A journalist recently detailed his ordeal trying to get answers from John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Gun Violence Solutions on what the main killer is of kids from ages 1 to 9.
The school is funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City and a staunch opponent of gun rights (and Big Gulps).
Kansas City Star columnist Dave Mastio wanted to dig deeper into the researchers’ claims about gun violence, as the center reports “firearms were the leading cause of death for children and teens.”
As Mastio (pictured) points out, the report does not say what the main killer of kids ages 1 to 9 is.
He noted the Ad Council is “launching a multimillion-dollar, multiyear public service campaign telling parents that their kids are in danger because guns are the number one killer of children(!) and teens,” based on data from the Bloomberg school.
It is not easy to get a straight answer from the school’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions, however. Mastio details how a spokesman questioned where the age ranges came from (it was from the school’s own report). A scheduled interview also fell through, and the school’s promise to send questions via email did not answer the only thing Mastio asked about.
Emails to school leadership and the center’s leaders were also of no avail. When he visited the school several days later, “[t]wo very polite and very plump ladies from campus security complete with official looking badges came to escort me from the building.”
Ultimately another public health think tank on campus, the Center on Injury Research and Policy, answered his questions in just a few hours.
Not guns, but “drownings, falls and car accidents,” are the main killers of kids ages 1 through 9.
“It is not that they didn’t know,” Mastio writes of the well-funded gun control researchers. “It is that they didn’t like their own answer.”
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A graphic from the Center for Gun Violence Solutions report next to a photo of Dave Mastio; Center for Gun Violence Solutions; Dave Mastio/X
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