By Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica

President Obama has directed the Centers for Disease Control to research gun violence as part of his legislative package on gun control. The CDC hasn't pursued this kind of research since 1996 when the National Rifle Association lobbied Congress to cut funding for it, arguing that the studies were politicized and being used to promote gun control. We've interviewed Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who led the agency's gun violence research in the nineties when he was the director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

We talked to Rosenberg about the work the agency was doing before funding was cut and how it's relevant to today's gun control debate. Here's an edited transcript.

There's been coverage recently about how Congress cut funding for gun violence research, but not much about what the agency was actually researching and what it was finding. You were in charge of that. Tell us a little bit about what the CDC was doing back then.

There were basically four questions that we were trying to answer. The first question is what is the problem? Who were the victims? Who was killed? Who were injured? Where did they happen? Under what circumstances? When? What times of the year? What times of the day? What was the relationship to other events? How did they happen? What were the weapons that were used? What was the relationship between the people involved? What was the motive or the setting in which they happened?

The second question is what are the causes? What are the things that increase one's risk of being shot? What are the things that decrease one's risk of being shot?

The third question we were trying to answer is what works to prevent these? What kinds of policies, what kinds of interventions, what kinds of police practices or medical practices or education and school practices actually might prevent some of these shootings? We're not just looking at mass shootings, but also looking at the bulk of the homicides that occur every year and the suicides, which account for a majority of all gun deaths.

Then the last question is how do you do it? Once you have a program or policy that has been proven to work in one place, how do you spread it? How do you actually put it in place?

So what were you were able to find before funding got cut off?

One of the critical studies that we supported was looking at the question of whether having a firearm in your home protects you or puts you at increased risk. This was a very important question because people who want to sell more guns say that having a gun in your home is the way to protect your family.

What the research showed was not only did having a firearm in your home not protect you, but it hugely increased the risk that someone in your family would die from a firearm homicide. It increased the risk almost 300 percent, almost three times as high.

It also showed that the risk that someone in your home would commit suicide went up. It went up five-fold if you had a gun in the home. These are huge, huge risks, and to just put that in perspective, we look at a risk that someone might get a heart attack or that they might get a certain type of cancer, and if that risk might be 20 percent greater, that may be enough to ban a certain drug or a certain product.

But in this case, we're talking about a risk not 20 percent, not 100 percent, not 200 percent, but almost 300 percent or 500 percent. These are huge, huge risks.

I understand there was also an effort to collect data on gun violence through something called the Firearm Injury Surveillance System. What did that involve?

We were collecting information to answer the question of who, what, where, when, and how did shootings occur?

We were finding that most homicides occur between people who know each other, people who are acquaintances or might be doing business together or might be living together. They're not stranger-on-stranger shootings. They're not mostly home intrusions.

We also found that there were a lot of firearm suicides, and in fact most firearm deaths are suicides. There were a lot of young people who were impulsive who were using guns to commit suicide.

So if you were able to continue this work, what kind of data do you think would be available today?

I think we'd know much more information about what sorts of weapons are used in what sorts of firearm deaths and injuries.

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Americans are "far" unhealthier than their counterparts in Canada, Australia, Japan, Britain, France, Portugal, Italy and Germany and eight other countries, according to a study from the National Academy of Sciences.

These findings come even though here in the U.S. we spend $8,600 a year per person on healthcare, which is more than twice as much Britain, France and Sweden, "even with their universal healthcare systems."

NBC News:

“The size of the health disadvantage was pretty stunning,” Woolf told reporters in a telephone briefing.

Americans did worse in nine areas: infant mortality; injury and homicide rates; teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases; the AIDS virus; drug abuse; obesity and diabetes; heart disease; lung disease; and disabilities.

And many of these affect young people, not the elderly. Americans are seven times more likely to be murdered than people in the other countries, and 20 times more likely to be killed by a gun.

"I don't think most parents know that, on average, infants, children, and adolescents in the U.S. die younger and have greater rates of illness and injury than youth in other countries,” Woolf said.

“For many years, Americans have been dying at younger ages than people in almost all other high-income countries,” the expert panel wrote.

We also have a higher infant mortality rate than the other countries, with 32.7 deaths per 100,000. Other countries have infant mortality rates between 15 and 25 deaths per 100,000.

The report wasn't all bad for the U.S., Americans have lower death rates from cancer, the No. 2 cause of death, and do better at controlling blood pressure and cholesterol. “Americans who reach age 75 can expect to live longer than people in the peer countries,” the report reads.

The experts who wrote the report suggested that our culture here in the U.S. has much to do with the negative findings, and suggested that "policymakers" take action to reverse the trend.

[Photo credit: Reuters]

By Blair Hickman, Suevon Lee and Cora Currier, ProPublica, Dec. 14, 2012, 4:34 p.m.

Update: With today's shooting in Newtown, Conn., this article, first published July 24, 2012, unfortunately seems relevant again.

In the wake of last week's shooting in Aurora, Colo., we've taken a step back and laid out the best pieces we could find about guns. They're roughly organized by articles on rights, trafficking and regulation. And include your suggestions in comments.

