Congressman calls for repeal of the Dickey Amendment

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Source: https://twitter.com/MartinHeinrich/stat ... 9788877825

For those not familiar, the Dickey Amendment prevents the Center For Disease Control and Prevention from studying gun violence and its effects on public health.

[TGLS]

Good. Only a charlatan fears facts.

[Admiral X]

I view this claim much in the same light I do the claim that porn represents a threat to public health.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Clarify which claim you refer to.

[Admiral X]

Seems pretty straightforward to me. If they were trying to study what makes these manlets snap and go shooting people, that'd be one thing, but the way they're putting it, this just seems like a lame attempt to undermine the Second Amendment in the same way claiming porn represents a public health crisis is a lame attempt to undermine the First.

[Deledrius]

There is no claim, because there is no research, which is a huge part of the problem. We can't even have a reasonable discussion on how to address the issue because there aren't even any data on which to begin forming hypotheses on what the issue(s) is. It's ridiculous that there would be an effective ban on collecting the numbers and examining the facts, but such is the world we're living in (or at least, those of us in the USA).

If one asks the questions "what effects (if any) does 'X' have on gun violence" but is only met with "I dunno", we're still at step zero on even thinking about this problem, let alone formulating possible solutions; only then can we have the arguments about what's acceptable to actually implement.

Otherwise, it's just a bunch of people arguing opinions in a void of ignorance.

[Darth Wedgius]

I agree that government funds should be able to be used to study gun violence. I wish I could say I expect a decent signal-to-noise ratio about the results, but it could be worthwhile.

It seems odd for the CDC to study it, but they have studied automobile deaths before. That is, the deaths of people in or caused by automobiles. If they studied the deaths of automobiles, Optimus Prime alone could get his own study.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Maybe it's easier if you describe it as "sudden-onset lead poisoning?"

[CharlesPhipps]

I'm of two minds here:

1. Yes, Gun violence is ridiculous in America and gets people killed because the gun companies want to sell and sell constantly.

2. It's not a disease. It's a social ill. The CDC is great but its like studying poverty or racism.

There's also no need for research as we KNOW gun violence is vile and killing Americans.

More research won't change the fact it's corruption and powerful lobbies keeping guns everywhere regardless of danger or for what use they're there for.

[Robovski]

I thought the Rand Group was undertaking a study.