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 relationship.” 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 firearm-related 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.karendecoster.com.

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RP said:

... "... 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 ..." If you mean that people who rob liquor stores with guns are more likely to be shot by the proprietors than people who rob liquor stores without guns, I guess it makes sense. The fact is, an armed citizenry REDUCES crime. The argument posed in this article is nonsensical. The presence of many liquor stores is responsible for more gun violence, therefore guns should be outlawed. This makes as much sense as: The presence of many highways is responsible for more automobile accidents, therefore automobiles should be outlawed.

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October 27, 2009
Votes: +15

DDW said:

I repeat yet again Soon, only criminals, thugs and government agents (all the aforementioned being the same) will have weapons. I repeat yet again, if the government, at all levels, was truly interested in the well being of the private citizens, there would be government sponsored classes teaching people how to use and maintain weapons. But that's NOT going to happen as their only apparent interest is to enslave us. ANY government that fears armed citizens is a government that needs to be closely watched every single minute of every single day.

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October 27, 2009
Votes: +23

AmericanFreeman said:

	DDW, Your forgot to mention freedom loving patriotic Americans in your list. Only a slave would let some unconstitutional statute decide his fate. Your right to keep and bear arms is not subject to law or opinion. Don't let anyone tell you to disarm for any reason because if you do, you will get what you deserve.
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October 27, 2009
Votes: +22

ArnePaul said:

"I would never invade the United States. There would be a gun behind every blade of grass." Isoroku Yamamoto Once H.R. 45, Obama's National Gun Registry and Citizen Disarmament Act is passed, it'll only be a few short steps to total disarmament of the population (except Obama's 1 million plus "civilian force". Can you say Brown Shirts?). But the analogies appear less and less like Nazi Germany but rather more and more like Stalinist Russia. Of course, the average person doesn't understand the much larger scale horrors Stalin implemented over Hitler because Joseph succeeded where Adolph ultimately failed. Stalin killed an estimated 20-30 million, perhaps more, it's hard to tell really because he then had history rewritten and censored so many of the purged never officially existed. Now don't you feel safe with BO appointing so many Czars? Oh, btw, oppose H.R. 45, Obama's National Gun Registry and Citizen Disarmament Act, maybe there are enough free-minded citizens left to stop the next portion of history from being rewritten at some future date. You're a real cutie, Karen. ;^)

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October 28, 2009
Votes: +14

DDW said:

Dear American Freeman I agree with you wholeheartedly. I was raised in a gun oriented family. My father and grandfather (both gone now) were both licensed gunsmiths. My point is that, the way things are going, only criminals, thugs and government agents will have weapons and it seems to me that criminals, thugs and government agents these days are all the same thing. I didn't mention American Patriots as I do not consider them criminals or thugs in any way, shape or form. Law abiding gun owning Patriots are most likely the ONLY thing keeping a rogue government at bay right now, just as our Founding Fathers said.

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October 28, 2009
Votes: +10

BrianTinNY said:

Elitist Intellectuals It's the same in every age, every epoch of human history. An elitist Intellectual class presumes the right to dictate how all the rest of the people shall live their lives. It's a metastasizing cancer upon the body politic that we can witness daily. In every field of human endeavor there is, and always will be, groups who through their educational attainment, their station in life, or their position in the established hierarchy, truly believe they are building a better world. If only the masses would listen to them, then Nirvana will finally arrive. They can never be wrong, and if their ideas prove unworkable among the general population then the fault is certainly not with their worldview. No, the fault lies with some 'other' that has foiled their perfect plan, preventing the establishment of heaven on earth, wrought by human hands - theirs. History is replete with examples. Hitler believed it, Stalin, Mao, Pol-Pot, Idi Amin - all of them megalomaniacs who believed theirs was "the way", "the truth" and "the life". These intellectual elitists are an outward manifestation of Frederick Bastiat's observation about those who seek to live off the fruits of the labor of others - the political means, vs. the economic means - as he wrote so eloquently in the mid 19th Century. As a species we humans are doomed because we never learn. The pied pipers of Intellectual-dom are leading people to their own destruction. I don't know what's worse, that they truly believe their delusions, or that there are so many sheep out there ready and willing to be led to their own destruction.

