An October 19, 2009 article in the
Washington Times examined federal
health agencies that have spent
millions of taxpayer dollars to study
gun “safety.” According to the article,
the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) is currently financing research
“to investigate whether having many
liquor stores in a neighborhood puts
people at greater risk of getting shot.”
The Times reports:
The NIH, which administers more
than $30 billion in taxpayer funds for
medical research, defended the grants.
“Gun related violence is a public health
problem – it diverts considerable
health care resources away from
other problems and, therefore, is of
interest to NIH,” Don Ralbovsky,
NIH spokesman, wrote in an e-mail
responding to questions about the
grants.
Certainly, more liquor stores are
operated in neighborhoods where
residents are poor because they are
consumers who tend to generate
brisk business for the liquor industry
— especially liquor convenience
stores, since they desire easy access
to cheap liquor and beer. These liquor
stores are also magnets for armed
robberies. So the NIH will attempt to
discover whether or not more crimes
are committed in these low-income
neighborhoods that play host to liquor
stores.
The American Journal of Public
Health, in its November 2009 issue,
will publish the results of a completed
study, also funded by the NIH, which
attempted to determine whether gun
possession safeguards against harm
or promotes a false sense of security.
The media reports of the results of that
study were predictable — people with
a gun were 4.5 times more likely to
be shot in an assault than those who
were not in possession of a gun, and
therefore, carrying a gun really doesn’t
offer protection at all. After looking
at the details of how the study was
conducted, it is important to recall that
correlation does not imply causation.
Moreover, the correlation-and-effect
approach to scientific inquiry is
often used to yield
biased results that
politicize critical
issues. The author
of the study, Charles
C. Branas, PhD,
Associate Professor
of Epidemiology,
was quoted as
saying:
Learning how to
live healthy lives
alongside guns
will require more
studies such as
this one. This
study should be
the beginning of a
better investment
in gun injury research through various
government and private agencies such
as the Centers for Disease Control,
which in the past have not been legally
permitted to fund research ‘designed
to affect the passage of specific Federal,
State, or local legislation intended to
restrict or control the purchase or use
of firearms.’
Champions of the anti-gun movement,
along with the anti-gun biased media,
often use study results to plant fear and
doubt among the uninformed masses
on this particularly tempestuous issue.
Notice the reference to more research
being needed, with specific mention of
a government — not private — agency.
Yet Eugene Volokh, a prominent UCLA
law professor and popular writer,
promptly dissected the ScienceDaily.
com headline, which had been repeated
throughout the media.
In an October 5, 2009 post at the
Volokh Conspiracy, Volokh notes the
correlation/causation problem, and
he also points out that the study left
a wide range of factors uncontrolled.
Additionally, he notes “the research
model works only to the extent that
you actually know who possesses guns
and who doesn’t,” and he goes on to
show how this could not be known in
all cases utilized in the study. In terms
of trying to determine whether gun
possession leads to protection or peril,
the study doesn’t
clearly support
either theory, but
as Volokh observes,
“yet it is publicized,
and it’s reported,
as if it did robustly
show the causal
r e l a t i o n s h i p . ”
Certainly, the media
has the ability to
serve up foreboding
headlines and
hand-picked quotes
that serve the
larger agenda of
influencing public
opinion on the gun
question.
I sent an inquiry to the NIH to verify
the Washington Times story, and I
received a quick and helpful reply. Here
is an interesting (but canned) snippet
from the NIH response that aims
to deflect the distrustful sentiment
expressed in the article:
If few people are studying gun
ownership within the social sphere
as it relates to the probability of being
injured or killed by a firearm, then
perhaps this researcher believed that
collecting that data was needed. To that
end, perhaps his forthcoming results
could be instructive for those wishing
to craft new guidance or safety lessons
to keep others from being harmed
or killed through firearm violence. I
would highly doubt that the results
could be manipulated to infringe on
ownership as the Washington Times
suggests. More likely, it would appear
that with as much violence that occurs
involving firearms, perhaps there
is more we need to know about the
circumstances surrounding gun safety
overall, hopefully curbing the number
of deaths and injury cases that are seen
in emergency rooms nationwide.
Furthermore, I did verify the existence
of the current study, and it is titled
“Alcohol, Firearms, and Adolescent
Gunshot Injury Risk.” Accordingly, is
a government health agency running
a stealth program to sway public
opinion on guns?
