Firing back at the N.R.A.

In my last posting I noted that I thought that the N.R.A. executive V.P. Wayne LaPierre had a point when he criticized violent video games.  He should have also mentioned that the gun manufacturers and the game producers have a symbiotic relationship.  Electronic Arts, the company that makes Medal of Honor Warfighter and similar games, for a time actually offered a link to catalogs of the type of weapons used in the games.  Real weapons are used as models for the games.  (See today’s New York Times, p. 26, “The Gun-Game Complex”).

And just in case you need one, here is another reason to dislike the N.R.A.  In 2004 the National Research Council released a report entitled “Firearms and Violence.”  The conclusion was somewhat wishy-washy, but called for a program of data collection and research to establish which policies worked best to prevent gun violence.

Since 2004, however, the N.R.A. has been largely successful in blocking funding for research on weapon-related injuries and deaths.  I am sure the reason is because the N.R.A. is worried that the researchers will find a clear link between lax gun laws and the death rate from guns.  Incidentally, the states with the most restrictive laws, such as New York and California, do have a lower percentage of death by firearms than states like Texas and Alabama.