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Abstract
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On June 23, 2022, the US Supreme Court ruled in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association (NYSPRA) v. Bruen that the New York State law requiring individuals to show proper cause to obtain a license to carry a concealed firearm in public places for purposes of self-defense was unconstitutional (https://bit.ly/3DBV4vF). The significance of this ruling from political and public health perspectives cannot be underestimated. Against the backdrop of growing political partisanship among US legislators and in the US Supreme Court, the persistent lobbying by gun rights groups and the gun industry to loosen gun regulations and promote gun sales, as evidenced by the NYSPRA ruling, exemplifies how commercial determinants undermine health and well-being. The commercial interests of the gun lobby and the gun industry that limit research and drive laws and practices to sustain the availability and presence of guns in the United States cause immediate and horrific public health harms--mass shootings, mass murders, homicides, suicides, and unintentional gun-related injuries and deaths. The physical and emotional costs of gun-related injuries and deaths to survivors, their friends, and families are staggering. An evaluation funded by Everytown for Gun Safety concluded that gun violence costs Americans $557 billion annually--the bulk of which is attributed to quality-of-life costs for victims and their families ($489.1 billion) and medical costs ($2.8 billion) (https://bit.ly/3Ubhw4N).
In their 2018 commentary, McKee and Stuckler1 presented a summary of key manifestations of corporate power that influence health. Two of these manifestations--setting the narrative and setting the rules--are clearly part of the playbook of the gun lobby as they seek to dismantle gun control legislation. By focusing on a narrative of gun "rights" in legislative and judicial decisions and pouring money to back politicians who will not support gun control prevention or research efforts, the gun industry has ensured that corporate power supersedes public health (https://bit.ly/2CnxRdo).
Although many are aware of the Dickey Amendment, few are likely to know that a major impetus for this amendment was a 1993 study by Kellerman et al.6 showing that the presence of a gun in a home increased the odds of homicide. In an effort to stall robust research on gun violence, the National Rifle Association (NRA) lobbied for the Dickey Amendment to the 1996 US spending bill, an amendment that effectively banned federal funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for research that could be used to advocate or promote gun control.7 In 2009, Branas et al.8 reported findings from a National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism-funded study showing that individuals in possession of a gun were four times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession of a gun. In 2012, once again with backing by the NRA, the US omnibus spending bill expanded its ban on federally funded gun control research to include the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as the CDC. The presence of this ban for more than 20 years is one of the most prominent examples of lobbying and corporate manifestation of power and of setting rules that eliminate funding for gun control research. Although a small number of researchers were able to continue carrying out gun-related research, the Dickey Amendment essentially eliminated the possibility of creating a robust evidence base on gun violence prevention.
Recently, the language of the Dickey Amendment has been clarified to allow the CDC and NIH to conduct gun violence-related research, and a $25 million allocation, distributed evenly between the CDC and NIH, was earmarked for gun violence prevention research. These funds provide what amounts to seed funding to conduct research on the impact of federal and state gun legislation compared with funding for other health issues. Despite this slow and small start, more funding and research are critically necessary to establish an evidence base that, it is hoped, can inform the myriad of laws, policies, and practices that will be required to comprehensively limit the availability of and access to guns...
Language: en |