“Any reasoned debate on firearms in the United States, particularly one that seeks to protect 2nd Amendment rights while taking seriously the role of firearms in America’s disproportionate violence, must begin with a shared set of facts. At present, the firearms data infrastructure in the United States is too limited to provide that foundation …
“The United States is unique among peer nations in the incidence and prevalence of violence in general, and firearms violence in particular. The lack of research on the causes and correlates of firearms violence in America is well established.
“Without a broadly accepted set of facts to anchor a public dialogue, the civic discourse is one of extremes and caricatures and inevitably dormant policy making. At the same time, the crime decline of the last generation – which was not distributed equally across communities, cities, and regions – has slowed, stalled, or even reversed in many parts of the country. With no broad and promising policy mechanisms emerging to spur future reductions, the result is an equilibrium level of firearms violence that far exceeds reason and few emerging population-level interventions.”
(“First Report of the Expert Panel on Firearms Data
Infrastructure:
The State of Firearms Data in 2019.” National
Opinion Research Center. University of Chicago. January 2020.)
The goal of this panel on firearms is to produce practical guidance for a rigorous, objective, and sustainable firearms data architecture for use by local, state, and federal policymakers and their constituents.
Granted, any study on guns is bound to meet strong protests from the NRA and the gun lobby. Let's face it – a large segment of firearms enthusiasts view any challenge or question about guns as threats to their constitutional rights of gun ownership.
While mass killings, homicides, and violent crimes get most of the headlines, the CDC wants to study the true toll of guns in America. Eric Westervelt of NPR explains …
“But for decades, the devastating impact of nonfatal firearm injuries in the U.S. has been understudied, undercovered by the media and often overlooked. Political pressure from the gun lobby, regulations and 'disordered and highly segmented' collection systems have created chronically unreliable data and information that obscure our true understanding of the public health, financial, psychological and social toll of gun injuries, according to a 2020 study on firearms.”
(Eric Westervelt. “After 25 Years In The Dark, The CDC Wants To Study The True Toll Of Guns In America.” National Public Radio. September 29, 2021.)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show that just over 100 people, on average, are killed by firearms in the U.S. every day. That includes crimes, suicides, gun accidents and shootings involving law enforcement.
People in public health, criminal justice, policing and academia admit they lack full and adequate answers for understanding the deaths. The violence begs for answers to important questions. For example …
How often is someone injured by a firearm in America?
Why, how and what kinds of weapons are used?
What are the underlying causes?
What's the relationship between shooter and victim?
What evidence-based, scalable programs work best to help prevent criminal shootings, accidents and suicides?
Do restrictions on assault weapons reduce violence?
Are there “best practices” that could prevent suicides, homicides or accidental injuries?
What reforms could impede mass shootings?
For decades, the gun lobby and Republican allies in Congress effectively blocked federal funding for firearms research, arguing that such study would undermine the constitutional rights of lawful gun owners. By one estimate – a two-year study of gun policy in America by researchers at RAND – the government spends about 1.6% as much on such questions as it does researching traffic deaths.
The editors of Bloomberg report …
“The last time a CDC director attempted to address gun violence was in the mid-1990s, when some of the agency’s research had connected home firearm ownership to higher rates of gun deaths. A Republican Congress, heeding industry lobbyists, promptly passed legislation blocking the CDC from spending resources to “advocate or promote gun control.” For good measure, it also cut $2.6 million from the agency’s budget — the exact amount spent on gun research the prior year.
“Over the next quarter-century, virtually all federally funded gun research ground to a halt. With few grants available, academics avoided the issue. Published research fell by 64% between 1998 and 2012. Although gun violence is the second-leading cause of death among young Americans, the U.S. government spent only $12 million to study the topic – extending a grand total of 32 grants – between 2007 and 2018. Cancer, the third-leading cause, received $335 million a year.”
(Editors: Bloomberg. “Gun Violence Is an Epidemic. Better Data Can Help.” The Washington Post. September 28, 2021.)
