|
Abstract
|
Despite many remaining obstacles, there is hope that the US will soon have research that clarifies many of the unanswered questions about firearm violence and its prevention. The need is urgent: firearm violence levels are high and rising.1 In 2021, more than 48 000 firearm-related deaths occurred in the US,2 and untold numbers of quality-adjusted life-years were lost. Existing health disparities were exacerbated, particularly for Black individuals whose firearm homicide rates are 10 times greater than White individuals (with rates of 29.0 per 100 000 vs 2.9 per 100 000, respectively),2 and among whom the growth in firearm homicides has been concentrated.3
However, important opportunity exists for discovery and lifesaving policy innovation. Many critical research questions, neglected for decades, may now benefit from recent federal and private research funding that has supported a surge in research on preventing firearm suicides, community-based gun violence, mass shootings, police shootings, unintentional firearm-related injury, and intimate partner homicides. These are the 6 concurrent epidemics that underlie the nation's firearm violence problem.
Historically, the alignment of gun policy views with partisan politics led many researchers and their sponsors to forego gun violence research as too controversial. Despite widespread agreement that gun violence represents a major problem in the US, views on firearm policies remain deeply divided. In a 2021 Pew Research Center survey of 5109 US adults, 72% of respondents ranked gun violence as a top concern for the country (comparable with COVID-19). However, respondents were split along partisan lines about how to address it; only 20% of self-described Republicans favored stricter gun laws, whereas 81% of self-described Democrats favored stricter gun laws.4
If differences in values or objectives explained these policy disagreements, there might be little for science to contribute. But a recent analysis that involved 173 gun policy researchers, advocates, and analysts suggests that experts who favor laws encouraging wider access to firearms share a common set of objectives with those favoring restrictive laws. In fact, both groups rank their objectives almost identically; they prioritize policies that they believe will reduce firearm homicides, suicides, and mass shootings, and consider protection of individual rights, hunting, and sport shooting of secondary importance
Language: en |