Surgeon General Nominee Decidedly Anit-Gun

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Climbskirun, you wanted data. All the data you want is available from the FBI in the form of their Uniform Crime Reports.

However, I'll give you an article which was published by the very left leaning Slate magazine last year after the post Sandy Hook, Obama mandated, CDC report on so-called "gun violence" was released. Slate's talking points are:


However, this ignores that some other developed countries have higher overall homicide rates. It also ignores that the overall violent crime rates are higher in many other countries, including the UK.

First, which developed countries have higher homicide rates than the US?

Second, you do know that the CDC did not produce ANY of the data in that article you quoted?

They were just reporting previous studies to define the current state of research to set research priorities for future research.
 
For better or worse, we lump and study things together as groups. In studies of death, mechanism of injury is one major way things get lumped together.

Car deaths
Falling Deaths
Gun deaths
Etc.

So call it studies into "gun deaths" instead of "gun violence," they will be studying the same thing. The truth is that the #1 mechanism of non-accidental deaths in the US is guns by a HUGE margin. Just as much as we should study other major causes of deaths (heart disease, auto accidents, etc.) we should study gun deaths and determine if there are steps that can be taken to reduce those deaths.
 
Pizzapinochle, really? 2013 Chicago had 412 murders. Thats 80 MORE than the city with the second most murders. Or , 19% more murders than any other US city last year!
 
And meanwhile since this thread started 214 people have died due to our countries "alcohol violence", or drunk drivers if you will. Maybe people need a govt evaluation in order to buy alcohol so they can determine if you MIGHT drive drunk.
 
climbskirun said:
Calling me "anti" in this context is probably the worst slur, given what that represents to folks here. Save for a few exceptions (Sam comes to mind, perhaps you), all I got is vitriol.

What would you suggest we call someone who advocates for gun control that you would find less offensive?

Owning a firearm does not make you pro-gun - though if it weren't for the NRA you would never have had the chance to own those firearms. That is something you might want to consider next time you are questioning whether it is reasonable for them to oppose having the "Centers for Disease Control" study gun crime. The fact is, jokes about "black rifle disease aside, guns are not a disease. The reason there is a ban on CDC funding isn't because the NRA hates science - it is because the NRA rightly objects to tax money being used to produce anti-gun propaganda. Which is exactly how those CDC grants were used - just look at the Kellerman study or similar CDC funded research for examples.
 
PizzaPinochle said:
Just as much as we should study other major causes of deaths (heart disease, auto accidents, etc.) we should study gun deaths and determine if there are steps that can be taken to reduce those deaths.

You have incorrectly stated the issue of discussion. We do study gun deaths and we do look at violence through criminology and studies funded by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. What is being argued here is whether the Surgeon General/Centers for Disease Control should study guns as a disease.

Look at that bolded conclusion. There is so much bias in just the basic premise behind this research and yet some of you appear to think that you will get good, reliable data out of it instead of just seeing your tax dollars used to fund "Guns are bad" propagandists. Which is a trusting conclusion you could almost be forgiven for making if there wasn't a documented 20+ year history of CDC doing just that before Congress removed their funding for studying guns as a "disease vector".
 
The "medical" aspect of this trend (other than mental health and outward/inward-directed
violence in general) is admittedly a strategic thrust on the part of the anti-2A crowd.

It is purely and simply a means to (1) appeal to emotion through the once trusted/apolitical
doctor-patient relationship; and (2) open the door to regulations & restrictions issued by
additional agencies on an entirely new basis.

If anyone here has any experience w/ the EPA -- I point out the difficulty in fighting such
highly interpretive "regulations" before they become past the point of no return to do incredible
damage.
 
Pizzapinochle said:
Just as much as we should study other major causes of deaths (heart disease, auto accidents, etc.) we should study gun deaths and determine if there are steps that can be taken to reduce those deaths.

And this, more than anything, reveals the logical fallacy you suffer from.

'Guns' were not the CAUSE of any of those deaths; they were the INSTRUMENT of them. Separating the instrument from the human actor is something you anti's are notoriously bad at, and nothing displays it better than this post.

You speak of 'irrationality' as if gun owners suffer from it; I think this post, more than anything, shows where the real irrationality lies.

Larry
 
You have incorrectly stated the issue of discussion. We do study gun deaths and we do look at violence through criminology and studies funded by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. What is being argued here is whether the Surgeon General/Centers for Disease Control should study guns as a disease.

Look at that bolded conclusion. There is so much bias in just the basic premise behind this research and yet some of you appear to think that you will get good, reliable data out of it instead of just seeing your tax dollars used to fund "Guns are bad" propagandists. Which is a trusting conclusion you could almost be forgiven for making if there wasn't a documented 20+ year history of CDC doing just that before Congress removed their funding for studying guns as a "disease vector".

Not sure where you formed the premise that the CDC only studies "disease," but it is not even slightly factual.

The CDC studies and publishes reports on pretty much every type of injury/death, not just disease.

