the gun lobby has effectively shut down government-financed research on gun violence for 17 years.

[spanone]

What We Don’t Know Is Killing Us

In one of the 23 executive orders on gun control signed this month, President Obama instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal science agencies to conduct research into the causes and prevention of gun violence. He called on Congress to aid that effort by providing $10 million for the C.D.C. in the next budget round and $20 million to expand the federal reporting system on violent deaths to all 50 states, from the current 18.

That Mr. Obama had to make such a decree at all is a measure of the power of the gun lobby, which has effectively shut down government-financed research on gun violence for 17 years. Research on guns is crucial to any long-term effort to reduce death from guns. In other words, treat gun violence as a public health issue.

But that is precisely what the National Rifle Association and other opponents of firearms regulation do not want. In the absence of reliable data and data-driven policy recommendations, talk about guns inevitably lurches into the unknown, allowing abstractions, propaganda and ideology to fill the void and thwart change.

The research freeze began at a time when the C.D.C. was making strides in studying gun violence as a public health problem. Before that, the issue had been regarded mainly as a law enforcement challenge or as a problem of disparate acts by deranged offenders, an approach that remains in sync with the N.R.A. worldview.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/opinion/sunday/what-we-dont-know-is-killing-us.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

[Walk away]

1. All of the bullshit garbage that Gun Lovers have been spewing as facts....

for years is finally going to run smack up against reality. If the NRA thinks this was a bad month wait until they see what the American people think of guns when they find out how bad things really are. As these new studies start to emerge they will be news and the country will be waking up to the most deadly terrorists we face every day, gun manufacturers and their lobby the NRA.

[Paladin]

2. Next Step: A Director For BATF.

The gun lobby has prevented that agency from having a director for over six years. Enough is enough.