Quietly, Congress extends a ban on CDC research on gun violence [View all]
In the immediate aftermath of the massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, the US House of Representatives Appropriations Committee quietly rejected an amendment that would have allowed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the underlying causes of gun violence.
Though gun violence and gun control has again come to the forefront of the American conversation, prohibition on gun research goes back decades.
Dr. Fred Rivara, a professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology at the University of Washington at Seattle Children's Hospital, has been involved with injury research for 30 years. He was part of a team that researched gun violence back in the 1990s and personally saw the chilling effects of the NRA’s lobbying arm. Rivara says that the NRA accused the CDC of trying to use science to promote gun control.
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“Congressional prohibition, which was extended in this very vote that we’re talking about with that appropriations bill, prevents the CDC from advocating for any form of gun control,” says Zwillich. “Researchers are concerned that if they report the results of their data publicly and say, for instance, as Fred Rivara found in the ‘90s, that having a gun in the home makes you more likely to be injured than if you don’t have a gun in a home, then they’ll be accused by Congress of breaking the rules and advocating for gun control.”
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http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-02/quietly-congress-extends-ban-cdc-research-gun-violenceThis kind of reminds me of the global warming debate, with science on one side, and faith
* on the other.
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