(February 27, 2014)
If we are to believe the mainstream media, the powerful NRA has used its political muscle to keep people ignorant of how guns impact our safety. They are supposedly to blame for the elimination of firearms research. This is all a result of a 1996 amendment to the federal budget stating “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.”Dr John Lott recently commented on a MSM trend to blame the NRA for a Federal decision to minimize grants for Researchers on the societal effects of firearms ownership.
According to Lott, the 1996 decision to cut funding for research on firearms-related injuries was made independently of any input from the NRA.
However, both ABC News and WAPO have published articles which specifically point the finger at the NRA:
He specifically cites the January 31, 2014, article from ABC NEWS "Unanswered Questions Gun Violence Researchers Would Tackle If They Had The Money" which focuses on "kids and guns"; and the January 17, 2014, Washington Post opinion article by Joe Davidson "Federal scientists can again research gun violence", which includes a graphic titled "How the NRA exerts influence over Congress".
[This graphic is especially telling, as it demonstrates that in 2012 NRA spent most (almost 90%) of its donative funds to Republicans, and very little of those funds to support Democratic members of congress. Which should come as no surprise, except that nobody really expected that as many as 10% of congressmen supported the Second Amendment.]
Lott's article appeared on the same day in which the Crime Prevention Research Bureau posted an internet article stating that, although federal funding for "gun violence" research has been increasingly difficult to find during the past 17 years,“Federal funding declined, but research either remained constant or even increased”.
If memory serves me correctly (and I think it does), the CDC had a fine thing going for them during the early 1990's. They found NRA and RKBA to be an easy target, and as a consequence CDC published a stream of articles vilifying the entire community of law-abiding firearms owners. Essentially, they decided that "firearm ownership" was a disease, not a constitutionally guaranteed right, and CDC addressed both RKBA and the NRA as if they were viral.
Someone pointed that out to Congress, which eventually reminded CDC that their mandate was to protect the public against pathology, not societal differences of opinion. (Although Congress would not stop CDC rants against gun owners ... it would not FUND it!)
Thus the CDC decided to get off their self-defined soap box and worry more about the N2D3 virus (or whatever) and let non-medical entities worry about vilifying a socio-political organization.
John Lott is a researcher, who addressed a situation he had noticed and researched it without bias, even though the subject was not necessarily one in which he held a personal position either for or against. The result was his book "More Guns, Less Crime".
The result was an unbiased examination of the available data, which led him to inevitable conclusions. That the CDC ignored the statistical evidence, and then proceeded to publish a series of "findings" which was not supported by the data, constituted shadow on their reputation. Were these researchers able to independently put aside their own bias, they may not have needed congress to remind them of their duties.
As it is, they wandered down the same 'wrong' fork in the road which has led both the Presbyterian church and Pediatricians to actively advocate for Gun Control.
The church may do what it will. Pediatricians, however, are vendors of a service. As such, they have been reminded that parents of their juvenile patients are sometimes disapproving of questions which their child's doctor asks of their children; they consider the questions intrusive, and not legitimately conducive to the best medical care of their children.
Thus is is, thus it will always be. Well intended groups of professionals, having he best intention (by their own opinion) will unilaterally encroach upon the rights of the individual to satisfy their own conscience.
But in the end, that's not their job. Their job is to help their parishioners to love the Lord thy God, or to protect their medical clients from disease or injury. It is not to impose their opinions on their patients, their parishioners.
They do so at the risk of their own livelihood, because:
People, I want you to heal my child or heal my soul, but I do NOT want you to tell me how to live my life!
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