David Frum of the Daily Beast
End the congressional ban upon studies of gun safety, urge 100 scientists from major universities.
While mortality rates from almost every
major cause of death declined dramatically over the past half century,
the homicide rate in America today is almost exactly the same as it was
in 1950," the academics wrote in a letter organized by scholars at the
University of Chicago Crime Lab research center.
"Politically-motivated constraints" left
the nation "muddling through" a problem that costs American society on
the order of $100 billion per year, it said. The federal Centers for
Disease Control has cut firearms safety research by 96 percent since the
mid-1990s, according to one estimate. Congress, pushed by the gun
lobby, in 1996 put restrictions on CDC funding of gun research into the
budget. Restrictions on other agencies were added in later years.
Just as a general rule: if you're the side shutting down scientific investigation, then you're the side that's in the wrong.