Citation

The Lancet. Lancet 2017; 390(10105): 1812.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32710-1

PMID

29082869

Abstract

The numbing parade of mass shootings in the USA—like the one in Las Vegas that left at least 59 people dead—has often obscured the gun debate's open secret: horrific, attention-grabbing, mass shootings represent only a small minority of gun deaths each year. Two-thirds of all gun deaths in the USA are attributable to suicide, a fact highlighted by a new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on over half a million deaths by suicide from 2001 to 2015. Rural counties have a higher prevalence of suicide than do small and medium metropolitan, or urban counties (17·3 vs 14·9 and 11·9 deaths per 100 000 people, respectively). More than 50% of suicides were by firearms (62% in rural areas), with the rate of firearm suicides in rural counties nearly double that of urban counties (10·5 vs 5·4 deaths per 100 000).

The report cites a 2017 CDC technical package, Preventing Suicide, as the “best available evidence” on suicide prevention strategies—but the quality of that evidence is compromised by the Dickey Amendment, federal law that bans funding for most gun violence research, effectively stopping the CDC (since 1996) and National Institutes of Health (NIH; since 2012) from examining gun violence and ways to prevent it. Research has shown that suicide barriers on bridges are effective at preventing suicide, but the CDC and NIH currently cannot investigate whether limiting access to guns would have a similar effect. The NIH previously took advantage of loopholes to fund research, but under President Trump, US$18 million in research grants have expired, a move Senate Democrats called on the NIH to reverse. If it were any other subject, the idea of the federal government closing its eyes on research of 2015's tenth largest cause of death would be a scandal.

The legal restriction on funding gun violence research is one of the most objectionable aspects of the already entirely objectionable gun control debate in the USA. In the wake of Las Vegas, policy makers and gun control advocates should be looking strongly at rescinding the abhorrent and nonsensical legal restrictions that keep the USA ignorant of the true toll of its gun violence...

Language: en