A reminder of why gun violence statistics are so damn hard to come by.

Courtesy of The New York Times:

For nearly two decades, Congress has banned needed research on gun violence by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last week, Congress, doing the bidding of the gun industry, quietly killed a provision in the omnibus spending bill that would have reversed that ban. 

In so doing, it left intact an anti-science smoke screen that has helped the industry and its lobbyists deny and dispute the facts of the gun violence that takes more than 30,000 lives a year. Imagine if the tobacco industry had been similarly favored by Congress with a ban on federal research about cigarette deaths. 

Imagine, too, if the auto industry had such a shield during the years when the government successfully fought unsafe cars in the cause of public health. 

Perversely, the gun industry claims that research by private and academic interests — which it can’t block — is untrustworthy. Expect that argument to be invoked in reaction to alarming research about the Missouri General Assembly’s repeal eight years ago of background checks for gun buyers that required people to appear in person at the local sheriff’s office. 

A study by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research found that in the first six years after the repeal, gun homicides rose within the state by 16 percent, while the national rate declined 11 percent. By contrast, it also found that Connecticut, which has maintained its 1995 background check law, registered a 40 percent drop in gun homicides across a decade.

This is what we are going to have to keep in mind, and fight against if we ever want to REALLY pass any meaningful legislation against gun violence in this country. 

And if Hillary continues putting the need to do something about all of these gun deaths front and center in her campaign I imagine the amount of misinformation put out by the NRA will increase a hundred fold.

Here my question. If the NRA is right and the statistics often used by media outlets are often exaggerated then why would they NOT want the CDC to set the record straight?

Yeah, that's what I thought.