Gun Violence Studies Biased, Used to Force Agenda | National Review

Gun Violence Studies Biased, Used to Force Agenda | National Review
"But we should not allow gun-control advocates to medicalize guns as a public-health concern.
One of the common talking points that liberals throw around in the gun debate is that Republicans have banned even studying gun violence. 
So you get headlines such as “Lift the Federal Ban on Gun Violence Research” (the New Republic), or “Why Gun Violence Research Has Been Shut Down for 20 Years” (the Washington Post’s Wonkblog), or “GOP Chairman: Congress Should Rethink CDC Ban on Gun Violence Research” (The Hill), or “What’s Missing from the Gun Debate. 
It’s Simple: Science” (an op-ed in Politico).
The reality is different, and it illustrates two contending views of how America should be governed.
To start with, nobody has been banned from anything, in the way we typically think of government bans. 
No law prohibits private citizens, universities, private foundations, or state governments from conducting studies of the subject.
 As the Federalist‘s David Harsanyi has noted:
Numerous states and private entities fund peer-reviewed studies and other research on gun violence...
...Moreover, the “ban” in question applies only to the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
Nothing bars other arms of the federal government from collecting or disseminating information about gun crimes. 
Indeed, the data collected by the federal government is often the foundation for arguments made about guns, by all sides.
 The Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), which bills itself as “the United States’ primary source for criminal justice statistics,” has a mission:
To collect, analyze, publish, and disseminate information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels of government. 
These data are critical to federal, state, and local policymakers in combating crime and ensuring that justice is both efficient and evenhanded.
...But we shouldn’t be delegating such important social questions to agenda-driven advocates operating behind the illusion that they are doing disinterested scientific research..."
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