Apparently having solved the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is moving on to another priority:
Gun violence.
The CDC, according to its website, has announced a plan to spend $2.2 million over the next three years to gather “surveillance data in near-real-time on emergency visits for nonfatal firearm injuries.”
“Timely state- and local-level data on emergency department visits for nonfatal firearm injuries are currently limited,” the agency maintains.
“The collection of near-real-time data on emergency department visits for nonfatal firearm injuries overall and by intent (intentional self-directed, unintentional, and assault-related) can support state and local jurisdictions in identifying and responding to emerging public health problems.”
“Efforts under this initiative will also result in tools and methods that can be used by state and local health departments around the nation to rapidly track and respond to firearm injuries,” the department adds.
The CDC will provide roughly $220,000 to 10 state-level health departments to collect this data.
Those agencies include health departments in Florida, the District of Columbia, Georgia, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, Washington state, and West Virginia.
Last month CDC Director Rochelle Walensky declared firearm-related violence a “public health threat.”
The Post Millennial, a conservative news website, notes that this study will analyze not only how often someone is injured by a gun, but also “discover what kinds of weapons are involved, how they are used, the causes between the shooter and the gunshot victim, and the underlying causes of those altercations.”
NPR, which also reported on the CDC’s action, noted that about 100 Americans are killed each day in gun violence.
That primarily occurs through suicide but also encompasses crimes, police shootings, and accidents.
What seems to be unknown is how often people are injured by guns – although the agency already has considerable data about that.
On its website, the CDC notes that “more people suffer nonfatal firearm-related injuries than die,” as 70 percent of firearm injuries stem from assaults, while another 20 percent are accidents.
The agency also points out that men make up 87 percent of nonfatal firearm injuries, and that gun-related homicide rates are highest among people between 15 and 34, and among minority groups.
“Firearm violence has tremendous impact on the overall safety and wellbeing of Americans,” the CDC says on its website. “Using a public health approach is essential to addressing firearm violence and keeping people safe and healthy.”
“CDC’s approach to preventing firearm injuries focuses on three elements: providing data to inform action; conducting research and applying science to identify effective solutions, and promoting collaboration across multiple sectors to address the problem.”
The National Rifle Association already has an idea of how this will turn out.
Almost in anticipation of this study, the NRA noted earlier this month that public confidence in the CDC is sinking fast because of its COVID policies.
But, per a May 2021 Harvard University study, which found that the public most wanted the CDC to work on infectious diseases, the work of public health officials has been “moving away from focusing on infectious disease control and now encompasses a much wider range of issues such as the environment and climate change, injury prevention, racism, healthy housing, and reducing drug and alcohol abuse.”
“Call it mission creep, the bureaucratic imperative, greed, or a function of ideology,” the NRA argued, “but it is clear that the CDC and public health officials are seeking to exert control over a greater number of people in a larger and increasingly tenuous array of circumstances.”
And that could now scoop up gun owners, the organization warned.
History indicates as much.
NPR pointed out that for a quarter-century “the gun lobby and Republican allies in Congress effectively blocked federal funding for firearms research.”
The NRA, however, had a different take on why GOP lawmakers fought efforts to implement such studies.
In the mid-1990s, the organization points out, the CDC’s response to gun violence was to advocate in part for a “registry of all gun purchases,” and to make “possession of unregistered handguns a criminal offense.”
CDC officials openly sought to make guns as unpalatable as cigarettes, and with allies in the gun-control movement pressed for a “public health model to work toward changing society’s attitude toward guns so that it becomes socially unacceptable for private citizens to have handguns,” according to the NRA.
In 1996, James Mercy, director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, said, “What we need to try and do is to find a socially acceptable form of gun control.”
Around that time, a CDC-funded newsletter was encouraging gun opponents, among other actions, to picket gun manufacturers, advocate for restrictions on ammunition and concealed weapons permits, and call for eradicating state preemptions on gun laws so cities and counties could regulate firearms.
The NRA argued that the Supreme Court’s rebuke of the CDC for its overreach with a moratorium on rent payments should have sent a message that still must be conveyed.
“Given the agency’s lackluster performance on COVID-19 and declining public trust,” the gun-rights group said, “CDC should get back to basics by following the law and confronting the pandemic.”
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I BET YOU 100 DOLLARS THAT CHICAGO, ILLINOIS IS NOT INCLUDED!
This CDC, the COMMUNIST DOCTOR’S CORPORATION is just ANOTHER ARM OF THE COMMUNIST DEMOCREEP PARTY!