CDC′s Roybal campus in Atlanta, GA. (Photo: Wikipedia)
Dems introduced a bill this week that would give the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approximately $60 million for gun violence research.
Known as S.834, the bill would set aside $10 million in funding for each year FY-2018-2023 for the CDC to “conduct or support research on firearms safety or gun violence prevention,” according to a press release.
The bill is sponsored by Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY), and supported by nearly every gun-control advocacy group under the sun, including: Newtown Action Alliance, Stop Handgun Violence, Doctors for America, Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence united with Million Mom March, Americans for Responsible Solutions and the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Center for American Progress.
“Gun violence is ending lives and shattering families in Massachusetts and across our country,” said Sen. Markey. “Now more than ever we must study the causes of gun violence and what can be done to prevent it. No one should be afraid of more non-partisan, scientific research into this vital issue – not Republicans, not the NRA and not President Trump. I thank Rep. Maloney for her leadership on this issue and look forward to working with my colleagues to fund this critical research priority.”
“Gun violence is a public health crisis,” said Rep. Maloney. “Yet, for too long the gun lobby and its allies in Congress have prohibited our nation’s leading federal public health researchers from studying gun violence to learn more about what drives it and how it can be prevented. With 89 people dying each and every day from gun violence, our country cannot afford Members of Congress playing political games with riders or restrictions on life-saving public health research and data collection. We must finally lift this senseless gag order.”
I actually agree with the sentiment that no gun owner should be afraid of objective research into gun-related violence because the facts are actually on our side. Generally speaking, the widespread availability of firearms combined with the easing of unconstitutional restrictions (may-issue laws) on concealed carry in this country have correlated to a uniform reduction in crime, from property crime to violent crime to the murder rate, all have been trending downward amidst this expansion of 2A rights. As it turns out, more guns equals less crime.
However, my fear is that a bureaucracy like the CDC may be easily corrupted by those who hold the purse strings for its funding. If the Dems are willing to dump $60 million into CDC coffers, one wonders whether the researchers there will be compelled to come back with results tailored to the gun-grabbers’ playbook.
The other beef I have with the legislation is the notion from the sponsors that we don’t know “what drivers it [gun violence] and how it can be prevented.” That’s utter nonsense. Drugs and gangs fuel that vast majority of gun-related violence in this country. It’s not a mystery. Curb drug abuse and crackdown on gangs and crime rates will plummet. There, I just saved taxpayers $60 million.
I’ll support this as soon as the CDC fires the “researchers” who were responsible for the propaganda that got them banned from “researching” gun violence and Democrats propose giving the FCC 60 million to research Crab Grass.
This is for the people in Congress that are so deranged and stupid that they would shove $60 million up a rats ass in order to waste the money. I feel sure that would include Pelosi, Feinstein, Schumer, Warren, and conspirators Soros and Bloomberg. Even semi-intelligent people already know that gun violence is not a disease and the money would be totally wasted on the CDC “investigation”. Use the money for a good purpose such as finding a cure for a disease such as the many forms of cancer. I feel sure you would prefer to waste the money and let sick people suffer and die rather than find a cure for a deadly disease. This confirms to me and many others that YOU are the people that are SICK !!
I want to know who the heck thinks the CDC should be doing anything related to firearms. They should concentrate on medical issues as indicated by their name / charter. What part of ‘disease’ has anything to do with firearms.
Of course the CDC will be bejholdin to the Dems for their swtolen charity.
To Rep. Maloney,
I would like to correct your statement to read, the democratic party is our public health crisis.
If the dumbocrats want to give the cdc $60mil then let them pass the hat amongst themselves. Intelligent people already know the truth. That more lawful guns equals less crime.
LEAVE OUR RIGHTS ALONE!!!!!!
This is crazy.
A few months ago, the Utah Health Department randomly called me conducting a poll about health in Utah. It was an interesting poll, so I took the 10 or 15 minutes or so to help them out.
Then they began to ask about where firearms were stored in my home. What? I promptly told them that I would refuse to answer any question about firearms, since I didn’t consider firearms an issue of public health.
After the second question on firearms, the pollster promptly skipped the rest of that section of questions, apparently, and kindly moved onto the next section, like it was perfectly normal and common for me to refuse to answer (I would hope so, anyway!).
But really? Et tu, Utah? I thought Utah was gun friendly. 🙁
The dems have never met a program geared to extracting every single one of your gun rights by force.
Just say no to giving away $60 mill down a rat hole
Well there needs to be some research and statistics gathering. It seems to me that the only sats that are being gathered are by the Guardian Newspaper. In fact some law enforcement have had to use that as a source.
When I worked for the State Department, we had people from the CDC who were to go overseas and refused to touch a pistol or rifle during their training. No inherant bias here.
Awesome…and when they discover that a lot of the shooting is being done by young black males…against other black males?
That 60% is not violence but suicide…another huge problem?
That most crime guns are obtained not by theft but by straw purchases by family and friends of criminals?
I hope they publish all these findings…and more…in every major publication and newspaper. Should be mandatory for the information to be published and sent out over every news network .
Perhaps we should teach gun safety in school…since gun ownership is a part of our constitution.
Teach kids that they are NOT toys. Show them what can happen.
Nah…kids are too sensitive and fragile these days…could never handle it.
