Shouldn’t we change our minds about how we handle guns?

[struggle4progress]

Julian Hickman
8:41 p.m. EDT August 13, 2016

My wife and I live in downtown Staunton. Two weeks ago at the West Beverley Street Food Lion, I stood in line with an older man packing a pistol. His companion sported a T-shirt with a Confederate flag and the words “keep this flag flying.” Even though I spent years hunting squirrels with a pistol, someone wearing a pistol in the grocery store makes me nervous. These are unsettled times; guns should make me nervous ...

I am a public school bus driver. In 2011, I pulled up to a stop where a man was standing nearby with a rifle. He wore camouflage. A student asked about the man with the rifle. I have seen others with guns near bus stops; this is the United States ...

The next morning everyone was talking about a shooting the evening before. My students said the man with the rifle was involved. He was angry about someone taking that gun. I expect this — people on the street carrying or wearing guns as my bus pulls up to a stop — to continue. Should I have let those children off? ...

We have blocked federal funding for studies related to gun violence. Every effort to improve gun safety is resisted ...

http://www.newsleader.com/story/opinion/columnists/2016/08/13/change-minds-handle-guns/88686140/

[pipoman]

1. No we haven't.

We have blocked federal funding for studies related to gun violence.

[struggle4progress]

3. GOP blocks Dem attempts to allow federal gun research

By Sarah Ferris - 07/07/16 12:35 PM EDT

A House panel on Thursday rejected multiple efforts by Democrats to eliminate a budget amendment that has frozen nearly all government research into gun violence for 17 years.

During a markup of next year’s health spending bill, Republicans blocked two amendments that would have allowed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to study gun-related deaths. Neither had a recorded vote.

Eliminating the provision has become a priority for Democrats since the June 12 attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., that killed 49 people — the nation’s deadliest mass shooting.

The provision, known as the Dickey Amendment for former Rep. Jay Dickey (R-Ark.), was first enacted in 1996 after groups including the National Rifle Association (NRA) accused federal agencies of trying to advance gun control ...

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/286847-gop-blocks-dem-attempts-to-allow-federal-gun-research

[pipoman]

8. The CDC not doing studies isn't "blocking federal funding for studies"

Why would "The Centers for Disease Control" do studies about non-diseases?

[jberryhill]

10. Are motor vehicles a disease?

Here is a link to their studies on motor vehicle injuries and mortality:

https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/

The CDC examines all sorts of causes of injury and mortality. Perhaps if you knew something about the CDC beyond what the initials stand for, then you would grasp how profoundly absurd your question is.

[pipoman]

13. Same for firearms

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6230a1.htm

There are pages and pages of data on CDC website related to firearms.

[Igel]

19. Two comments.

1. It's mission creep. Established for one purpose, some CDC people decided that wasn't that they wanted their job description to be. Anything death-related that they don't like is fair game. It's mission creep. After all, we all get to have "living job descriptions" and re-create our jobs.

I'm supposed to teach state science standards, but hey, when it says to teach "scientific processes" I can spend time on Islamic science from the 13th century. It was "science," after all. But to read that stuff they need to know Arabic as a prerequisite, remedial work, so my entire year I'll teach Arabic. And since it's rooted in concepts of state sponsorship and Muslim teachings, while I teach Arabic I can teach the Qur'aan. Hey, that's the state standards, right? Like that would fly with my bosses. Mission creep is bad. Even if I might personally like the the creep. (Hmmm ... that sounds a bit off, doesn't it?)

2. The way we interpret "blocked federal funding for X" is taken to mean "no federal funding for X was granted." We leave out what people who know language call "quantifiers."

Is it "blocked all federal funding"? "Most federal funding"? "Some federal funding"? "A trivially small amount of federal funding"?

The phrase is ambiguous in principle. But in practice, there's a single most common parsing if the word with little or no context is exhaustive quantification. That is, all of whatever is involved is negated. We assume that if it's partial, that's relevant information that should be provided. Not providing that information is simply not being cooperative, it's not showing good will. It's considered a kind of non-lying deceit. It's what we expect out of used car salesmen, hucksters, lawyers, and politicians.

Much federal funding for gun violence was permitted or at least not covered by the ban. It's not like HESC research using non-approved stem-cell lines was. However, the take-away from the piss-poor English skills of English majors and reporters is "all." Now, wordsmiths tend to know how their language will be interpreted. That's their job. The options are that the reporters are consciously manipulating their readers without their readers' knowledge or that the reporters really need to learn how to write clearly--in other words, they're incompetent. So which is it--manipulative and deceitful or simply incompetent for this writer?