Gun Rights

Battleground America, New Yorker, April 2012 Jill Lepore's thorough look at the evolution of U.S. gun laws — from the Second Amendment, to the 1968 Gun Control Act, to the N.R.A.'s rise to political prominence — is an excellent primer for the modern day gun debate. And provides great context for the articles below. Contributed by @Corinneavital

Florida 'stand your ground' law yields some shocking outcomes depending on how law is applied, Tampa Bay Times, June 2012 The Tampa Bay Times analyzed nearly 200 "stand your ground" cases in Florida. Among the findings: Nearly 70 percent of defendants who invoke "stand your ground" went free. Seventy-three percent of those who killed a black person faced no penalty; 59 percent of those who killed a white went free.

Stand Your Ground Law Coincides With Jump in Justifiable-Homicides Cases, Washington Post, April 2012 Since Florida passed a Stand Your Ground law in 2005, more than 30 states have adopted similarly broad laws. Justifiable-homicide cases have also been on the rise nationwide.

Felons Finding It Easy to Regain Gun Rights, New York Times, November 2011 In many states the restoration of gun rights for convicted felons is now either automatic or left to the discretion of judges under vague standards. Standards are similarly lax for those with a history of mental illness — judges are often ill-equipped to make decisions without information about an applicant's mental health.

Trafficking

The Truth About the Fast and Furious Scandal, Fortune, June 2012 An investigation into the fallout over Operation Fast and Furious suggests much of what's been widely reported about the scandal is simply wrong. It doesn't seem the ATF intentionally allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Based on confidential ATF documents and interviews with law enforcement agents, the piece claims the public charges are "replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies." Fortune's follow-up answers some criticisms raised by Sen. Chuck Grassley, among others. Congress is conducting an investigation into Fast and Furious.

Realco Guns Tied to 2,500 Crimes in D.C. and Maryland, Washington Post, October 2010 As part of a larger look at firearms' paths from dealer to crime scene, the Post's analysis of gun-trace data for Virginia found that a handful of dealers sold the bulk of crime guns. Realco, the store featured in this piece, sold four times the number of crime guns as the next highest dealer. The kicker? It was all perfectly legal.

The Gun: The AK-47 and the evolution of war, CJ Chivers, October 2010 A nuanced, in-depth look at what is arguably the most lethal gun of all time.

U.S. Stymied as Guns Flow to Mexican Cartels, New York Times, April 2009 Before the ATF's efforts to monitor gun-trafficking across the U.S.-Mexico border became notorious, this article detailed how easy it was for straw purchasers to buy guns in the U.S. and get them across the border to Mexico, and how difficult it was for federal regulators to build a case against them. About 90 percent of the 12,000 guns recovered and traced in 2008 by Mexican officials came from U.S. dealers.

Regulation

Concealed gun law turns 10 years old, Booth Newspapers, June 2011 A decade after Michigan passed a law making it easier to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon, hundreds of thousands have been issued. This multi-part series shows how regulations meant to keep track of who has concealed-carry licenses — and whose should have been revoked — are a mess. The New York Times has also analyzed the lack of oversight into the concealed-carry permit process in North Carolina, which loosened the requirements to obtain such permits in 1995.

Ineffective rules let gun stores endure, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December 2010 The ATF is charged with inspecting the country's 62,000 licensed gun dealers. But it's rare for a permit to be revoked, and when it happens, stores often simply reopen with a new license in someone else's name, or sell guns on the side through their personal collections. (This Washington Post database lets you see which dealers near you have had their licenses revoked.)

One month after Trayvon Martin's murder, thousands rally in Sanford for justice as thousands more join them in cities across the country.

Via:

In communities big and small, people wore hooded sweatshirts -- hoodies -- and carried Skittles and iced tea -- just as Martin had done on the night of his death -- as they called for Zimmerman's arrest, legislative changes and an end to racial profiling.

They included throngs of people who marched on streets in front of the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta, decrying a "stand your ground" law in that state -- as in Florida -- that allows people to use force in self-defense.

More than 2,100 miles away in San Francisco, others held up signs reading, "We demand justice."

Similar scenes played out in Iowa City, Iowa; Houston; Detroit; Philadelphia; and places in between.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, presented Sanford's city commission with a petition he claimed had been signed by 2 million people who urged that the shooter be detained.

In Washington, D.C., a march to the Justice Department ended with the delivery of printout of an online petition with over half a million signatures demanding action.

A new poll shows that 67 percent of white Americans and 86 percent of nonwhites believe Martin’s shooter, 28-year-old George Zimmerman, should be arrested.

A full list of participating cities in Monday's Day of Action for Trayvon in online here.

Trayvon's parents will be in D.C. today as Congress prepares to hold a hearing on racial profiling. Protesters have planned a march to the White House to coincide with the hearing.

If you'd like to sign the petition started by Trayvon's parents, you can do that online here.

Video of the rally, and performance at House of the Lord church
Sunday night in Brooklyn, New York hosted by Kevin Powell, Akila Worksongs,
MoveOn.org & ColorofChange.org.

"A Song for Trayvon" written and performed by Jasiri X.

(Based on "No Church in the Wild" by Jay-Z & Kanye West)

Lyrics below the fold.

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