.” Certainly, the media has the ability to serve up foreboding headlines and hand-picked quotes that serve the larger agenda of influencing public opinion on the gun question. I sent an inquiry to the NIH to verify the Washington Times story, and I received a quick and helpful reply. Here is an interesting (but canned) snippet from the NIH response that aims to deflect the distrustful sentiment expressed in the article: If few people are studying gun ownership within the social sphere as it relates to the probability of being injured or killed by a firearm, then perhaps this researcher believed that collecting that data was needed. To that end, perhaps his forthcoming results could be instructive for those wishing to craft new guidance or safety lessons to keep others from being harmed or killed through firearm violence. I would highly doubt that the results could be manipulated to infringe on ownership as the Washington Times suggests. More likely, it would appear that with as much violence that occurs involving firearms, perhaps there is more we need to know about the circumstances surrounding gun safety overall, hopefully curbing the number of deaths and injury cases that are seen in emergency rooms nationwide. Furthermore, I did verify the existence of the current study, and it is titled “Alcohol, Firearms, and Adolescent Gunshot Injury Risk.” Accordingly, is a government health agency running a stealth program to sway public opinion on guns? Studies such as this, that pose the question of whether or not gun ownership is advantageous for saving lives, are an unmistakable attempt to curry favor for gun control and change social attitudes toward guns and gun ownership in general. Go back in time to the late 1990s, when this issue was hotly debated in the media. The CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) spent $2.6 million in 1995 studying injuries related to firearms under the cloak of carrying out research in the interest of "public safety" because of the "public health" concerns that resulted from gun violence. So then, gun issues become medical issues, and U.S. health agencies can then obtain grants to conduct research and roll out their political agendas, ostensibly in the interest of public health. This allows well-funded government organizations to attack the gun issue through the use of public health mechanisms that include high-level agencies, reputable medical professionals, and public health officials who are so-called “experts.” In essence, the CDC has used tax monies to pay researchers to support its politicized, anti-gun agenda and disguise it as scientific research that is printed in journals that support the anti-gun/gun control agenda, such as The New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association. Physician and neurosurgeon Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D. stated, in a 1999 speech, that The New England Journal of Medicine is “one of the most anti-gun, health advocacy publications in medical journalism that routinely practices hermetically tight censorship, excluding articles dissenting with its well-known, strident and inflexible position of gun control advocacy.” Dr Faria also unveiled a CDC official, Dr. Patrick O’Carroll, who was quoted in the February 3, 1989, Journal of the American Medical Association, as saying: Bringing about gun control, which itself covers a variety of activities from registration to confiscation, was not the specific reason for the [NCIPC's] creation. However, the facts themselves tend to make some form of [firearms] regulation seem desirable. The way we're going to do this is to systematically build a case that owning firearms causes death. This excellent article from an April 1997 issue of Reason magazine, "Public Health Pot Shots: How the CDC Succumbed to the Gun "Epidemic," is one of the best sources of information on the government's politicization of the gun issue during this period. From the article: In a 1991 letter to CDC critic Dr. David Stolinsky, the NCIPC's Mark Rosenberg said "our scientific understanding of the role that firearms play in violent events is rudimentary." He added in a subsequent letter, "There is a strong need for further scientific investigations of the relationships among firearms ownership, firearms regulations and the risk of firearm-related injury. This is an area that has not been given adequate scrutiny. Hopefully, by addressing these important and appropriate scientific issues we will eventually arrive at conclusions which support effective, preventive actions." Yet four years earlier, in a 1987 CDC report, Rosenberg thought the area adequately scrutinized, and his understanding sufficient, to urge confiscation of all firearms from "the general population," claiming "8,600 homicides and 5,370 suicides could be avoided" each year. In 1993 Rolling Stone reported that Rosenberg "envisions a long term campaign, similar to [those concerning] tobacco use and auto safety, to convince Americans that guns are, first and foremost, a public health menace." In 1994 he told The Washington Post, "We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes. Now it [sic] is dirty, deadly, and banned." Still, the CDC has not been able to make its research work in favor of its agenda. Its own studies have not been able to link gun control laws to the reduction of crime. Nevertheless, any time the government studies "gun safety," you know that in spite of the fact that all the research in the world will not support its end goal of affirming the necessity of disarmament, the aim is to produce enough information and “expert” opinions to influence the public against gun ownership and persuade them to internalize the emotional aspect of the issue, thereby leading people to despise guns, distrust gun owners, and desire more government intervention to make gun ownership more difficult. The anti-gun movement is built on pure emotion — hating guns and being afraid of guns — so crafting a false perception among the masses through fear mongering and emotional coercion is much more crucial, and uncomplicated, than presenting a clear-cut, scientific case through the use of bona fide research studies. For the most part, the establishment of gun safety as a public health issue is a very purposeful strategy aimed at avoiding the political reality of individual liberty and the right to defend oneself. Thus gun ownership can be viewed as a “problem” that is looked at in a collective sense, by determining the costs and benefits to the public at large, as if these considerations can possibly trump an individual’s natural right to bear arms and defend his own life. Karen DeCoster, CPA, has a Masters degree in economics and is an accounting and financial professional in Detroit. She writes for various websites and organizations, including LewRockwell.com, Taki's Magazine, and Mises.org. She is a Special Advisor on Economics to the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute. See her website and blog at www.karendecoster.com.
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#1. To: Ada, *Shooters*, *libertarians* (#0)
ping
http://www.moola.com:80/moopubs/b2b/exc/join.jsp?sid=4d6a55744e5451354e7a673d-2
If gun violence is such a public health problem, then how about conducting a study between the correlation of gun violence and the war on drugs? I'll tell you why, because as an arm of the government, you are only interested in increasing the power of government, not reducing it.
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." ~ William Colby, Director, CIA 1973–1976 The purpose of the legal system is to protect the elites from the wrath of those they plunder.- Elliott Jackalope "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it." - Frederic Bastiat
More BS. It's better to have it and not need it, then it is to need it and not have it! Rationalize that!
"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that its people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms....The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Thomas Jefferson
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