NRA hit piece

[ericire12]

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

Is NRA part of the problem in counting the shootings?
By
Carol Marin
on August 5, 2009 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

August 5, 2009

BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist

Four years ago, Arne Duncan says, he became "obsessed with numbers" he couldn't get.

He was the CEO of Chicago Public Schools then, not the Secretary of Education he is today.
» Click to enlarge image
Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin

How many of his students were getting shot, he wanted to know?

"I could tell you exactly how many schools we closed, how many children had the H1N1 virus," he said Tuesday from his office in Washington.

But not how many Chicago kids getting shot. Or data to compare Chicago with other cities.

"No one, literally, could tell me anything," Duncan said.

And so he began collecting his own statistics on how many CPS students found themselves at the wrong end of a gun.

It's a horrifying number, now estimated at 500 a year.

"Estimated" is the key word here.

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.

So much so that when it comes to suicides, the CDC does not break out its data with regard to the method used. Hanging? Drug overdose? Or gun?

If you don't break the numbers out specifically, well, then you end up talking less about guns, don't you?

And that, clearly, is the point.

As phenomenal as the work of the CDC is, it lives at the mercy of a Congress still too afraid of the NRA.

Given the shooting epidemic in Chicago and other cities, that's a scandal.

[Pathfinder]

Sad. Carol Marin used to be a half-way decent news reader in Chicago TV. Had a big blow-up over her canning, went to another station for a while. Looks like she is receding to her professional level with a column in the ST.

A biased, emotion-driven column, quoting the VPC? That's a joke. Especially that quote - "Information is the gun lobby's enemy". The VPC twists every stat it gets its hands on, like the "dead kids" stat that includes gang bangers shooting each other (conveniently ignoring the fact that the older BGs use kids to do a lot of the dirty work as initiation and because if they're caught this kids get turned loose or get a light juvie sentence, not hard time in the slammer.

And Arne Duncan was and probably still is a hard-core Chicago political wanker.

[tt11758]

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."

If the numbers TRULY aren't available, then the above quoted assertion about "firearms injuries being one of the leading causes of hospitalization and death for Americans" MUST just be something that Ms. Monahan simply pulled out of her ass to bolster her argument.  Afterall, if the numbers aren't available, how does she KNOW the accuracy of her assertion?

Or could this just be another case of the anti's making shit up as they go along, because the facts simply don't support their position?

[Kid Shelleen]

Arne Duncan is a radical Chicago gun hater. The NRA published a very enlightening exposé of Duncan in Americas First Freedom.

[tombogan03884]

  These are people who will be killed when REAL Americans purge the socialists from our society.

[Sponsor]

[MikeBjerum]

This clown needs to quit blaming the NRA for "supressing" numbers, and get after the Chicago Public School System for not having that number.  They have the number of students that come to school, they have numbers of insurance claims, they have every number imaginable for what happens in their buildings.  If these numbers are available it is their own damn fault!

[WatchManUSA]

  These are people who will be killed when REAL Americans purge the socialists from our society.

Tom, perhaps a bit over the top?  I'm  pissed of about things too but, killed?

[tombogan03884]

Tom, perhaps a bit over the top?  I'm  pissed of about things too but, killed?

That's what happens in revolutions, the opposition is either exiled, killed, or terrorized into submission. And Revolution is the only way the communists will be purged as the last election shows the power of ACORN .
All of BO's current policies are geared toward disenfranchising those who oppose him.

[Kid Shelleen]

Tom, perhaps a bit over the top?  I'm  pissed of about things too but, killed?

Don't worry WatchMan, Tom is not going to get "Postal" on anyone, not unless there is an outright armed revolution. I think that the actual possibility of that is very, very slim to none.

Let him vent and dream of guns and ropes.

Sic 'em Tom.

[tombogan03884]

Don't worry WatchMan, Tom is not going to get "Postal" on anyone, not unless there is an outright armed revolution. I think that the actual possibility of that is very, very slim to none.

Let him vent and dream of guns and ropes.

Sic 'em Tom.

You're fairly close Kid, if I do anything extreme it will either be self defense or I will have A LOT of company.
I think the possibility of armed conflict increases with every action BO takes though.
Besides, I only weigh about 160, with most of those fat cat SOB's I couldn't hoist them by myself.