An NRA Potshot at Science : Senate amendment would punish federal center for pointing to gun toll

Nearly 150,000 Americans a year die from injuries, arguably making this a greater public health threat than, say, AIDS. So why are some in Congress trying to eviscerate the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control?

The reason is that the institution, one of the federal Centers for Disease Control, is asking why 38,000 people annually die from murders, suicides and accidents caused by gunfire. The National Rifle Assn. is crying foul and backing a cynical Senate appropriations amendment to transfer the injury center’s $43-million budget to breast cancer research.

A recent letter to senators from the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action complained that “intentionally inflicted” injuries are criminal, not scientific, matters and that the center’s “overtly anti-firearms bias” is an assault on gun owner rights.

Little wonder the NRA is nervous. In a study published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., Harvard and L.A. emergency care experts describe in dry but chilling detail the toll that guns have taken on the youths of Los Angeles County, documenting 7,288 gang-related homicides over a 15-year period. The study, unrelated to the beleaguered federal center, found that the proportion caused by guns increased dramatically, from 71% in 1979 to 95% in 1994. Nationally, guns cause more teen-age deaths than all natural causes combined.

Obviously, the medical consequences of gunplay should not be exempt from study by public health scientists.

Only 5% of the center’s research grants and programs go to firearms work. It also examines means of preventing bicycle and auto injuries, drownings, fire casualties and the like. Its focus is on “community-based” preventive programs, for example helping cities determine where fire injuries were most prevalent and helping plan distribution of smoke detectors. As for guns, it promotes local efforts at violence prevention, avoiding any direct stand on gun control. But any logical examination of the data points to a need for stricter controls.

The amendment to transfer injury funds to breast research is sponsored by Sen. Robert C. Smith (R-N.H.). His mostly rural New England constituents probably know little about Southern California’s gun mayhem. He should drop this amendment and the Senate should get on with more important business.