Ban on research into gun violence must be repealed

[BainsBane]

From that bastion of liberal gun grabbing, Arizona.

SENSELESS LAWS ARE TYING HANDS OF POLICE AND PROSECUTORS, KEEPING US ALL IN THE DARK

How do criminals get their guns? Are there observable patterns to gun crime? Who is at the greatest risk of injury, or causing injury to others, from firearm use? Which gun-safety practices are most effective at preventing accidental injury?

The answers to these and other basic questions remain difficult and obscure in part thanks to a senseless ban, on the books for a decade, that limits research on gun violence and denies researchers and even police and prosecutors access to federal gun data. The laws prohibit the public disclosure of a gun's sales history, make that data inadmissible in court, require the Justice Department to destroy background-check records within 24 hours and prohibit the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from requiring gun dealers to check their inventories annually for theft.

A recent report from the Institute of Medicine, an independent, nonprofit research organization, details just how thoroughly Americans are in the dark. The report, commissioned by President Obama after the massacre of 26 students and educators in Newtown, Conn., underscores how little even serious scholars know about gun violence and shows how such ignorance jeopardizes public safety and health.

A better understanding of the "characteristics of firearm violence," the "risk and preventative factors" for gun-related injuries, and the "impact of gun-safety technology," the report says, would undoubtedly help save lives. By making reliable gun data scarce, the research ban has hamstrung police, prosecutors and public health officials in their response to an onslaught of 30,000 gun deaths a year.

Congressional opposition to gun data, which advances the anti-research agenda of the National Rifle Association, isn't merely a policy position. The lack of information has successfully restricted public debate itself. Healthy democracies do not resolve conflicts by stifling inconvenient evidence. Imagine banning doctors from studying cancer cells or requiring radiologists to destroy X-ray records within 24 hours.


http://azstarnet.com/news/opinion/editorial/ban-on-research-into-gun-violence-must-be-repealed/article_92ab48d7-f8dc-51fb-813b-21c23de41a62.html