Junk Science Receives High Praise
from Gun Ban Lobby
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"...[T]he high praise... actually confirms what NRA has been saying all along..." |
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It should come as no surprise that the gun-ban lobby formerly known as
HCI uses tragically flawed "research" to promote its gun-ban agenda, its
alliance with anti-gun "public health" activists recently reached new
lows. Last week, the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research
announced the release of a "study" that has been touted by anti-gun
extremists as justification for imposing draconian restrictions on
law-abiding gun owners, such as licensing and registration schemes.
Michael D. Barnes, president of the gun-ban lobby, announced, "This
study confirms what we've been saying all along: gun laws work."
Barnes's statement, however, couldn't possibly be farther from the
truth. In fact, the high praise from Barnes and his gun-ban cohorts
actually confirms what NRA has been saying all along: the gun-ban
movement regularly relies on "research" that is flawed, misleading, and
is anchored in an extremist anti-gun bias.
This latest "research" from Hopkins, a study of licensing and
registration laws, uses tracing data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
& Firearms (BATF) in an attempt to support its conclusion that licensing
and registration schemes are effective methods for keeping firearms out
of the hands of criminals. However, BATF tracing data have been proven
to be worthless for such research. In 1992, the bipartisan
Congressional Research Service informed Congress that the BATF tracing
system is "designed to help law enforcement agencies identify the
ownership path of individual firearms. It was not designed to collect
statistics.... Firearms selected for tracing do not constitute a
random sample and cannot be considered representative of the larger
universe of all firearms used by criminals, or of any subset of that
universe. As a result, data from the tracing system may not be
appropriate for drawing inferences...."
BATF even acknowledges that it
"does not always know if a firearm being traced has been used in a
crime." In other words, the foundation of the "research" produced by
Hopkins and praised by Barnes (and paid for through the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention with your tax dollars) is completely
worthless. Of course, what more could we expect from Barnes, who
earlier this year fabricated a Supreme Court quote and grossly
exaggerated the number of firearm-related fatalities involving children
when testifying before Congress?
To express your outrage over the CDC's
grotesque and illegal abuse of taxpayer funds, please contact President
Bush's Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) at:
The Honorable Tommy Thompson
U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Ave., S.W.
Washington, DC 20201
Phone: (877) 696-6775 (toll-free)
e-mail: hhsmail@os.dhhs.gov
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