Hacker News Reader

Comment by lainga | Hacker News Reader

Why was the CDC asking about firearms?

The "main goal" of the CDC "is to protect public health and safety through the control and prevention of disease, injury, and disability in the US and internationally" [1]. Guns cause injury and disability.

The CDC's work around guns has been an area of "partisan dispute" [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_an...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_an...

Guns don’t cause injury and disability more than they prevent it. Sorry, but that’s the truth.

We have 340,000,000 people, more guns than that. And 10,000 homicides where the vast majority are drug and gang related.

We have a problem, but it’s not with guns.

Edit: more truth, more downvotes. I’m curious as to why there is such effort against an enumerated right - when putting even 1/10th the effort into fighting heart disease which kills 700,000 a year would have such a greater impact?

Guy says it's an area of partisan dispute, and you write a post that proves it.

Yes, it's partisan. Your facts may be right, but the argument is one sided.

It’s not partisan to me, i could care less how fellow gun owners vote.

One side has emotional plees, logical fallacies, or stubborn ignorance of the topic - I won’t appologoze for not being on that side.

Guns have an amplifier effect on suicides, domestic violence.

Guns have a force multiplier effect on self defense.

Guess which one of our arguments happens more frequently?

Pretty sure it's domestic violence.

Many countries that have essentially completely banned guns somehow have also managed to have low injury / death rates. Yes crimes still occur but are much less lethal with knives or other weapons compared to guns. So saying guns cause less injury vs preventing it sounds like it could be true but also is a symptom of our current culture in the US that has zillions of guns.

>>Many countries that have essentially completely banned guns somehow have also managed to have low injury / death rates.

As long as you go back only a few years - many of those same countries have experienced genocides and holocausts from their powerful governments acting against a disarmed citizenry and driving their long-term violent death rates to astronomical levels.

I would say that this observation is relevant because the argument for citizens being armed is to curtail the abuse of a powerful government.

Sadly this is true.

This is what guns are supposed to protect you against.

At this moment in history, I am way more concerned about the thread of far-right violence than of a derelict government that needs to be put down. What if the people hoarding the guns end up allying with an authoritarian regime instead of rising up against it?

In that case the authoritarian regime already has all the guns it needs and the threat is not significantly bigger than before.

> many of those same countries have experienced genocides and holocausts from their powerful governments acting against a disarmed citizenry

More from the fact that a few armed citizens aren’t a match for an industrial state’s military. The Jews in the Warsaw uprising had guns, grenades, etc. but nowhere near enough people to defend against an army.

If you want to avoid atrocities, strong civil institutions matter a lot more than fantasies about LARPing Somalia.

> The Jews in the Warsaw uprising had guns, grenades, etc. but nowhere near enough people to defend against an army.

Well, they delayed the Germans. That is impressive. Another time when the international community isn't too busy looking the other way it might buy enough time to save some people.

> If you want to avoid atrocities, strong civil institutions matter a lot more

Don't disagree. But there is no conflict between driving carefully and also wearing a seat belt.

They shouldn’t be, but it’s not new. The big fuss about the CDC and guns happened in 92/93/94 when Clinton came in and wanted ammo for his upcoming gun ban proposals. Funded some absolutely junk science that had been almost all entirely discredited. Such gems as “you are X % more likely to die of a gun if you own one” that was based on police reported deaths only where the victim owned a gun then applied to all citizens. The data for these “studies” was never fully released.

The 1996 congress came in and slapped the CDC down from being used as a propoganda tool again. The Dickey amendment never banned research as many like to claim - but did ban advocacy of gun bans - imagine that once they couldn’t be used as a tool the junk science stopped.

Should the CDC be focused on guns? Explicitly no, but it’s not new. Of the studies since 96, none have found a link to guns and violence or gun ownership and higher death rates.

Edit: downvotes for truth, please don’t turn into reddit.

> The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the leading national public health institute of the United States. (source: wikipedia).

People dying is a health issue, and it's CDCs job to investigate how to prevent / minimise deaths. Doesn't matter if the health issues come from viruses or guns. They also investigate deaths related to motor vehicle crashes etc.

And IIRC they can ask about anything, just not publish it themselves (what a stupid law the americans came up with). So other people getting their hands on those numbers and publishing themselves, why not…

Public health hazard.

[Edit] The author, Gary Klek, is a firearm-ownership supporter.

>[Edit] The author, Gary Klek, is a firearm-ownership supporter.

Can you state clearly the implication of this?

The wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kleck talks about his research, advocacy, and testimony.

Perhaps someone who makes a living advocating for gun rights might focus on finding supporting arguments for gun ownership?

If the data is sound, what does it matter what they believe?

Check the wikipedia article below. There is not universal agreement amongst researchers.

Looks like there are some people trying to use the "anti-smoking" campaign as a blueprint for an "anti-gun" campaign. I found a couple links like this when I searched:

http://theconversation.com/public-health-research-reduced-sm...

I doubt any "motivated" research like this is going to be good science. It just seems impossible.

Epidemiologist study epidemics

Reply on news.ycombinator.com