Reply #17: as for myself

[iverglas]

I still haven't figured out what the issue was exactly.

The fact is that the CDC has been in a straightjacket for some years when it comes to collecting data relating to firearms.

http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/194/Guns-Injuries-Fatalities.html
http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/1767/Guns-Injuries-Fatalities-WHAT-KNOWN-ABOUT-FIREARMS-INJURIES.html

State and local health departments report that they lack the funding to conduct a thorough surveillance of firearms injuries. To investigate how many health agencies conduct surveillance, Roger Hayes and colleagues carried out a survey of all fifty state health departments, as well as the city and county health departments of the fifty largest urban areas. The report is titled Missing in Action: Health Agencies Lack Critical Data Needed for Firearm Injury Prevention (Chicago: The HELP Network, 1999). The survey reports that thirty-one states (62%) maintain some type of firearm injury surveillance, but nineteen (38%) do not. More than one-half of the states (56%) track mortality data, 30% track hospital data, and 38% track the type of firearm. Twenty-six percent of the states track circumstances. Only 18% issue a report. According to the HELP report, the lack of funding and staffing were the main obstacles to adequate surveillance.

According to the survey, about one-half of the city and county health departments collected data on firearm injuries and deaths. Less than one-quarter collected information on firearm types involved in injuries or on the circumstances, and 35% issued a report. The lack of funding and staffing were the reasons cited by health departments for not collecting data.

Concerned about the lack of firearms injury data, the CDC in September 2002 awarded $7.5 million to six states (New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, South Carolina, and Virginia) to develop the nation's first comprehensive system for collecting data about violent deaths, the National Violent Death Reporting System. In 2004 the U.S. Congress granted $3.7 million to continue implementing the system.

... A 2002 study carried out by the HELP Network, Disabilities from Guns: The Untold Costs of Spinal Cord and Traumatic Brain Injuries (Chicago: The HELP Network, 2002), examined the consequences of nonfatal firearm injuries and underscored "the critical need for a national, centralized data collection system to track their long-term after-effects."

I'm not surprised that a reporter not versed in the very complex issues involved misinterpreted some aspect of the problem.

As I recall, the actual issue that prompted the column was a school board official's inability to find any data source anywhere that tracked shootings in which his students were victims.

Any progress on that one?


I know we don't like to talk about the wide-ranging costs of firearms violence here in the Guns forum. Never mind the spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries suffered by people who don't bother to die. The important thing is ... lemme see. As I recall, there are two important things. People don't commit homicide with long guns, except when they do; and concealed firearm permit holders don't commit as many crimes as people with criminal records. I think I've got that right. Oh, and if people didn't use guns to "defend" themselves, there would have been a couple of hundred thousand more homicides in the US in the last few years than there actually were ... because homicidal criminals only pick people with pistols in their pockets to try it on with ...

I think that about sums it up.