Reader disputes editorial on guns

To the editor:

How, might you ask, can there be fake news on an opinion page?

The answer is when the journalists at the Kokomo Tribune base their opinion on statements that are not true.

We are told “Starting in 1996, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention self-imposed a ban on researching firearms deaths in the United States.”

The date is correct but not much else.

The CDC had spent $2.6 million on biased, unscientific, anti-gun research designed primarily to generate sound bites for gun ban politicians and possibly regulate firearms as a health hazard. Most of the study was easily disproven. As a result, Congress banned the CDC from advocating for gun control and reduced their budget by the amount spent on the study.

Contrary to reports in the Gun Ban Media, the CDC did not stop all research into firearms, just gun control advocacy. The CDC has studied guns and suicide, noise and lead exposure at ranges, firearm violence prevention in Wilmington, Delaware, and issued a report on firearms homicides and suicides in metropolitan areas. There have also been many FBI, ATF, Department of Justice and Congressional studies.

So not only was there no ban on firearms research, it did not stop. The CDC anti-gun advocates just had no interest if they couldn’t do studies predetermined to produce anti-gun results.

The Tribune tells us that “Cold, hard facts should always be welcome in a debate as serious as gun violence.” Gun owners and the NRA agree. It is the gun ban crowd, now known as “Gun Safety Organizations," who actively lie and try to suppress the truth. 

Sen. Chuck Schumer and former Vice President Joe Biden were all over the airwaves for a year telling us that the Glock pistol was an “all plastic terrorist handgun only good for hijacking airplanes.” It is now the most popular law enforcement handgun in the country.

Did you know that almost twice as many people were killed with bare hands in 2015 than rifles of all kinds? And I have still never heard an intelligent explanation as to why an adjustable stock or a pistol grip makes a gun evil when it has no measurable effect on how fast or accurate the rifle shoots.

Stephen Erwin

Portland