Studies such as this, that pose the
question of whether or not gun
ownership is advantageous for saving
lives, are an unmistakable attempt to
curry favor for gun control and change
social attitudes toward guns and gun
ownership in general. Go back in time
to the late 1990s, when this issue was
hotly debated in the media. The CDC’s
National Center for Injury Prevention
and Control (NCIPC) spent $2.6
million in 1995 studying injuries
related to firearms under the cloak of
carrying out research in the interest of
“public safety” because of the “public
health” concerns that resulted from
gun violence. So then, gun issues
become medical issues, and U.S. health
agencies can then obtain grants to
conduct research and roll out their
political agendas, ostensibly in the
interest of public health. This allows
well-funded government organizations
to attack the gun issue through the
use of public health mechanisms that
include high-level agencies, reputable medical professionals, and public health officials who are so-called
“experts.”
In essence, the CDC has used tax
monies to pay researchers to support
its politicized, anti-gun agenda and
disguise it as scientific research that
is printed in journals that support the
anti-gun/gun control agenda, such as
The New England Journal of Medicine
and the Journal of the American
Medical Association. Physician and
neurosurgeon Miguel A. Faria, Jr.,
M.D. stated, in a 1999 speech, that
The New England Journal of Medicine
is “one of the most anti-gun, health
advocacy publications in medical
journalism that routinely practices
hermetically tight censorship,
excluding articles dissenting with its
well-known, strident and inflexible
position of gun control advocacy.” Dr
Faria also unveiled a CDC official, Dr.
Patrick O’Carroll, who was quoted
in the February 3, 1989, Journal of the
American Medical Association, as
saying:
Bringing about gun control, which
itself covers a variety of activities
from registration to confiscation,
was not the specific reason for the
[NCIPC’s] creation. However, the facts
themselves tend to make some form of
[firearms] regulation seem desirable.
The way we’re going to do this is
to systematically build a case that
owning firearms causes death.
This excellent article from an April
1997 issue of Reason magazine, “Public
Health Pot Shots: How the CDC
Succumbed to the Gun “Epidemic,” is
one of the best sources of information
on the government’s politicization of
the gun issue during this period. From
the article:
In a 1991 letter to CDC critic Dr.
David Stolinsky, the NCIPC’s Mark
Rosenberg said “our scientific
understanding of the role that firearms
play in violent events is rudimentary.”
He added in a subsequent letter, “There
is a strong need for further scientific
investigations of the relationships
among firearms ownership, firearms
regulations and the risk of firearmrelated
injury. This is an area that
has not been given adequate scrutiny.
Hopefully, by addressing these
important and appropriate scientific
issues we will eventually arrive at
conclusions which support effective,
preventive actions.”
Yet four years earlier, in a 1987 CDC
report, Rosenberg thought the area
adequately scrutinized, and his
understanding sufficient, to urge
confiscation of all firearms from
“the general population,” claiming
“8,600 homicides and 5,370 suicides
could be avoided” each year. In 1993
Rolling Stone reported that Rosenberg
“envisions a long term campaign,
similar to [those concerning] tobacco
use and auto safety, to convince
Americans that guns are, first and
foremost, a public health menace.” In
1994 he told The Washington Post,
“We need to revolutionize the way we
look at guns, like what we did with
cigarettes. Now it [sic] is dirty, deadly,
and banned.”
Still, the CDC has not been able to make
its research work in favor of its agenda.
Its own studies have not been able to
link gun control laws to the reduction
of crime. Nevertheless, any time the
government studies “gun safety,” you
know that in spite of the fact that all the
research in the world will not support
its end goal of affirming the necessity
of disarmament, the aim is to produce
enough information and “expert”
opinions to influence the public
against gun ownership and persuade
them to internalize the emotional
aspect of the issue, thereby leading
people to despise guns, distrust gun
owners, and desire more government
intervention to make gun ownership
more difficult. The anti-gun movement
is built on pure emotion — hating guns
and being afraid of guns — so crafting
a false perception among the masses
through fear mongering and emotional
coercion is much more crucial, and
uncomplicated, than presenting a
clear-cut, scientific case through the
use of bona fide research studies.
For the most part, the establishment
of gun safety as a public health issue
is a very purposeful strategy aimed
at avoiding the political reality of
individual liberty and the right to
defend oneself. Thus gun ownership
can be viewed as a “problem” that
is looked at in a collective sense, by
determining the costs and benefits
to the public at large, as if these
considerations can possibly trump an
individual’s natural right to bear arms
and defend his own life.
Karen DeCoster, CPA, has a Masters degree
in economics and is an accounting and
financial professional in Detroit. She writes
for various websites and organizations,
including LewRockwell.com, Taki’s Magazine,
and Mises.org. She is a Special Advisor on
Economics to the Clare Boothe Luce Policy
Institute. See her website and blog at www.
With all the media scares over karendecoster.com