as there was some discussion about the CDCs role in researching gun control subjects.
Here's the background. In 1989, the research head for gun studies at the CDC was Patrick O’Carroll. He wrote in a JAMA column, "we’re going to systematically build a case that owning firearms causes deaths. We will prove it.” And the agenda was set.
In 1993, Director Mark Rosenberg said he wanted, "a long term campaign, similar to tobacco use and auto safety, to convince Americans that guns are, first and foremost, a public health menace.”
In 1994,
he said, “we need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes. It used to be that smoking was a glamour symbol — cool, sexy, macho. Now it is dirty, deadly — and banned.”
This was when the CDC published Arthur Kellerman's
flawed (to put it charitably) study, Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home.
The agenda was obvious, and in 1996, Rep. Jay Dickey put an amendment into the year's omnibus spending bill reading, "none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
may be used to advocate or promote gun control."
It is not a ban on research. It is a ban on pushing an inappropriate agenda.
(I should add that scientists are supposed to follow the data, not shoehorn it into preordained conclusions.)
