Editorial: The feds take a shot at guns

Obama administration caught "loading their guns" for a new round of anti-gun legislation

For a decade, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been forbidden by Congress from doing research on gun-control issues. Such piddling hurdles as federal law don't matter to the Obama administration.

With a wave of a hand, the CDC has simply redefined gun-control research so the ban no longer applies.

They're not researching guns; they're researching alcohol sales and their impact on gun violence, or researching how teens carrying guns affect the rates of non-gun injuries. "These particular grants do not address gun control; rather they deal with the surrounding web of circumstances," wrote National Institutes of Health (NIH) spokesman Don Ralbovsky.

Gun-control advocates claim that banning the CDC from examining gun control amounts to a gag order on science. After all, what can be wrong with further scientific inquiry? But the issue isn't about scientific inquiry. It is whether government resources should be used to promote an ideological agenda.

Take the Obama administration's justification for its new gun research. "Gun-related violence is a public health problem - it diverts considerable health care resources away from other problems and, therefore, is of interest to NIH," wrote the agency spokesman in an e-mail responding to questions from Republican members of Congress about new grants the CDC is giving out. The statement assumes the conclusion of the research before the first study is done.

...The CDC's brazen end run around restrictions on gun-control research is hardly surprising given that when President Obama served on the board of the Joyce Foundation, it was the largest private funder of gun-ban research in the country. Now he has the resources of the whole federal government.

First we'll get the half-baked studies followed by fawning press coverage. Then Democratic politicians and activists will pretend the gun restrictions they've always wanted were spurred by the new government research.

Click here to read the complete editorial from the Washington Times.