It's easy to make a government joke, but this is really the result of lobbying Congress. So many gun violence statistics can't be tracked electronically by the people who need them for decision support because that's outlawed in various spending bills. 1/n
And before I go further, I'll state that I'm a gun owner and support intelligent gun rights. But when the CDC isn't legally allowed to track gun violence deaths in the same way they track literally all other death, that's dumb and we have a problem. 2/n
I don't think either side can make a good argument when the numbers are being intentionally concealed. In court, when something is being intentionally hidden, the court assumes the worst (spoliation). I can't come to any other conclusion here - the number MUST be bad. 3/n
The legal theory is that if the evidence is worth hiding, it must be at least as bad as what opposing counsel can guess. I think that's probably the case here, though unlike spoliation where the evidence is just gone, we can reconstruct this evidence. 4/n
And no matter which side of the gun control debate you find yourself on, it is all kinds of stupid to argue for action without understanding what the real data is. I can't imagine any other argument where we would say "we should/shouldn't act based on this lack of data." 5/5
