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Comment by larnmar | Hacker News Reader

On the other hand, shouldn’t the Center for Disease Control spend its time and focus on things that could reasonably be argued fall under the heading of “disease control”? By all means, gun violence research should be conducted by, say, the Department of Justice.

Like many policies in the US at this stage, the goal appears not to be good governance but simply “pwning the other side”.

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Quote from this website [1]

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“Gun violence is America’s most preventable disease. I say that because it’s almost entirely preventable and the numbers of people affected are so high.”

    Judy Schaechter, MD, MBA
    University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine

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[1] https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/disease-gun-violence

You're quoting someone who clearly has innumeracy issues and no business practicing medicine.

Type II diabetes kills 1.5 MM people annually ( if Judy were to get out a calculator, she would find that this is a smidgen lower than the "so high" 14k gun homicides per annum ), is an actual disease, and is nearly completely preventable.

If Judy Schaechter, MD doesn't know this, then it calls into question her ability to practice medicine.

Incidentally, the medical errors caused by medical staff who can't do basic math, as Judy clearly cannot, kills another quarter million annually in the US.

Perhaps gun suicides are preventable, but murder has been a disease that humans will likely always suffer from. We did it long before we had firearms, and we'll still be doing it when we all have blaster rifles.

You could say a similar thing about car accidents. Does that make car accidents a disease?

Regardless of whether you classify it as a disease, the CDC does in fact track and research car accident deaths and injuries: https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/motor-vehicle-safety/index.ht...

Additionally there are two federal agencies (NHTSB and NTSB) that regulate the various elements of vehicular safety at the national level, on top of state DMVs and transportation departments. By comparison, the federal BATFE is basically hamstrung on firearms regulation, and outside a few States so are its state level equivalents.

Additionally, CDC funds and publishes research of motor vehicle safety[1].

Their seat belts topic is a good example: https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/seatbelts/pubs.html

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/

I also like to see what is the argument for treating gun violence as disease but not car accidents.

They also are experts in the study of epidemics broadly which many people have noted mass shootings look like.

Similarly gun violence encompasses suicide and domestic abuse which clearly fall into the expertise of the NiH

The u.s. government has a history of departments performing work that would not seem to logically fit with their stated intention or primary focus. I don't think that alone implies a misuse of authority. For example, the secret service is in charge of protecting government officials but is also tasked with investigating forgery.

This could be a reasonable argument. Unfortunately it is not the one used by CDC officials. They are literally saying gun violence is a disease.

>The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the leading national public health institute of the United States. The CDC is a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Its main goal is to protect public health and safety through the control and prevention of disease, injury, and disability in the US and internationally.

Gun violence is definitely a public health issue.

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