i guess size really does matter … how small penises stop big change

Ed Wray/Getty Images News/Getty Images

American adolescents have higher homicide death rates than 16 other peer nations. See: http://www.examiner.com/article/us-health-compared-internationally-shorter-lives-poorer-health According to the Christian Science Monitor and Wikipedia, there is a long history of school shootings in the United States.

THE CDC CAN’T RESEARCH GUN VIOLENCE, AND THE GOP WANTS TO KEEP IT THAT WAY
By Isobel Markham @i_markham
For the last 20 years, the CDC has been effectively blocked from carrying out gun-violence research, and the Republican Party wants to keep it that way. If any recent incident was going to spur serious, critical research into gun violence and its causes, you’d think it would be last year’s massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut — and for a few brief months, it was. Even Georgia Republican Rep. Jack Kingston said he wanted more research into not only guns, but video games and mental health.
But as so often happens in politics, a tough upcoming primary race for a seat in the Senate has changed his mind. In a statement to ProPublica, Kingston said he would oppose President Barack Obama’s proposal for $10 million to go toward research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for gun research. He called Obama’s request an attempt to “fund propaganda for his gun-grabbing initiatives through the CDC” and vowed that it would be excluded from the appropriations bill for the 2015 fiscal year.
Back in the 1990s the Clinton administration began to look into gun-related deaths as a public health issue, which ruffled the feathers of conservatives in Congress and piqued the interest of the National Rifle Association. Under pressure from the NRA, Congress immediately cut the CDC’s funding for firearms injury prevention activities from more than $2.7 million in 2005 to a negligible $100,000 in 2012.
Congress also moved to add language to the appropriations bill that funds the CDC. According to the CDC’s website, the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act states that “None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”
As chairman of this appropriations subcommittee, Kingston was in a unique position to actually do something about that language and get the ball rolling with some research. He decided not to take that opportunity.
reposted from bustle.com
read entire article here … 

NRA: Bill to allow CDC to determine how many people are killed by guns is ‘unethical’
A piece by Lois Beckett, ProPublica
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Since 1996, when a small CDC-funded study on the risks of owning a firearm ignited opposition from Republicans, the CDC’s budget for research on firearms injuries has shrunk to zero. The result, as we’ve detailed, is that many basic questions about gun violence — such as how many Americans are shot each year — remain unanswered.
The new legislation, which will be introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) in the House, and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in the Senate, would give the CDC $10 million a year “for the purpose of conducting or supporting research on firearms safety or gun violence prevention.”
“In America, gun violence kills twice as many children as cancer, and yet political grandstanding has halted funding for public health research to understand this crisis,” Maloney said in a statement.
A National Rifle Association spokeswoman called the push for new CDC funding “unethical.”
“The abuse of taxpayer funds for anti-gun political propaganda under the guise of ‘research’ is unethical,” spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen said in a statement to ProPublica. “That is why Congress should stand firm against President Obama’s scheme to undermine a fundamental constitutional right.”
Maloney, who co-sponsored the 1994 assault weapons ban, is a long-time gun control advocate. Earlier this year, she and Markey encouraged President Obama to include CDC funding in his proposed 2015 budget, which he did.
Obama’s proposal has been opposed by key Republicans, and so far, Markey and Maloney’s legislation has not attracted any Republican support. “On the House side, we have over 20 co-sponsors already. We do not have a Republican,” Maloney said at a press conference this morning.
“The President’s request to fund propaganda for his gun-grabbing initiatives though the CDC will not be included in the FY2015 appropriations bill,” Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that traditionally sets CDC funding, told ProPublica last month.
The CDC sponsors a wide variety of disease and injury prevention programs, focusing on everything from HIV/AIDS to averting falls by elderly people. Since 2007, the CDC has spent less than $100,000 a year on firearms-focused work, according to a CDC spokeswoman. The money goes not for research but for a very rough, annual estimate of the number of Americans injured by shootings.
The NRA’s director of public affairs told CNN last year that more government-funded gun research is not needed.
“What works to reduce gun violence is to make sure that criminals are prosecuted and those who have been found to be a danger to themselves or others don’t have access to firearms,” Andrew Arulanandam said. “Not to carry out more studies.”
reposted from raw story