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CDC REPORT: Tennessee Among Worst in Gun Deaths

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The CDC just released their report about gun-related deaths in 2017 and Tennessee is near the bottom, coming in 40th in the country with 18 gun-related deaths per every 100,000 people. Despite this low number for Tennessee, there are still many gun-related problems that need to be dealt with, this includes cases where people are recklessly firing a gun, or using one as a means of theft, etc. they need to be tackled to ensure safety on the streets and in homes.

The bottom 5 states were Missouri, Lousiana, Montana, Alabama, and Alaska.

The top 5 were Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut.

This backs up the idea that states with tighter gun laws do have fewer gun deaths, with some outliers.

In related news, this week The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston released a study of over 600 young adults in Texas and found that access to guns, not mental illness, was a better predictor of whether or not they had threatened someone with a gun.
Their results were published in the journal Preventive Medicine. Dr. Yu Lu, a postdoctoral research fellow at UTMB and lead author of the study, said:

“Counter to public beliefs, the majority of mental health symptoms examined were not related to gun violence… Much of the limited research on gun violence and mental illness has focused on violence among individuals with severe mental illnesses or rates of mental illness among individuals arrested for violent crimes. What we found is that the link between mental illness and gun violence is not there.“

What researchers found instead was that individuals who had gun access were approximately 18 times more likely to have threatened someone with a gun. Individuals with high hostility were about 3.5 times more likely to threaten someone.

Each year, an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 Americans are injured by firearms and 30,000 to 40,000 die from firearms, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Very little government-backed scientific research is done on the topic of guns. This stems in large part from a little-known amendment called The Dickey Amendment, named for Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Arkansas, who got the bill passed on behalf of the NRA in 1996.

From Newsweek:

“The Dickey Amendment is a classic piece of NRA-backed legislation passed in 1996. Three years earlier, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did a study that came to an obvious conclusion: Guns in the home were associated with an increased risk of homicide and suicide in the home. The NRA didn’t like that conclusion, and when Republicans took control of the House in the 1994 midterms, the gun lobby persuaded Congress to pass the amendment, which states “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote gun control,” which effectively meant any research that could conceivably lead to gun control measures could threaten CDC funding.

Since then, the so-called Dickey amendment has brought federal funding of firearms research to a halt.

But here’s the twist: Before he died last year, Dickey had a change of heart. In 2012, he co-authored a Washington Post editorial with Mark Rosenberg, the head of the CDC when the Dickey amendment was passed, calling for MORE scientific research to prevent firearm injuries and deaths.

From their piece:

“We were on opposite sides of the heated battle 16 years ago, but we are in strong agreement now that scientific research should be conducted into preventing firearm injuries and that ways to prevent firearm deaths can be found without encroaching on the rights of legitimate gun owners.”

Better late then never, we guess.

As a reminder, both Ronald Reagan and Justice Scalia supported gun safety legislation, as did the NRA itself. Common sense gun laws, such as safe storage in the home, and the 2nd Amendment are not incompatible.

Democrats like Lucy McBath are working hard to get the Dickey Amendment overturned. If you agree that should happen, holler at your state and local reps and tell them to repeal the Dickey Amendment.

Nobody should be afraid of the truth.