....the "tool" of the capitalist...

Congress Still Bans CDC Scientists From Studying Gun Violence

In the wake of another mass shooting (among many this year), we are
asking again: What causes gun violence? Is there a causal relationship
between gun ownership and gun violence? We might know the answers to
these questions, or at least have a body of empirical evidence getting
us closer to the answers, if government scientists were allowed to study
them.

But they’re not.

In June, the Appropriations Committee of the U.S. House of
Representatives, (run by the GOP) rejected an amendment that would have
repealed a ban on scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) conducting research to study the relationship between
gun ownership and gun violence. Supporters of the ban, including current
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) argue that the CDC shouldn’t study
these questions because “a gun is not a disease.”

Arguably, though, CDC researchers have studied other kinds of
environmental factors that play a role in human health and in human
behaviors with implications for human health. Are alcohol, tobacco, and
other drugs of abuse diseases? Is a faulty ventilation system, of the
sort that might provide a hospitable environment for the bacterium that
causes Legionnaire’s disease? Is a hurricane? If you think, given its
scientific mission, that the CDC is the wrong group of government
scientists to study the connection between gun ownership and gun
violence, fine. Allocate funding to the right government scientists,
those working in the appropriate scientific disciplines to conduct the
research. Establish research grants to support academic scientists
studying this question. Do something to mobilize scientists to address
this problem.

Or, admit that the point of the ban is that you don’t want scientists to
work on these questions at all.

Why wouldn’t you want scientists to look into connections between gun
ownership and gun violence?

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That stench...it's the NRA...