Friday, March 18, 2016

N.R.A. LOBBYING

“In 1993, The New England Journal of Medicine
published a study showing that ‘keeping
a gun in the home
w
as strongly and independently associated with an increased
ri
sk of homicidein that home. The researchers had been funded
b
y the C.D.C.'s [National Centers for Disease Control] National
Center for Injury Prevention
, and the N.R.A. [National Rifle
Association
] responded by trying to get the prevention center
defunded. It didn't succeed, but, in 1996, Congress amended
an appropriati
ons bill to the effect that 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.It was a little like saying that no research
on the health effects of smoking should be interpretable as
anti-smoking. Congress also removed $2.6 million from the
C
.D.C.'s budget - the precise amount that had gone to the
prevention center's research - and then restored it, earmarked
for an entirely different purpose
. As a result, one of the
study's authors said in a public-radio interview last spring,
"many, many people stopped doing gun research."


Margaret Talbot, “Obama’s Guns Gambit,”a Talk of the Town
essay in The New Yorker, January 18, 2016, pp: 23-24.