NRA Aims at the Messenger

The current box-office sensation “Independence Day” proudly celebrates how Americans, from a slightly deranged crop duster to the President, successfully marshal arms against an enemy.

Polls conducted by The Times and other organizations, however, have shown that Americans decry in the streets what they cheer in the theaters. They say they are concerned that the number of Americans killed by handguns far eclipses those of countries with stricter firearms regulations: In 1994, for example, handguns killed 12,769 people in the United States compared with 59 in Germany and 16 in Sweden.

Rather than attending to the message of these statistics, however, the National Rifle Assn. is now engaged in a heated battle to shoot the messenger.

Since last month, when the federal Centers for Disease Control issued a study of firearm deaths and injuries in the past decade, the NRA has mounted an aggressive attack on the agency’s “meddling” that resulted in a decision by the House Appropriations Committee to dock next year’s CDC budget by $2.6 million, the exact cost of the study.

Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.) intends to introduce an amendment to restore the $2.6 million. An examination of the flaws in the NRA’s objections to the CDC study shows why Congress ought to swiftly approve Lowey’s amendment.

First, the NRA claims that the CDC is spending too much money on firearms research. But consider: The CDC study showed that firearms are the second leading cause of death for white teenagers and the leading cause of death for black teenagers. Given that the CDC’s central mission is to prevent death, the $2.6 million it has earmarked for firearms-injury research in 1997 (slightly more than 1% of the CDC’s $2.2-billion budget) hardly seems excessive.

Second, the NRA charges that the CDC’s Center for Injury Prevention and Control, which oversaw the firearms study, duplicates the work of other federal agencies. The bipartisan General Accounting Office, however, has said this charge is false. CDC research has been an indispensable policymaking tool.

Most recently, its report on youth homicide rates helped motivate President Clinton to embrace the idea of using a national computer database to track down those who sell guns to youths.

But now the CDC appears to be buckling under political pressure from the NRA; while the agency has traditionally funded studies on firearms injuries, for instance, researchers say that this year the CDC did not specifically call for such studies.

By passing the Lowey amendment, Congress could encourage the CDC to continue a bold tradition of research that helped America eradicate smallpox and polio in the 1940s, just as it could help reduce firearms deaths today.