[struggle4progress]

12. Gun violence is a major and costly public health problem; and unfortunately the Republicans

decided many years ago to block funding for research into this problem

Annual costs of gunshot wounds in 1997 were estimated at $126 billion

It's a miserable waste of blood and treasure

[pipoman]

15. The CDC has reams of firearm statistics all over their website...

The whole issue is so lied about to the point that you believe the entire federal government is prohibited from doing firearms studies, when the fact is that it's only the CDC....It is the lying when the truth would do better I object to....and the furthering of these lies by well meaning unsuspecting of the trick which has been played on them good samaritians...

[struggle4progress]

4. AMA to Congress: Lift Ban on CDC Gun Research

Robert Lowes
June 14, 2016

CHICAGO, Illinois — Moved to action by the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, that has claimed at least 49 lives, the AMA House of Delegates today voted overwhelmingly to urge Congress to lift its ban on gun violence research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

A Republican-controlled Congress voted in 1996 to forbid CDC studies that would advocate or promote gun control. A proposal to overturn the ban died in a House subcommittee in July 2015.

A resolution to declare gun violence a public health crisis and lobby for lifting the research ban was introduced at the annual AMA meeting shortly after the Orlando massacre in the early morning hours of June 12. The AMA has characterized gun violence as a public health threat before, but the stance on CDC research is new. The AMA joins other medical societies such as the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Physicians, and the American Academy of Pediatrics in opposing the Congressional ban.

"We...have a disease on our shore," American Academy of Family Physicians President Wanda Filer, MD, told fellow delegates. "It's called gun violence. We need to know more about it" ...

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/864797

[scscholar]

7. The AMA has always been reasonable wrt to restrictions on right

They demanded a lot of questions before ultimately refusing to treat me iin the ER the last time I was hit by a car as a pedestrian. I respect their hard-line stance, but I wish I could have gotten medical treatment.

[Eko]

14. Uh,, what?

The AMA doesn't do that. That would be the hospital.

[struggle4progress]

5. Congress extends a ban on CDC research on gun violence

July 02, 2015 · 8:00 AM EDT

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 ...

http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-02/quietly-congress-extends-ban-cdc-research-gun-violence

[pipoman]

9. See post 8

[jberryhill]

11. See post 10

You understand nothing about the CDC and its role in public health.

[Hoyt]

2. Yes we ought to handle it differently, but GOPers continue to coddle gun fanciers for votes.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

6. There is a deification of guns and gun ownership in this country

that is beyond disturbing.

I have not yet seen anyone openly carrying in a store or restaurant where I live, but if I did I'd simply leave.

I do frequently see signs saying guns are not permitted there.

I don't understand it. People in this country constantly defend guns, seem to think that the daily toll of gun deaths is perfectly acceptable. Does no one who feels this way ever lose a loved one to a gun? Does that every make them change their minds?

I'm aware of the statistics that show having a gun in the home vastly increases the chances of the presence of a gun leading to a death from that very same gun. Do the gun owners not know this? Do they think that's an acceptable risk?

I don't. I don't have a gun in my home and never will. If I still had young children I'd be asking the parents of their friends if there's a gun in the house, and if there were I'd say, their kids can come to my house, but my kid can't come to theirs.

I've occasionally thought of moving to another country, and I suppose I never will. But still . . . .

[raccoon]

17. That is what parents need to do, IMO.

If I still had young children I'd be asking the parents of their friends if there's a gun in the house, and if there were I'd say, their kids can come to my house, but my kid can't come to theirs.

[pipoman]

18. It is good to be diligent in the safety of your children...

Freakonomics spoke to this exact school of thought...the facts are that asking if they have a swimming pool of any kind, then keeping the child away from that neighbor or friend would save 10 times more lives. Your child is 10 times more likely to drown at a neighbor's home than be shot....which is concerning because over 1/3 of US homes have guns, and far fewer own swimming pools...

[grubbs]

16. After sandyhook

I gave up on the idea of there ever being any reasonable gun control in the USA. I ask a guy how he would feel about it if it was his grandson dead with brains and blood all over him.

He said that biometric trigger locks were unreliable and his depression never affected his ability to safely own weapons.

Really. This was his response. Apparently empathy is the first casualty of gun violence.