THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Saturday, July 20, 1996               TAG: 9607200020
SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A10  EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Editorial 
                                            LENGTH:   43 lines

LOOKING AWAY WON'T MAKE GUN VIOLENCE VANISH

Ask any ER physician about the greatest hazards to health he or she sees and the answer is likely to come back - guns. So why are some in Congress proposing to stop tracking gun violence? Money.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention keeps tabs on the health of the American people. CDC statistics have revealed, for example, that more teens die from gunshot wounds than all diseases combined.

Now the U.S. House of Representatives has proposed cutting off funds to compile data that show 18,500 Americans are murdered annually using guns, 19,000 use guns to commit suicide, 1,500 die in accidental shootings. Guess who's behind that.

The House is in an uproar because the CDC, through its National Center for Injury Prevention, studied what measures might help to reduce the toll, including education, mandatory sentences and gun control.

It is the last named that produced a predictable reaction. The House is acting at the behest of the National Rifle Association, the powerful lobbying group for the gun industry that opposes gun control, contributes heavily to political campaigns and has concluded that the CDC studies are biased.

The NRA argues that the agency has abandoned scientific objectivity for political advocacy on this issue. It claims that it is negative ``if all you ever do is count the times criminals misuse firearms or the times people accidentally shoot themselves. . . .''

By that logic, it is negative to keep track only of the times people get cancer and ignore all the times they don't. The CDC argues, plausibly, that an agency charged with compiling data on the health of the American people could be considered derelict in its duty if it ignored any factor that accounted for the loss of 40,000 lives a year.

Congress can, of course, decide to rule gun violence out of bounds. It can restrict CDC's mission to the control and prevention of infectious disease alone, for instance. Doing so would please the big donors from the NRA and swell the campaign coffers of those voting to put gun violence out of sight and out of mind. So, it may happen.

But failing to collect statistics on gun violence won't make it go away and certainly won't do anything to reduce its toll. It's a strategy that puts money in the pockets of politicians and the country's head in the sand. by CNB