(The graph, taken from a 2017 Journal of the American Medical Association article, shows that when looking at the 30 leading causes of death in the U.S. by mortality rate and publication volume, it is evident that the U.S. spends less money on research and publishes fewer articles on gun violence than nearly all of the other leading causes of death.)
As a result of lack of funding, experts say, in-depth gun-data collection and sharing in the U.S. is a tangled mess that undermines objective research on programs and policies intended to prevent firearm injury, suicide and criminal violence.
These and other basic questions about how to prevent gun violence have gone unresearched. Officials find themselves going in circles because they don’t have the data they need. Clarence Wardell, Vice President of Solutions at Results for America, a leading voice in advancing and driving evidence-based policy change, says, “Most folks assume that someone, somewhere is collecting this information, and they’re shocked when they find out it isn’t being collected.”
Nancy Potok, CEO of NAPx Consulting and the former Chief Statistician of the United States, explains …
“Even if particular communities are collecting this information and acting locally, there isn’t really the ability to compare communities because there’s a lack of standardized data. The local, state, and federal government all have an important role in data collection. Without basic information that can be compared, it’s hard to do anything about gun violence …
“It’s not just about collecting more data, it’s about how the data are used to understand some very complex dynamics. That requires more than one data set from one agency. It requires that health data, demographic data, crime data, and other data be brought together. The Foundations of Evidence-Based Policy Act, which passed Congress in 2018, puts strong protections around that data and makes it available to researchers. Our report builds on that new statutory authority, and takes a holistic approach. Gun violence doesn’t have a single dimension—it’s complex.”
(“America Knows Surprisingly Little About Firearms Usage. A New Expert Panel Sets Out To Fix That.” Arnold Ventures. 2021.)
Recommendations call on the federal government to revise how handling of gun violence data is collected and analyzed, chiefly by empowering researchers to fully explore all aspects of the nation’s gun violence epidemic; improving databases tracking things like nonviolent shootings; standardizing and improving the collection of data by law enforcement entities; and conducting annual surveys of firearm ownership and storage practices. With more comprehensive data available, policymakers would be better equipped to craft solutions, and the public would be better informed about the scope of the gun violence issue.
According to a price estimate by Health Management Associates (HMA), it will cost between $587 and $639 million over five years – or roughly $117 to $128 million annually – for the federal government to fully implement the gun violence research and data infrastructure improvements recommended by the Joyce Foundation and a NORC expert panel at the University of Chicago.
(Kira Lerner. “$120 million a year would close gun violence research gap.” The Joyce Foundation. July 13, 2021.)
A 2015 op-ed in The Washington Post written by Mark Rosenberg, who once oversaw gun violence research at the CDC, and Jay Dickey, the former Republican congressman from Arkansas who sponsored the 1996 amendment that stifled that research and that still bears his name concludes that Congress has to say that it wants gun violence research before government agencies will invest meaningfully in gun violence research.
In part, op-ed read …
“We can get there only through research Our nation does not have to choose between reducing gun-violence injuries and safeguarding gun ownership. Indeed, scientific research helped reduce the motor vehicle death rate in the United States and save hundreds of thousands of lives – all without getting rid of cars. For example, research led to the development of simple four-foot barricades dividing oncoming traffic that are preventing injuries and saving many lives. We can do the same with respect to firearm-related deaths, reducing their numbers while preserving the rights of gun owners.
“If we are to be successful , those of us on opposite sides of this issue will have to do a better job of respecting, understanding and working with each other. In the area of firearms injuries, collaboration has a special meaning. It will require real partnership on the design of the research we do because while we often hear about 'common-sense gun laws,' common sense is not enough to both keep us safe and to protect the Second Amendment.”
(Jay Dickey and Mark Rosenberg. “How to protect gun rights while reducing the toll of gun violence.” The Washington Post. December 25, 2015.)
A Child's Pledge of Allegiance
I pledge allegiance
To
the discourse
Of the divided states of mind
And to the guns
For which they hold
One crowd
Under fire
Inescapable
With funerals and bullets
For all
By Ozzie, August 2019
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