5/17/2011

Why is the CDC doing this "research" on guns?

Why does USA Today cover this? Why is this news worthy enough for an article by them? If it was important enough for a news story, why couldn't USA Today simply assign a reporter to spend a few hours going through the FBI UCR reports to get this information? The value added from the CDC doing this seems negligible. I can only imagine how much tax dollars was wasted by the CDC restating the FBI UCR numbers. In the discussion of 10 to 19 year olds committing most of the murders, couldn't they have mentioned that virtually none of these were by the younger kids in this range. Why not include have the range from 5 to 19? It would be even more sensational.

UPDATE: Let me be clear about this. The title of this posting was important. The central issue was the CDC report and the news coverage given to the CDC, not the point about gun violence per se. Given that the CDC is just repeating information already put out by the Justice Department, why is this news worthy enough for an article by them? There is nothing new in this CDC report. Not only is this out in the DOJ numbers, it has been discussed for years. My first edition of More Guns, Less Crime pointed out that in 1992 over 70 percent of the murders take place in just 3.5 percent of the counties. The fact that most murders occur in urban areas and actually a very small portion of those urban areas is nothing new. Note as an aside, that the gun ownership rate among law-abiding citizens is also much lower in these urban areas. The CDC is just restating what is already in the FBI UCR numbers and adding nothing new to that discussion and they are distorting even that by not making it clear over what ages the murders are occurring. If the CDC is going to do a study, it should add something new to the debate. Otherwise our tax dollars are just being wasted.

Typo fixed in the original first paragraph.


UPDATE 2: Media Matters has an attack on this post available here. Can Media Matters get anything right? There claim about "Based on the CDC data" is the whole point of my post. This is DOJ data, and the CDC added nothing to the DOJ UCR report about murders being concentrated in urban areas.


The USA Today piece is available here.

Large metropolitan areas suffer about two-thirds of all firearm homicides in the United States, with inner cities most affected, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"The central cities really bear the burden of firearm homicides," said Linda L. Dahlberg, the associate director for science in CDC's Division of Violence Prevention, noting that the gun murder rate was highest among male children and teens.
These findings "speak to the importance of addressing youth if we really want to do something about the gun violence problem," Dahlberg said.
According to the CDC, 25,423 murders by gunfire took place in the United States in 2006 through 2007 — the years of the most recent available statistics.
Among these deaths, the rate of firearm homicides was higher in inner cities than in other parts of cities and higher than the murder rate of the country as a whole, Dahlberg said. People living in 50 of the largest cities, in fact, accounted for 67% of all firearm homicides.
In addition, children and teens aged 10 to 19 in these areas — more than 85% of them male — accounted for 73% of all firearm homicides, Dahlberg noted. . . .

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2 Comments:

Blogger commoncents said...

I'm glad I found this blog! Keep up the great work!!

Steve
Common Cents
http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com

5/17/2011 10:24 PM  
Blogger Goin' said...

Interestingly, these wonderous enclaves of peace and harmony also have the strictest gun control laws and highest levels of government "entitlements".

I am curious as to how many of these murder victims and muderers were illegal aliens?

5/18/2011 8:38 AM  

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