By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – In a few days, the National Rifle Association will come to Indiana for its big annual meeting.

John Krull, publisher, TheStatehouseFile.com

Gov. Mike Pence and the state’s lawmakers decided to mark the occasion by giving the gun lobby a gift – a new state law that allows gun owners to bring their weapons to school.

(If this annual meeting is successful and the gun lobby decides to come back to Indiana, presumably the governor and state legislators will move to the next item on the NRA wish list – a state law requiring Hoosier pre-schoolers to pack heat when they toddle off to daycare.)

A lot of people and groups opposed the whole “bring your guns to school” idea. The Indiana State Teachers Association, the Indiana Association of School Principals, Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents, Indiana School Boards Association, Indiana Urban School Association, and the Children’s Coalition of Indiana didn’t like it.

Initially, I agreed with the folks who didn’t like the new law.

But then I realized that, if allowing NRA members to bring their guns to school was the only way to get them to continue their educations, it was a small price to pay.

They could start by taking a refresher course in math. They seem to struggle with simple things like counting and comparing numbers.

The author of the “bring your guns to school” bill, Rep. Jim Lucas, R-Seymour, likes to point out that guns are not nearly the danger that automobiles are. Lucas proclaims himself a proud NRA life member and supporter. He says, correctly, that more than 32,000 Americans died in automobile-related incidents in 2011 – a number so significant and so threatening to public safety that, among other things, it justifies limiting drivers’ First Amendment rights to text while they’re behind the wheel.

Guns, Lucas says, accounted for “only” 8,583 deaths in that year, so we Americans really don’t have an issue when it comes to guns.

The problem with Lucas’s reckoning is that those 8,583 deaths were only a sliver of the number of gun-related deaths in the United States in 2011.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, nearly 32,000 Americans died in gun-related incidents in 2011 – basically the same “huge” number as were killed by automobiles that year.

To keep his gun number low, Lucas opted to ignore the number of gun-related suicides and accidental deaths. To make it a fair comparison, Lucas should have included all the gun-related deaths – or limited his cars-to-guns comparison to people who were killed by others.

What Lucas did wasn’t a case of comparing apples to oranges. It was a case of comparing apples to door knobs.

At a conference committee meeting on the “bring guns to school” law, Lucas repeatedly said that people opposing the measure had manipulated data to support their arguments. Critics charged that he was bullying those offering testimony he didn’t like.

Maybe Lucas’s motives were misinterpreted. Given his own determined and selective numerical cherry-picking, it’s possible that Lucas intended his statements about witnesses’ data manipulation as a compliment from one practitioner of the art to another.

Once Lucas and his fellow NRA members have finished with basic counting, perhaps they could move on to story problems.

For example, they could try to answer this one: The United States leads the developed world in the number of gun-related deaths by a wide margin. In fact, America records 20 times – that’s 2000 percent – the number of gun-related deaths per 100,000 people than the average of the world’s other developed countries.

If America’s NRA-crafted policies of free and unfettered gun flow – bring your guns to school – isn’t part of the problem, then what is?

Is it that Americans are 2000 percent more evil than the rest of the developed world?

Or are we 2000 percent more careless than people in other developed nations?

Or is that, in giving a special interest group like the NRA such a disproportionate voice in our laws and public policies, we Americans are 2000 percent more gullible than citizens of other developed countries?

John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits” WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

By Ashlee Kieler April 3, 2014

While critics of e-cigarettes raise concerns about everything from exploding devices to poisoning risks to marketing and advertising to minors, there are currently no specific federal regulations on these products. That is likely to change soon, says the head of the FDA.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg told senators at a Congressional budget hearing today that a proposed rule that would establish FDA authority over e-cigarettes should be ready for release “very soon,” Reuters reports.

Currently, the proposal is being examined by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to assess its potential economic impact.

Public health advocates and lawmakers have been pressing for regulations since the products came on the market as an alternative to traditional cigarettes.

“Four years and four months to get the first draft over to OMB is unacceptable,” Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon says.

Hamburg told senators that criticism of the FDA’s slow response to establish regulations is fair.

“I do believe that very soon I will be able to call you, and say the deeming rule is out,” she said.

The FDA isn’t exactly known for its swiftness. In 1977, the agency proposed a ban on penicillin and other antibiotics in farm animals. It wasn’t until 35 years later and a court order that the agency got around to seriously considering that proposal.

Since 2009, the FDA has had authority to regulate cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and roll-your-own tobacco, as well as the power to deem other tobacco product within its jurisdiction.

Still, e-cigarette companies believe they should be exempt from FDA regulations, contending it would stifle innovation, damage small business and hurt consumer trying to quite smoking.

Those in favor of regulations say the delay presents a risk to children who may be attracted to the product’s sweet flavors.

Last month, the New York Times explored one of the deadliest attributes e-cigarettes pose: liquid nitrogen. When ingested or absorbed even small amounts of the toxin could prove deadly.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a new report [PDF] today that show the number of calls to poison centers involving e-cigarette liquid containing nicotine rose from one per month in September 2010 to 215 per month in February 2014.

“We do feel that this in an area that requires greater attention, action and concern,” Hamburg says of the increased poisonings.

E-cig rule coming ‘very soon,’ U.S. FDA chief says [Reuters]