Here is a study on WATER SAFETY:

http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/water-safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html

Another report on injuries from nail guns:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5614a2.htm

Is drowning a disease? Or perhaps nail gunnitis, a disease which causes ppl to shoot themselves with nail guns?

No, it is a way people die/injure themselves or others, so the CDC studies it. Just like they study every major cause of death and injury. The CDC studies pretty much all of them... except guns, because the NRA worked to block funding for studies of gun deaths and injuries.
 
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Pizzapinochle said:


And this, more than anything, reveals the logical fallacy you suffer from.

'Guns' were not the CAUSE of any of those deaths; they were the INSTRUMENT of them. Separating the instrument from the human actor is something you anti's are notoriously bad at, and nothing displays it better than this post.

You speak of 'irrationality' as if gun owners suffer from it; I think this post, more than anything, shows where the real irrationality lies.

Larry

1. I just posted and have never said a word about irrationality. Not sure why you brought it up.

2. Fine, instrument of death.

Just as we should study other major instruments of death (death from cars, death from water, death from unhealthy eating, death from hitting the ground, etc. etc. etc.) we should study guns as one of the leading instruments of death in the US.

You can word it however you want. A lot of people die in the US when a gun goes off and they are in front of its barrel. The CDC studies basically every way that people die, why give special treatment to guns?
 
You can slice it any way you want but at the end of the day Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the country and the number of murders blew away any other city.
 
PizzaPinochle said:
Not sure where you formed the premise that the CDC only studies "disease," but it is not even slightly factual.

You are probably unsure where that premise formed because I never said anything along the lines of the "CDC only studies disease." Instead I said that the CDC proposes to treat gun violence as a disease - which is based on the statements of their parent agency, Public Health Service ("our goal... to reduce the number of firearms in private ownership" - see next link for source), and the statements of past CDC Directors like Mark Rosenberg.

The CDC studies and publishes reports on pretty much every type of injury/death, not just disease.

Yes, in fact they have better reporting on gun injury and death than the FBI UCRs and have reported that information for the past 17 years.

No, it is a way people die/injure themselves or others, so the CDC studies it. Just like they study every major cause of death and injury. The CDC studies pretty much all of them... except guns, because the NRA worked to block funding for studies of gun deaths and injuries.

The ban passed on Congress says that the CDC cannot "advocate for gun control" using its funds. It doesn't say that CDC cannot do any research on gun deaths - which I would think you would realize considering that in this very thread you quoted a 2011 CDC study on gun injury. There was also a comprehensive 2003 report on the subject - what CDC can no longer do is give money to "researchers" like Arthur Kellerman to produce anti-gun propaganda or like this past CDC grantee, Dr. Katherine Christoffel who said "guns are a virus that must be eradicated."

Both you and climbskirun are grossly mischaracterizing the debate by describing the NRA as preventing all research into gun violence - yet the ban is specific only to the CDC, it does not cover other agencies who are more suited to studying criminology. Additionally, the ban doesn't even prevent the CDC from studying gun deaths* - it simply says they can't use taxpayer money to pay people to advocate for gun control. I really don't see why either of you would have a problem with that.

*The exact language of the 1996 Dickey Amendment restricting CDC funding is: "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" (Which is completely in keeping with other non-gun lobbying-related restrictions on CDC grant funding see 31 USC 1352 for an example of similar legislation)
 
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Pizza, it still doesn't wash.

Nail gun injuries are universally (statistically, ignoring the exceptionally rare deliberate act) simple accidents.

Drownings are almost universally (again, ignoring the extremely limited instances of murder by drowning) accidental.

Not that many drunk driving deaths are deliberate homicides. And so forth.

It makes some sense to study these relatively cohesive, simple and related avenues of injury as "blank" deaths because they are similar to each other in all the ways that are important.

Not so, at all, with guns. Killings involving guns include accidents, sure, but the majority are deliberate acts which have wildly different causes and circumstances.

As I said before:

A guy who shoots his wife, or a guy who poisons his wife, or a guys who beats his wife to death -- all aspects of the same phenomenon.
A guy who knifes someone for their wallet, or shoots them for their car, or beats them for their shoes -- all the same basic criminal pattern.
A guy who gasses a crowd in a theater, or shoots 20 people in a theater? Same basic expression of his sickness and criminality.
A guy who blasts away at a group of a rival gang with his TEC-9, vs. cornering one member and beating him to death? All gang violence.

But by floating the leaky canoe of "gun violence" you're saying that the guy who shot his wife over an affair is part of the same phenomenon as the guy who shot a driver in a carjacking, or pulled off a mass-murder/suicide at a public place. No honest analysis of violence could conflate those phenomena.

To claim that the instances where a gun is involved are somehow unique to each other (e.g.: the fit-of-passion wife killer and the carjacker let's say) requires you to transfer some power or element of compulsion to the object itself in its ability to cause or influence action in a sentient being. That is not a scientifically valid way to approach research. It's a form of superstition and should be beneath all of us.
 