How about giving $60 million dollars back to the tax payers, who don’t really want this politically motivated garbage study. Or put it into roads and infrastructure where it was supposed to go in the first place…
Yep, its about drugs and gangs, not guns. However, a lot of money goes into the Democratic Party to polarize and give them what they perceive to be an edge, so they keep going after guns. What’s worse is the sham “research” produced. If you have a background in any field that uses statistics, you will immediately see problems with these studies, especially those funded by the Bloomberg School of Public Health. There are a set of studies by B. Kalesan that were funded by Bloomie; however, a few of the journals published the early draft documents. Those were more objective and at least one that I read did not support gun control But what a surprise that the final version was strongly pro gun control. Want to stop violence? Stop focusing on guns, and focus on the cause of violence – drugs, gangs, poor socioeconomic conditions, poor education, mental health, and the like. When it comes to suicide, remember that it is a personal choice, albeit one that probably should be avoided in many, if not most cases. If you want to help reduce suicides, then focus on mental health – not pill pushing treatments, but real treatment and acknowledgement that institutionalization is required in some cases.
We all know how this would turn out. Are these gun-grabber Dems sponsoring this because they want (and expect) honest research and unbiased conclusions? Do any of us believe the CDC will start from an unbiased position? Hahahaha!
Far better uses for that 60 million of OUR tax dollars! Let your Congresspersons hear that you know how big a farce and waste of money this is.
My experience while with the Department of State was the folks from the CDC would not touch a gun, even when it was part of their training to go overseas. No bias there.
Only our goverment could think it would cost 60 Million dollars to do research.
This exact program was done approximately 20/25 years ago and was finally stopped because inevitably the conclusion was always to take guns out of the public domain. There is no ‘disease’ involved here but ‘normal’ human interaction. Someone without the ability to restrain uncivil urges attempts to take something from a person who doesn’t agree with the intended outcome. There’s no disease involved, but a difference on how a functioning society conducts interactions. So, once again the government is being convinced to spend money on a program that won’t work. But it will ‘make work’ for some of the leftist trained idiots the ‘higher education system’ is producing these days. They, of course, will come to understand that with more money they can solve this problem. So far its been by changing definitions of social violence to medical terms. This is the spiral our country finds itself in on as many fronts as there are bureaucracies.
Write your senators. Your only hope. Now there’s a disease if ever there was one…but its the one we’ve got.
How about taking that 60 million dollars to a group of four (4) retired E-7’s from and fix the V.A. for a change ? It’s glaringly obvious that the democrats could not, or would not even try for the past eight years at the very least. Put the dollars to a good use for a change.
There is going to be a day when there is a showdown between the liberals and the rest of the country. I doubt this will end good for anyone but horrible for the liberals.
Get rid of most of the lunatic Democrats, most of our problems would seem easily fixable. All they ever do is blow things way out of proportion, can’t find their heads with both hands. Blame it on Russia is all they ever say! Russia has their own problems, they sure as hell don’t want to get mixed up in ours. What the hell does the CDC have to do with gun violence? If caring about the 2nd. Amendment is a disease, then I got it bad. Another classic case of Government overreach. Does Trump know about this? Bet he doesn’t. 60 million? is that all? Communism is good till you run out of other peoples money!Schumer and Pelosi are probably behind it!”We’ll fix it let’s just throw a big wad of money at it and maybe it will go away.
Sixty MILLION dollars to produce biased statistics and a pre-determined outcome. Anybody who doesn’t believe that voted for hillary, schumer, feinschteeeen, klobachar, franken AND pelosi….no doubt. These people are despicable. And if this passes, then shame on the Center for Disease Control for getting involved in another attempt to destroy the Constitution: CDC deserves to lose all respect and credibility.
Democrats love this idea because it would link gun ownwership with being a disease. Think about it.
Majority of the firearms deaths are suicides. Why not just address the causes of suicides? Next is homicides committed with hand guns. Again mostly caused by drugs or gangs. every policeman in Chicago knows what is driving their murders. Just ask them. If the sposors of this bill really wanted to address suicides, they’d offer incentives to employers to hire 40 & 50 year olds that have dropped out of the workforce since 2007.
As we saw with Hilary’s bogus claim of “33,000 gun deaths,” when you mix politics with science, you get junk science.
What bogus claim…? That is the actual number of average gun deaths per year in the USA.
I am very pro 2-A…but facts are facts. That number is pretty accurate.
But…it does not say that about 60% of those are suicides. Deaths…but self-inflicted.
Lets waste more money….
Precisely.
Wouldn’t $60 million spent on infrastructure repair be of far greater benefit?
Not really, it might paint new stripes on a couple of hundred miles of Interstate but would probably be used to give bonuses to a handful of political hires.
Democrats believe in ideas like this? Democrats think something like this will solve a problem? We need funding to research those two ideas, because they are just crazy and absurd. Democrats push ideas like this to spend our money with the disguise that some good for all mankind will come of it, when really, they are just pushing for their own ideas and their own agenda. We need to write to our elected politicians to oppose such crazy and wasteful uses of our money.
Democrats believe in this kind of thing? And they fancy themselves as intelligent? Those are two concepts that need research funding, because they are just crazy. It’s too easy for them to spend our money on ideas that only benefit them, but are disguised as good ideas for all of mankind.
If they did a study it would be redundant because we already know the results of the study…….unhinged, immoral, unaccountable, irrational, liberal democrats are 100% of the gun violence problem.