Facts are not infringement
T he raft of new gun policies sweeping the nation — arm teachers, arm students, flash your piece under “open carry” laws — share one trait: There is not a shred of evidence they work to reduce gun carnage. That is because Congress essentially has banned federal spending on gun violence prevention research for more than 20 years. California legislators have proposed a way to do what Congress will not — study gun violence, just as we would study any other public health crisis. All we can say is: How soon can we begin?
“We know something about the causes of gun violence but nothing about what would prevent it,” said Mark Rosenberg. “Science has made huge leaps, but where science is kept out, we are behind the times,” he said, citing advances in automobile safety that reduced the number of highway deaths. “People wouldn’t stand for it if we said we were stopping cancer research.”
Rosenberg was the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Control and Prevention in 1996 when the Dickey Amendment, which banned any CDC funding that would “advocate or promote gun control,” was tacked on to an appropriations bill. Today, former Rep. Jay Dickey, R- Ark., seeks redemption. In 2012, he and Rosenberg co- wrote an opinion piece seeking federal funding of firearms research. Now friends, they have pursued the cause of reversing the ban but to no avail. In February, they threw their support behind state Sen. Lois Wolk, D- Davis, whose SB1006 would ask the University of California to create a center to study and gather evidence about the causes and prevention of firearm injuries. “Instead of fighting those who want to melt the guns down, and those who want no regulation at all, there must be a constructive middle ground,” Wolk said. “Research is a good way to get us some answers.”
The bill carries no funding, although costs are estimated at $ 1 million a year. It would require the center to report to the Legislature at the end of the first two years, and every five years thereafter. It also would allow the center to offer training and grants, vetted under strict, scientific guidelines, to other centers. On Wednesday, SB1006 sailed through the Senate Education Committee on a 7- 2 vote. Assemblywoman Catharine Baker, R- San Ramon, said she co- authored the bill because gun violence is a recurring theme in her community. “Let’s get the information, and let’s work with that,” she said. “Research doesn’t infringe on Second Amendment rights.”
With no federal funding for decades, gun violence prevention research barely exists in the U. S. The exception is Dr. Garen Wintemute’s Violence Prevention Program at UC Davis. As an emergency room physician, Wintemute sees the effects of gun violence first- hand. He has kept his program alive for two decades through foundation grants and his own money. If the UC regents approve a competitive process to open a center, he will apply. “We’re the only group that is doing this research on an ongoing basis,” he said. “That’s not bragging; it is a complaint.”
It is a complaint we should all share. The Legislature should send SB1006 to Gov. Jerry Brown to sign into law.