You can slice it any way you want but at the end of the day Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the country and the number of murders blew away any other city.
Oh wow... Seriously?

Yes, chicago had more murders. Chicago has more EVERYTHING because it is bigger than every other city except LA and NY.

Rate matters. If you have 1 million people and 500 murders, you are doing much better than a place with 10000 people and 100 murders.

YOU can "slice it" however you want, Chicago's murder rate is not even top 10 in the country and NY, who pro-gun folks love to complain about, is WAY down the list, behind a whole pile of cities with very loose gun laws.

I am curious, does everyone on here really think that "rate per capita" is a "liberal ploy" to twist the facts? Or do you recognize that it is a standard tool in social science/human geography/demographics used to compare groups with different sized populations?
 
You also asked in post #101 which developed countries had higher homicide rates than US. Ours is right at 5 per 100,000. Russia is right at 10 per 100,000.
 
I think Bartholomew Roberts explained the basic misunderstanding about the NRA's (and OUR) opposition to specific efforts at using public money through a government agency to produce anti-gun propaganda very well in post 114, so we -- hopefully -- can set this vacuous worry aside.

Having said that, if the CDC was simply neutral and daft, perhaps it wouldn't be anything more than another colossal governmental waste of funds for them to conflate all "gun violence" into a minestrone stew of random and unrelated factors and then peer into the disjointed mess as though some enlightenment would come from it.

Unfortunately, it is nothing so feebly benign.

When an organization sets out the premise of their research under the misconception that "gun violence" is a cohesive phenomenon, homogeneous in some way, then they have set themselves up (most here would logically assume, deliberately) to be able to reach only conclusions that relate to the only factor these killings ever had in common: guns.

In analogy: If you've got a guy who ran his car into a tree and died, and a guy who felled a tree on himself clearing land and was killed, and a guy who choked on a piece of bark and strangled, and a guy who sat in a tree until he died of exposure, and a guy who swallowed something he picked off a manchineel, and a guy who got a locust thorn stuck into his arm and died of blood poisoning -- and you set out to say you're going to study TREE DEATHS and understand what we can do about this phenomenon...

The only answers you can produce, which don't make you look like a total fool, are those that somehow focus on the tree danger and what to do about trees.

Do the same daft thing with "gun violence" and the only answers you can present which at all validate your absurd research are those which seek to remove GUNS, because "guns" is the only (tenuous) thread tying all these disparate things together.

This is bad "science" on the face of it, and politically motivated social engineering if we're being honest with each other.

So, yeah, we're going to oppose that. Go figure.
 
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You also asked in post #101 which developed countries had higher homicide rates than US. Ours is right at 5 per 100,000. Russia is right at 10 per 100,000.
And by most measures, Russia is a 2nd world country, ranked a tier below the US and other developed countries. One of the big reasons is because their public safety is terrible, between lack of enforcement and corruption.
 
Russia IS a developed country. Of course they are a tier below the US, along with everybody else. Im done with this foolishness now. This is like arguing with my 8 year old.
 
PizzaPinochle said:
somewhere between 300-400 firearm deaths a year are ruled justifiable homicides. Out of 30,000+ deaths.

This is incorrect as well, PP. The UCRs rely on individual reporting of the various law enforcement agencies. Not all agencies report and not all agencies report on time (which is one reason why the CDC data on homicides is more complete and accurate than the UCR number). So technically, only 300-400 homicides a year are classified as justifiable homicides in a timely enough fashion that they can be reported to the UCR and are reported. In theory, there could be any number of agencies that choose not to report info for justifiable outcome or cases that don't reach an outcome prior to that year's UCR.
 
Russia IS a developed country. Of course they are a tier below the US, along with everybody else. Im done with this foolishness now. This is like arguing with my 8 year old.
Boy.... High road for sure.

Here is a list based on the Human Development index.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index

Of the top 40 countries, the US (at #3 overall) probably has the highest murder rate. Haven't checked against all the smaller countries, but all the major ones i know for sure.

If your big moral victory is "at least we aren't as bad as Russia!" And THAT is your standard for the US, then so be it.

Personally, I would like for the US to be in the same neighborhood as UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, Japan, Spain, Norway, Australia, New Zealand and pretty much every other wealthy, stable nation in the world. But, if looking up from the bottom of the heap with Russia is good enough for you, then that is your call.
 
This is incorrect as well, PP. The UCRs rely on individual reporting of the various law enforcement agencies. Not all agencies report and not all agencies report on time (which is one reason why the CDC data on homicides is more complete and accurate than the UCR number). So technically, only 300-400 homicides a year are classified as justifiable homicides in a timely enough fashion that they can be reported to the UCR and are reported. In theory, there could be any number of agencies that choose not to report info for justifiable outcome or cases that don't reach an outcome prior to that year's UCR.
Ok, do you have another source that takes those into account? If so, great, if not, the UCR is the best data availale.
 
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