Is NRA part of the problem in counting the shootings? (NRA undermining accurate gun violence stats)

[villager]

s NRA part of the problem in counting the shootings?

By Carol Marin

BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist

<snip>

We have lousy numbers on gun violence.

Why, in this sophisticated world of a data mining, where marketers can profile you within an inch of your life, can't we track victims of violence? Not only the dead ones, who tragically are easier to count, but the ones who are shot but don't die?

Could the answer, at least in part, be the massively powerful, heavily funded National Rifle Association?

Back in 1997, PBS' "Frontline" reported that when the respected Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta published a "mind-boggling report showing that the U.S. firearm-related homicide rate for children was 16 times higher than the combined rate for children in 25 other industrialized countries," the CDC was already firmly in the gunsights of the NRA.

And so the CDC's effort to exhaustively investigate gun-related injuries was met with intense NRA lobbying that, not surprisingly, fueled Congress' unwillingness to fully fund the CDC's continued research.

Kathleen Monahan, the former project director for the Illinois Violent Death Reporting System, puts it this way: "While firearms injuries are one of the leading causes of hospitalization and death for Americans, the CDC was prevented for years from investigating injuries and deaths due to firearms. This was always attributed to the NRA's power in Congress. This is well known among gun violence prevention researchers."

The NRA, for its part, makes no bones about its attempts to inhibit or limit research on gun violence.

"We've interjected ourselves when we think there would be biased, outcome-based research," Todd Vandermyde, the NRA's legislative liaison for Illinois, said Tuesday by phone. "We have anti-gun researchers with a bias from the git-go. . . . We don't think taxpayer dollars should be used . . . to drive an agenda to restrict law-abiding citizens access to firearms."

But restricting access to information? Not a problem.

The NRA's fearsome clout goes a long way to explaining why only 17 states are part of the CDC's National Violent Death Reporting System. Begun in 2002, it ran out of funding by the time Illinois applied in 2004. Private money from the Joyce and MacArthur foundations came to Illinois' rescue as it tried to examine gun violence. Still that money covers only three counties.

"Information is the gun lobby's enemy," said Kristen Rand of the Violence Policy Center, based in Washington.

<snip>

http://blogs.suntimes.com/marin/2009/08/is_nra_part_of_the_problem_in.html

[orwell]

1. Many statistics are cooked...

...unemployment, inflation, GDP. They are cooked by those with political and financial power.

"Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past." - George Orwell

[BluePup]

2. The CDC counted 'kids' up to the age of 21

Their lies didn't get very far.

Sorry.... the 2nd Amendment issue has been decided. Freedom won.

Let it go.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[BluePup]

11. Oh please...

Do you like winning elections or argunments?

[Paladin]

14. "Argunments"

Calling Dr. Freud.......

[villager]

16. Yes, I will defer to your sagacious wisdom on all things...

n/t

[Union Yes]

17. When Pro-gun nut Pols win elections, we all lose.

I'd expect a document written be slave owners to contain a Second Amendment.

Gun ownership IS NOT a human right.

[chicago legal pro]

36. Is there anything in the Constitution you respect?

Since it was all written by slave owners after all.

[BunkerHill24]

4. The 2nd amendment is murderer and should be shot, imo.

[sharesunited]

5. Paralyzed; brain damaged; wearing a bag to collect waste; post traumatic stress.

Never bathing normally again. Wounds which never heal.

This is the suffering which gun worship in the USA causes people.

For WHAT treasured liberty? No, this cannot be justified.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

7. Think about those whom that did not happen to because they were able to defend themselves...

[sharesunited]

8. We do hear that argument. The gun lovers are scrambling right now to find such stories to link to.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

12. It is the immpossible stat to prove since it is not collected but drives the anti gun bigots nuts

since it is a reasonable use.

[sharesunited]

13. Or maybe you're fantasizing a little too romantically about your sacred pistol?

[ProgressiveProfessor]

15. Unlike anti gun bigots, I don't personalize tools at that level

I have a mixed collection of firearms. None of them are revered any more than my hammers are. Just tools.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. This was pretty much debunked on an earlier thread...more bad journalism

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x244710

[jody]

9. What ProgressiveProfessor said. n/t

[Doctor_J]

10. Can't be. The NRA is just a civil rights organization

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

[slackmaster]

18. She's wrong - CDC publishes detailed information on fatal and non-fatal injuries of all kinds

I wonder if she even bothered to look for it.

http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html

[cornermouse]

19. When you drill down further

I think its rather curious that the code used most often is "Assault (homicide) by other or unspecified gun discharge". You would think they know and have entered on the death certificate most of the time whether it was a handgun or a rifle or shotgun.