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October 28, 2009
Votes: +12

The Brachiating Troglodyte said:

Excellent article on confounding, Karen! As a physician familiar with scientific research, I am delighted to see your common-sense understanding of a principle which defies the understanding of many research scientists - confounding. "Confounding" is the association of two separate variables, and assuming a causal relationship between them, when they may both derive from an outside, unidentified cause. ("Chance" is when they are selected and coincidentally seem to be related.) The Overcoat Problem is the canonical example of confounding. -worldwide, in July through September, in Ottawa, Minneapolis and Moscow, there is a HUGE uptick in overcoat sales. These are the months when most overcoats are sold. However, the median temperatures are in the 60's-80's (F). Several months later, the temperature drops. This phenomenon is seen in other cities, to a VERY diminished degree - Los Angeles, Dallas and Miami have VERY SIMILAR temperatures during the months of July through September, but FEWER overcoats are sold. The anthropological record shows that humans wore FAR FEWER furs during periods of relative global warmth, even in northern climates - and FAR MORE even in southern climates during global cooling. WHAT IS THE SOLUTION TO GLOBAL WARMING? Simple. Please everyone buy overcoats. Even in Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami and Phoenix. This will bring the temperatures down. We will pass a legislative mandate for overcoat purchases, with fines and penalties, and PRESTO! Global Warming FIXED! (Those who are also rather astute will realize that the correlation of "anthropogenic greenhouse gas" production and "global temperature increase" is merely a greener version of the Overcoat Hypothesis.) Shazzam! This sciency stuff is SIMPLE!!

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October 28, 2009 | url
Votes: +3

The Brachiating Troglodyte said:

On Elitist Intellectuals I do appreciate your observations, Brian: The pied pipers of Intellectual-dom are leading people to their own destruction. I don't know what's worse, that they truly believe their delusions, or that there are so many sheep out there ready and willing to be led to their own destruction. I offer the term pseudo-intellectual for use here.  Like many other areas of our society, American universities have been overrun by the opportunists who seek self-aggrandizement in the academic sphere.  I find that the independent thought is most commonly seen at the vke, ag and tech colleges - because of their general mandates to really teach people how to really do things.  No matter the theory, date palms won't grow in Wisconsin.

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October 28, 2009 | url
Votes: +6

Ol' Grey Ghost said:

Never Surrender and Never Appease It can be assured that those who fear arms in the hands of the people will use any form of lies or manufactured illusions to cover their desire to disarm the populace and so they should never be compromised with whatever their stated reason for some form of government interference with the Natural Right to keep, bear, and use arms to protect oneself and one's family, home, or local community. "Is There A 'Reasonable' Gun Control Law?" http://olgreyghost.blogspot.com/2009/06/is-there-reasonable-gun-control-law.html

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October 28, 2009 | url
Votes: +6

ron2112 said:

	gun control Reasonable gun control> Isn't that "A" placing the second bullet in the hole of the first. Or is it "B" using both hands, I can't remember maybe it's A&B. As for government interpitation of gun control,the only control they want is control of our lives. Only a fool beleives other wise. And so far theyr'e succeding little by little,step by step inch by inch. WAKE up AMERICA 2010>
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October 28, 2009 | url
Votes: +5

Buster said:

	... As Joe Mccarthy said about one of the Senators that was raving about Joes atempt to identify communists in USA government " Somepne should get a net and take some place where it is quite." Does anyone remember who JOE was??????Look it and you will be surprised at what was in the Whitehouse working President.Like ewise the anti-gunners!!!!!!
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October 28, 2009
Votes: +3

RodneyH said:

	Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! ...or....slight-of-hand a la The Wizard of Oz Oh my guns must be bad!! (cries the 'good doctor'). Oddly enough, if you examine the facts closely, you will find that bad medicine, bad hospitals, and mostly BAD DOCTORS kill many more innocent persons in this country than guns do. And that is a verifiable fact.
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October 28, 2009
Votes: +7

nutjob said:

I agree I agree completely with the part about guns using more funds to care for gun violence. The solution... Teach these guys that want to use guns for self defense NOT TO WOUND BUT TO KILL THEIR ASSAILANT!! Center mass, and, if need be, a head shot. No medical treatment, just send the meat wagon, with a one way ticket straight to the grave. I mean, c'mon, how hard is it for everyone to understand? it has been stated over and over again so many times it should be like scripture. More laws do nothing at all except harm the innocent. Nobody gets that because they do not care for anyones personal well-being, just the money that elitists and special intrest groups put in their campaign funds.

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October 28, 2009
Votes: +6

AmericanFreeman said:

My point, DDW Is that every human being who draws breath has the right to keep and bear arms. Whether they "abide laws" or not. When our Creator blessed His kind with life, He charged us with the duty to preserve it, by force if necessary. Just like our Founding Fathers intended when they carefully considered and proclaimed the right (not privilege) "shall not be infringed." It was this way up until NAZI gun legislation was Americanized and imposed upon our country in the form of the GCA 1968.

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October 29, 2009
Votes: +4

DDW said:

	And I still maintain That the crime problem would disappear in a very, very short period of time were more citizens armed and able to defend themselves. And yes, AmericanFreeman, I do see your point and, again, I agree with you completely.
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October 29, 2009
Votes: +3

DDW said:

	P.S. to AmericanFreeman I forgot to mention that I see your point in my adding the words "law abiding". It creates a loophole not included or intended by out Founding Fathers. In the future I will omit those two words. Thanks for educating me.
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October 29, 2009
Votes: +3

AmericanFreeman said:

	DDW knows... An armed society really IS a polite society. Violent crime would be as rare as the repeal of unconstitutional legislation if every potential victim were able to effectively defend themselves. Also, tax dollars would support more important endeavors than the profits of corporate prisons. Although less economically viable, a dead violent offender is really no offender at all.
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October 30, 2009
Votes: +1

Mark Roberts said:

Mr. Wasn't it great when the framers of the constitution guaranteed the people to keep and ber arms so we could protect ourselves from our own government? Well that was when they all had muskets! How in the world do we, as private citizens, expect to stand up to all the military toys we have paid our government to produce to use against foreign enemies and ultimately on us? Do we think a few handguns, shotguns and some assault rifles are going to make a difference to trained soldiers armed with laser guided missiles, night vision GPS heads up display range finding infrared radar depleted uranium etc, etc equipment? I'm going to use all the ammo I have when the day comes but I have illusions about the outcome. Freedom will die along with all of us that know the way it really should be.

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October 31, 2009
Votes: -1

AmericanFreeman said:

Have faith, Mark How do we stand against them? We stand UNITED! They're already outnumbered and outgunned. That's why they keep pushing more and more gun control on us. Our founding fathers didn't win their war but, they did win our freedom. Relentless courage and determination was the key. To suppress the defense of our Republic, any military would have to raze all of our neighborhoods with "Vulcans" firing from "Spookies" at thirty-thousand feet. Any attempt by them to force compliance on the ground will be met with CQB and long-range resistance, rendering much of their technological advantage impotent; "Red Dawn" style. Besides, any meth-addled home invader can gear up with NVGs, Level III body armor and simulator flash grenades and attack us at four in the morning, just like the jackboots who are already doing it. Once some of the enemy fall, though, their gear and weapons will be reclaimed and used to our advantage. We aren't completely vulnerable like so many other societies in world history. Just get your spirit right and pledging the ultimate sacrifice won't feel so scary. Hell, I look forward to falling for such a noble and righteous cause, for me & mine and for you & yours. There really is no other choice. At least not if you will be leaving this world to someone you love.

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November 01, 2009
Votes: +4