- ATLANTA (Reuters) - A report
published by the Centers for Disease Control on Thursday found no conclusive
evidence that gun control laws help to prevent violent crime, suicides
and accidental injuries in the United States.
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- Critics of U.S. firearms laws, which are considered lax
in comparison with most other Western nations, have long contended that
easy access to guns helped to fuel comparatively high U.S. rates of murder
and other violent crimes.
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- Gun control is a perennial hot political issue in the
United States, which reported 28,663 gun-related deaths in 2000, the latest
year for which complete data are available. Firearms were the second leading
cause of injury-related death that year.
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- But a national task force of health-care and community
experts found "insufficient evidence" that bans on specific guns,
waiting periods for gun buyers and other such laws changed the incidence
of murder, rape, suicide and other types of violence.
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- The findings were based on 51 studies, some partly funded
by the CDC, of gun laws enacted in the mid-1970s and later.
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- Dr. Jonathan Fielding, director of the Los Angeles County
Health Department and head of the Task Force on Community Preventive Services,
said the studies were marked by unreliable data, inappropriate analysis
and inconsistent findings, making it impossible to determine the true effectiveness
of gun laws.
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- "WE DON'T KNOW"
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- "This means that we don't know what effects, if
any, a law has on the outcome," Fielding said in a conference call.
"We don't mean it has no effect, and that's why it's important to
do more studies."
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- One study found that the 1994 Brady Bill, which required
a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases until 1998 when a computerized
checking system was introduced, significantly cut the rate of gun-related
suicides in those under the age of 55.
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- Several other studies, however, suggested that such declines
were accompanied by smaller increases in suicide by other means.
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- Officials with the National Rifle Association, a gun
rights group that has accused the Atlanta-based CDC in the past of having
an anti-gun slant, were not immediately available for comment on the report.
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- The CDC, a federal agency within the Department of Health
and Human Services, is prohibited from using funds to promote gun control.
HHS, however, is determined to reduce the rate of firearms-related deaths
by about two-thirds by 2010.
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- There are an estimated 200 million privately held rifles,
handguns and other firearms in the United States, which guarantees the
right to bear arms in its constitution.
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- Approximately 4.5 million new firearms, including two
million handguns, are sold each year in the nation. Secondhand firearms
account for an additional 2 million to 4.5 million transactions annually.
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