
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, November 9, 1995                   TAG: 9511090019
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GUN VIOLENCE

SENATORS trying to quash research on gun violence claim it is being conducted to push predetermined political goals. But the politicians' motives are more suspect than the scientists'.

Ten senators, led by GOP presidential front-runner Bob Dole, wrote to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control that they favor transferring its entire $43.6 million budget to breast cancer research. A cynical attempt, perhaps, to limit political damage among women concerned about rising violence, while taking out a favorite target of the National Rifle Association?

The NRA claims that part of $2 million in grants given by the federally funded center, one of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, went to pay for pro gun-control literature. But the center is a research organization, not an advocacy group. A spokesman explains that one hospital used part of its funds to publish a newsletter reporting on a domestic violence conference, and this report included information about gun-control advocacy efforts. The center told the hospital this was an inappropriate use of the funds, and disallowed it.

Now the NRA and the predictable cadre of politicians who line up to do its bidding want to eliminate research into how to prevent injuries - not just gun injuries, but all the injuries that, together, are the leading cause of death in the United States for people under 45. The center spends less than $2.5 million looking at the issue of firearm injuries.

The objective data it gathers, though, is not what the NRA wants the public to hear. For example:

The second leading cause of injury deaths in the United States (after motor-vehicle accidents) is firearms.

In 1992, 37,776 deaths were caused by firearms, including homicides, suicides and accidents.

Three times that number were treated for nonfatal firearms injuries that year in hospital emergency rooms.

Accurate, unbiased statistical information is needed to develop public policy dealing with what is undeniably a major threat to public health. Anyone trying to search out a political agenda need look no farther than the NRA and its obsequious political friends. They're the ones who are afraid of the facts, lest the grim figures persuade more Americans of the need to do something about the domestic arms race.

by CNB