Science may get its say after tragedy
Research lacking on gun violence prevention
WASHINGTON – Do armed guards in schools prevent school shootings?
It’s a good question — and one of many that gun violence prevention researchers said they haven’t been able to conclusively answer, largely because of restrictions on federal funding.
Since 1996, Congress has blocked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from using funds for injury prevention and control to “advocate or promote gun control.” That doesn’t ban federally funded research, but some said it has produced a “chilling effect” on research that’s lasted more than two decades.
That’s part of the reason why researchers can’t definitively say whether having more people carrying concealed weapons would save or take more lives, said Mark L. Rosenberg, president emeritus of the Task Force for Global Health in Decatur, Ga. Or whether banning access to semiautomatic rifles would prevent mass shootings. Or whether certain types of mental illness are associated with violence. Or whether firearm registration and licensing would reduce gun violence or undermine the rights of law-abiding gun owners.
“We don’t know,” said Rosenberg, who was the founding director of CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. “And when you don’t know, people yell and scream on both sides, and unfortunately, they pass laws that sometimes have very bad consequences.”
After the mass shooting Feb. 14 at a school in Parkland, Fla., all Democratic members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee called on GOP leaders to hold a hearing on federal investment in gun violence prevention research. They have not received an answer, but some Republicans signaled they’re on board.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar suggested during a House
“We’re in the science business and the evidence generating business, and I will have our agency certainly be working in this field.”
Alex Azar
Health and Human Services Secretary
committee hearing that he was open to new gun violence safety research at agencies he oversees, including the CDC.
“We’re in the science business and the evidence generating business, and I will have our agency certainly be working in this field,” he said.
A study published last year by the Journal of the American Medical Association found gun violence kills about as many people a year as sepsis from infections, but federal funding for gun research was about 0.7% of that for sepsis and publication volume about 4%.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and others wanted to know last year whether programs that promote the safe storage of personal firearms are effective. The Governmental Accountability Office learned from program officials and researchers that “safe storage, as with other gun safety issues, has not been extensively studied.” One explanation they gave was the “Dickey amendment,” the recurring federal spending restriction on CDC research named for its author, Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Ark., who died last year.
“This is one of the leading causes of death in this country, but it’s one of the ones we have researched the least,” Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate health committee, said when she announced the results of the report in October. “Frankly, like so much about the gun debate in our country, this makes no sense.”
The National Rifle Association backed the Dickey amendment in 1996 after CDC-sponsored research refuted the notion that having a firearm at home makes you safer. Congress redirected $2.6 million spent on gun research to fund traumatic brain injury research. Rosenberg said he was fired in 1999. “I call them shots across the bow” at researchers, Rosenberg said, adding that the CDC became fearful of doing something that would put its budget at risk.