CDC now has a blueprint for gun-related research.
Back in January, President Barack Obama responded to the elementary school slaughter in Newtown, Connecticut, with
23 orders intended to reduce gun violence. One of those
directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other scientific agencies to "conduct or sponsor research into the causes of gun violence and the ways to prevent it."
Right-wingers, under the guiding hand of the National Rifle Association, had successfully intimidated the CDC away from research into the prevention of gun violence in 1996. In fact, since then, the budget for such research has been reduced by 96 percent. Thus, when someone seeks to bolster a point of view with hard data, valuable information that research might have generated simply isn't available and people can, and do, make up their own "facts."
Because of Obama's order, the CDC contracted with the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academies, to come up with a gun research agenda. On Wednesday, IOM published its recommendations, as reported at the Nature News blog:
The committee that wrote the 69-page report—chaired by Alan Leshner, the chief executive of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science—was asked to examine five areas: the characteristics of firearm violence; risk factors and preventive factors; interventions and strategies; gun safety technology; and the influence of video games and other media.
The panel generated a long list of questions that it said could be pursued. They include whether point-of-purchase background checks actually deter people who are forbidden from owning firearms from getting hold of them, and how effective existing policies and laws are at preventing gun sales to people with specific psychiatric diagnoses.
Now, of course, there's the question of whether Congress will provide the $10 million requested for gun research at an agency whose budget is being whacked for next to the tune of $216 million plus the 5 percent chop from the sequester. Among the recommendations:
Evaluate the potential health risks and benefits (e.g. suicide rates, personal protection) of having a firearm in the home under a variety of circumstances (including storage practices) and settings.
Examples of topics that could be examined:
• What are the associated probabilities of thwarting a crime versus committing suicide or sustaining an injury while in the possession of a firearm?
• What factors affect this risk/benefit relationship of gun ownership and storage techniques?
° What is the impact gun storage methods on the incidence of gun violence—unintentional and intentional—involving both youths and adults?
° What is the impact of gun storage techniques on rates of suicide and unintentional injury?