The specter of gun violence uniquely shadows the lives of children in the United States. Gun violence in the U.S. has become a public health crisis and, more disturbingly, a pediatric health crisis. Guns kill more than 38,000 people and cause nearly 85,000 injuries each year1. Nearly 1,300 children die each year in the U.S. from firearm-related injuries, with the vast majority caused by homicide (53 percent) and suicide (38 percent)2. Among all high-income countries worldwide, 91 percent of firearm deaths of children aged 0 to 14 years occur in the United States3. Further, the gross inequities in racial equality in the U.S. are reflected by the fact that gun violence is the leading cause of death for black children and teens4.
The recent March for Our Lives gatherings reflect the public’s desire to find solutions to the public health crisis of gun violence, but solutions must be based on solid evidence distilled through rigorous unbiased research. Congress recently passed an omnibus spending bill that some have touted as a step in the right direction towards the prevention of gun violence; however, upon closer inspection, the bill’s provisions related to gun violence do nothing to advance the scientific community’s ability to conduct research into prevention efforts, and in fact its current form hampers such research.
The spending bill undermines research into gun violence prevention in the following ways:
First, the spending bill contains the STOP School Violence Act of 2018, which seeks to provide training for school personnel and law enforcement to prevent school violence and to add physical security features to schools. The act was Congress’ response to the recent shooting at a high school in Parkland, FL. The bill appropriates funds to provide grants to states, units of local government, and Indian tribes to implement school safety programs and technologies. The legislation states that such security measures must be based on “evidence-based strategies and programs, such as those identified by the Comprehensive School Safety Initiative (CSSI) of the Department of Justice (DOJ).” However, the day after the spending bill was passed, the DOJ announced its cancellation of the CSSI because the spending bill cut all CSSI funding5. The CSSI was a research initiative focused on K-12 public schools, born out of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. While both the STOP School Violence Act and the CSSI were implemented as a direct result of mass shootings at schools, there is a telling absence of any reference to gun violence research in either initiative. The sole mention of firearms in the STOP School Violence Act is language barring any funds from being used for the provision to any person of a firearm or training in the use of a firearm. The act sets forth rigorous statistical thresholds that must be met for proposed programs and technology, but the act provides no funds to research these ephemeral “evidence-based” programs. The question is who will conduct this research? Without federal funding, there will likely be an overreliance on industry studies conducted by the very companies seeking to sell their technology and equipment to school districts whose pockets will be lined by this grant money.
Second, a legislative report accompanying the spending bill contains language to purportedly clarify whether the 1996 Dickey Amendment allows federal appropriations to be used to conduct research on gun violence. The Dickey Amendment has been a de facto ban on gun violence research since its passing due to lack of funding. The legislative report accompanying the current spending bill includes the following provision:
While appropriations language prohibits the CDC and other agencies from using appropriated funding to advocate or promote gun control, the Secretary of Health and Human Services has stated the CDC has the authority to conduct research on the causes of gun violence6.
This provision has two consequences: first, it reifies the Dickey Amendment’s language that funding cannot be used to advocate or promote gun control (with no exception for control measures that may be deemed constitutional); and second, it constrains the CDC to conducting research only with regard to the causes of gun violence. The CDC’s mission is to protect the United States from health, safety and security threats. When researching the threats of child maltreatment, the CDC is not limited to only studying the causes of such abuse and neglect, they research ways to prevent such maltreatment. Why then should research into the threat of gun violence be hamstrung to only examining the causes of such violence with no means to research the most effective ways to prevent such violence?
Congress has the power to (i) repeal the Dickey Amendment and (ii) allocate adequate funds to support research regarding gun violence prevention in the next omnibus spending bill, the extension of which is due only 38 days before the midterm elections. A repeal will allow for unfettered and unbiased scientific research into not only the causes of gun violence, but also into sound evidence-based solutions to prevent gun violence. These steps will empower us to march forward in the fight against this public–and more poignantly–pediatric health crisis. This is not a matter of gun control; it is a matter of information control.
References
- APHA (2018). Preventing Gun Violence. Retrieved from: https://www.apha.org/-/media/files/pdf/factsheets/160317_gunviolencefs.ashx?la=en&hash=AB71DE1BEDEBB2A797F8EC378E672791904FCF87opens in new window
- Fowler, K., Dahlberg, L., Haileyesus, T., Gutierrez, C., Bacon, S. Childhood Firearm Injuries in the United States. Pediatrics. 2017;140(1). Retrieved from: https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/early/2017/06/15/peds.2016-3486.full.pdfopens in new window
- Fowler, K., Dahlberg, L., Haileyesus, T., Gutierrez, C., Bacon, S. Childhood Firearm Injuries in the United States. Pediatrics. 2017;140(1). Retrieved from: https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/early/2017/06/15/peds.2016-3486.full.pdfopens in new window
- Children’s Defense Fund (2018). The State of America’s Children 2017. Retrieved from: https://www.childrensdefense.org/library/state-of-americas-children/2017-soac.pdfopens in new window
- National Institute of Justice (2018). NIJ’s Comprehensive School Safety Initiative. Retrieved from: https://nij.gov/topics/crime/school-crime/Pages/school-safety-initiative.aspxopens in new window
- Division H – Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2018. Retrieved from: https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20180319/DIV%20H%20LABORHHS%20SOM%20FY18%20OMNI.OCR.pdfopens in new window