By: Teresa Mull
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) latest tactic is perhaps the most despicable one to come from an anti-gun institution. Reason.com reports the agency’s director, Rochelle Walensky, is using the tragedy of suicide to push her progressive political agenda.
Of course, if the CDC’s research did, in fact, lead to a lower suicide rate and fewer homicides, it would have everyone’s support. The problem is, though, that the agency has a long history of using so-called “research” to paint the picture they want to use to disarm law-abiding citizens.
Reason noted as far back as 1997 that “serious scholars have been criticizing the CDC’s ‘public health’ approach to gun research for years.”
One of the “CDC’s favorite gun researchers,” for example, found that guns kept in homes are more likely to be used for suicide and accidental shootings than for self-defense.
Reports Reason:
One glaring problem with this study is that Kellermann’s team limited its analysis to cases in which guns were used to “injure or kill” someone. As scholars such as the Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck have been pointing out for decades, counting only shootings vastly underestimates the use of guns for self-defense, which according to survey data typically involves nothing more than brandishing a weapon to deter an attacker.
Though Walensky claims she will conduct her research “embracing wholeheartedly the firearm-owning community,” the CDC’s history and Joe Biden’s gun control wish list are reasons to doubt the agency’s intent.
Read Reason’s full analysis here.
Teresa Mull ([email protected]) is editor of Gunpowder Magazine.