Three Cheers for Congress and Staunch Gun Lovers: Hip, Hip, Boo Hoo

NRA Long Ago in a Far, Far Away Place

NRA and Backers Today

Congressional Reaction to Any Rational Gun Control Talk

President Obama gave great remarks following the latest mass shooting on campus in Oregon – his words have meaning, I wonder who is listening?

An excellent article here from Vox.com ... some editing and inserts by me to fit the blog (and with no malice whatsoever). The Vox message is just as clear as intended, and their lead-in sentence is catchy: “The federal government is willfully ignorant about guns.” More from the main site:

“When you don't know enough about something, your reaction is probably to research it — on Google, on Wikipedia, at the library. The federal government is supposed to respond in a similar way when it has questions about certain laws and policies. So if there's a public health crisis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is usually charged with looking into the matter by funding studies and research that look into the best policies to deal with the issue.”

The kicker as it were: “Back in 1996, Congress approved a budget restriction that stated, "None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control." The ban remains to this day, and it was later extended to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), another federal agency that studies public health issues.”

“The ban was originally intended to stymie advocacy work in favor of gun control, its supporters say. But the CDC, concerned of any political backlash, effectively halted all significant research on gun violence. And Congress has held the ban in place for the past couple of decades.”

“As a result, CDC research funding for gun violence fell by 96 percent between 1996 and 2012. Further, major public research funding for gun violence prevention is estimated at $2 million annually, yet by contrast, in 2011, NIH devoted $21 million to the study of headaches.” As they say, go figure.

“The ban doesn't apply to some agencies, like the National Institute of Justice, but it does apply to two big research arms of government, seriously curtailing the amount of money that can flow to studying gun violence. Public health researchers argue it's stopped more scientists from entering the field, since there's a good chance they may not be able to get the resources they need to conduct studies on gun violence.”

Directly related here and published by the Washington Post of an excellent research report on data collected by Mother Jones looking back at the weapons used in the last 30 years of mass shootings in the U.S. show that legal weapons are the norm and excellent chart to see.

I conclude: “Lock and load” and “Rock and Roll” and all thanks the NRA and other such 100% “guns for everyone, all the time, and any place they choose openly carry advocates” – give them a big round of applause – please take a bow, and thank you so much (tongue in cheek summation).  

Thanks for stopping.