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Abstract
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This week as we go to press, a 17-year-old gunman fired on and killed 10 people at the Santa Fe High School in Texas. We mourn and express our condolences to the relatives and friends whose loss is personal and to communities whose trauma is collective.
This episode follows the February rampage at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a 19-year-old gunman killed 17 people. Since the beginning of 2018, there have been 10 school shootings and 101 mass shootings involving four or more people. Excluding suicide, the Gun Violence Archive recorded 15,549 firearm-related deaths in 2017. Including suicide, the most recent available federal data reported 38,658 firearm-related deaths in 2016.
Data are sparse on how to prevent firearm deaths and injuries. There have been no government-sponsored studies on this since 1996, when the Dickey amendment was added to a US House of Representatives bill. The amendment stated that the CDC may not conduct any studies that “advocate or promote gun control.” In 2012, that prohibition was expanded to the entire Department of Health and Human Services.
The restriction on research means that it has been difficult to objectively evaluate the potential efficacy of any proposed gun control laws. In 2003, when the Task Force on Community Preventive Services issued its first report evaluating the effectiveness of strategies to prevent violence, it concluded that there was insufficient evidence to make any determination [1].
In an effort to change the dynamic after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, which took place in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, Vice President Biden called for the Institute of Medicine to conduct a review and provide a report on firearm-related research. The report Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence was published in 2013 [2]. It highlighted significant gaps in knowledge to formulate prevention strategies and proposed a research agenda—designed to produce results in three to five years—which focuses on the characteristics of firearm violence, risk and protective factors, interventions and strategies, the impact of gun safety technology, and the potential influence of video games and other media. Yet with Congress stalled on providing funding, the research has lagged, although some private foundations have stepped forward.
Recently, the governors of six states (Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island) and Puerto Rico have launched a gun violence research consortium, bypassing Congress. With 44 experts in criminology, medicine, and public health, we may expect research in the coming months and years ...
Language: en |