Interesting that wm cited CDC research, when they haven't been able to research it for the past 25 years.
Congress quashed funding for C.D.C. gun violence research 25 years ago. But an extraordinary friendship between an agency scientist and the “point man” for the N.R.A. helped bring the money back.
“It’s not either, ‘Keep your guns or prevent gun violence,’ ” said Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who helped establish the C.D.C.’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control but said he was fired in the late 1990s under pressure from Republicans who opposed the center’s gun research. “There’s a strategy that science can help us define where you can do both — you can protect the rights of law-abiding gun owners and at the very same time reduce the toll of gun violence.”
Republicans do their best to make sure there ARE no gun statistics.
Why is this? Because it is obvious to everyone that more guns doesn't equal more safety. Australia. Everyone in the gun debate KNOWS about Australia, because it is such a stark example of the efficacy of gun control.
Firearms research summariesThe NFA also seems to have reduced firearm homicide outside of mass shootings, as well as firearm suicide. In the seven years before the NFA (1989-1995), the average annual firearm suicide death rate per 100,000 was 2.6 (with a yearly range of 2.2 to 2.9); in the seven years after the buyback was fully implemented (1998-2004), the average annual firearm suicide rate was 1.1 (yearly range 0.8 to 1.4). In the seven years before the NFA, the average annual firearm homicide rate per 100,000 was .43 (range .27 to .60) while for the seven years post NFA, the average annual firearm homicide rate was .25 (range .16 to .33). 3
Interestingly, this summary differentiates homicides from suicides. In a very easy to understand methodology, the results are clear though there is debate on how much the law and buyback contributed, since the general trend was downward.
The authors (Australian gun lobby members) of one study 5claimed that “the policy has made no difference. There was a trend of declining deaths which has continued”. 6 They made an assumption that the historical downward trend in firearm deaths would have continued unabated, and chose 1979 as the beginning year for the trend analysis, although data were available for each year back to 1915. The Australian firearm suicide rate in 1979 was higher than any other year from 1932-1996; the firearm homicide rate in 1979 was the third highest it had been during this same time frame. Identical analyses using data from 1915-2004 found that both firearm suicide and firearm homicide declined significantly after the NFA.
Well look at all the fallacies and manipulations here. Cherry-picking your date range. But it gets worse.
The researchers also assumed that without the NFA, a linear trend of the actual death rate 1979-1996 would have continued forever. In other words, they assumed that if the historical rate fell from 3/100,000 to 2/100,000 in the initial period, it would fall to 1/100,000 in next period, then to 0/100,000, and then to -1/100,000. According to their assumption, without the NFA there would have been an ever-increasing percentage fall in firearm death. Indeed their model predicted that without the NFA, the number of firearm homicides in Australia would be negative by 2015. Critics labeled this a “Resurrection Problem”.
If the natural result of your equations requires raising people from the dead, that's kind of an issue. Now stipulated, this isn't a model for the US and we would be unlikely to replicate their success. But it demonstrates there is manipulation going on - by the people trying to discredit the ban, and even THEY can't prove that deaths increased the way US gun control advocates assert that they MUST.