Firearm death, 2006, age 10 - 14, 72.6% firearms / age 15 - 19, 85.9% firearms / age 20 - 24, 84.3% firearms / age 25 - 34, 79.7% firearms / age 35 - 44, 65.8% firearms
Those are not good statistics to try to support the NRA's usual stance.

I looked at the suicide by firearms and they are using unspecified firearm for most of them as well. You would think that in the case of suicide the "firearm" would have been somewhere in the vicinity of the body.

[slackmaster]

20. I can't figure out what kind of query you did to come up with those numbers

Are you saying that of kids 10-14 who were killed by gunshot in 2006, that 72.6% were killed by firearms?

I get 266 total age 10-14 fatally shot in 2006 for all intents combined (which includes suicide).

To put things into perspective, look at the Leading Causes of Death reports. Shootings fall very low on the scale regardless of age selected.

[cornermouse]

21. Okay.

Leading cause of death report.
Submit request without changing anything.
Homicide, age 25 - 34, total 4,725
Cause of death - firearm - 79.7% - 3,767

or if you prefer to attempt to keep the focus on the same age group only,

Homicide, age 10 - 14 total homicide 241
Cause of death - firearm - 72.6% - 175 children

Suicide age 10 - 14, total suicide 213
Cause of death - firearm - 28.7% - 62 children

Or put another way, 2006 totals were 10,860 firearm homicides and 13,054 firearm suicides.

You may think these numbers are insignificant. I doubt their families would agree.

[slackmaster]

22. I think any needless death is significant

What we really don't know is how many of those deaths would have still occurred in the absence of a firearm. In any case, it is shocking to me how high homicide ranks among all ages below 45. After that it drops out of the top 10.

[cornermouse]

23. We do know.

Cause of death is split up into homicide (firearm, suffocation, cutting, fire, poisoning, to name only some of the subcategories), suicide, unintentional with a multitude of causes (firearm deaths in that category I did not count), cancer, congenital causes, heart, respiratory, flu, diabetes, septicemia, HIV. None of the other causes come even close to firearm death. Your contention that we don't know how many would still have occurred in the absence of a firearm is inaccurate.

Total firearm deaths in 2006, including unintentional, would be 24,346 unless I made a made a addition mistake.

[slackmaster]

24. Not all homicides involve firearms

Certainly some of the ones that were committed with firearms would have occurred in the absence of a firearm, but we have no way of knowing how many. They're not all random events. Murders can involve planning and premeditation. If you really want to kill someone, there are plenty of ways to do it. Firearms are convenient and easy to get, but that doesn't mean that making them (for example) impossible to get would stop murders.

Suggesting that removing the firearm from any given situation would necessarily prevent a homicide is simplistic and IMO naive.

[cornermouse]

25. Look at the factual data which you, yourself, put out there.

Knives, blunt objects, just about all other ways are there and counted.

[slackmaster]

26. What is NOT counted...

Is how many of the murders that were done with firearms would have been done, in absence of a firearm, with some other instrument.

Surely blunt-object and edged weapon murders would increase if guns suddenly ceased to exist. We don't know how much.

[cornermouse]

27. You are using conjecture and hypothesis.

The report is dealing with known facts.

[slackmaster]

30. You are jumping to a conclusion that is not necessarily supported by the known facts

:hi:

[Jackson1999]

34. Umm not quite

"I was Dead Wrong About the NRA and CDC" Carol Marin

http://blogs.suntimes.com/marin/2009/08/i_was_dead_wrong_about_cdc_and.html

[cornermouse]

35. Umm.

What does anything that I said have to do with the article Marin wrote? If you notice, I was only referencing and/or looking at the statistics, not the article itself.

[villager]

28. Yeah, like that guy in the Pennsylvania gym -- woulda started swinging a hammer around in the dark

...after he turned out the lights, after planning for months to do it.

No doubt.

[slackmaster]

29. He's a good example

It's clear that he spend months planning to kill a bunch of innocent women. Doing that was very important to him, and he was a lot of things but not stupid. Surely he could have figured out a way of accomplishing that goal without firearms.

[Paladin]

31. Yeah, But He Didn't Have To Do It Without Firearms, Now Did He?

Since lunatics have such a preposterously easy time of getting all the guns they want in the U.S. It's going to take yet another history-altering political tragedy in this country to overcome the malignant impact of the gun militancy movement. Save some room in your gun safe for that legacy.......

[villager]

32. he's a good example, indeed, of someone who planned to use firearms

--and only firearms -- all along...

[Jackson1999]

33. Reporter was wrong. She removed the article

She was given some bad info. She took the article down.