American Exceptionalism

by: Zappatero

Sun Dec 16, 2012 at 17:53:21 PM MST

31 Pro-gun Senators were afraid to go on Meet the Press today to discuss their views in front of the American people and justify why it's good policy to have guns everywhere.

Murder-suicide in Vegas at the Excalibur.

Michael Brown on 850KOA: "We are not all in this together." Where's Gunny Bob when 850KOA needs him?

Republicans' anti-science hostility bleeds over into study of gun violence as they try to kill the agency responsible for collecting and analyzing the data.

Amazingly, the anti-science views held by Republicans also serves the industries and corporations who are helped by negating the science and casting doubt on America's smartest scientists. Industries are able to evade responsibility for the affects of their products and processes (see fracking) and are able to further profit as the science gets muddied up by their highly paid lobbyists (see cigarettes/cancer, energy extraction/global climate change).  

As the tragic shooting in Colorado last week has reignited the debate over guns, one key public policy question - does gun control save lives? - is almost impossible to answer thanks to a dearth of research on the subject. That lack of research is no accident. It's the product of a concerted campaign by the gun lobby and its allies on Capitol Hill to stymie and even explicitly outlaw scientific research into gun violence in what critics charge is an attempt to deceive the public about the dangers of guns.

Over the past two decades, the NRA has not only been able to stop gun control laws, but even debate on the subject. The Centers for Disease Control funds research into the causes of death in the United States, including firearms - or at least it used to. In 1996, after various studies funded by the agency found that guns can be dangerous, the gun lobby mobilized to punish the agency. First, Republicans tried to eliminate entirely the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, the bureau responsible for the research. When that failed, Rep. Jay Dickey, a Republican from Arkansas, successfully pushed through an amendment that stripped $2.6 million from the CDC's budget (the amount it had spent on gun research in the previous year) and outlawed research on gun control with a provision that reads: "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."

David Satcher, the then-director of the CDC, wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post in November of 1995 warning that the NRA's "shotgun assault" on the CDC was dangerous both for public health and for our democracy:

What ought to be of wider concern, is the second argument advanced by the NRA - that firearms research funded by the CDC is so biased against gun ownership that all such funding ought to cease. Here is a prescription for inaction on a major cause of death and disability. Here is a charge that not only casts doubt on the ability of scientists to conduct research involving controversial issues but also raises basic questions about the ability, fundamental to any democracy, to have honest, searching public discussions of such issues.

But now is not the time to talk about it, so we all just better shut up.