There is a lot of bait-and-switch in this fight to preserve our Second Amendment rights against those who want to restrict these rights—the anti-gunners. A favorite bait-and-switch is their demand for research into gun violence when what they really mean is more gun control. This argument starts with the assertion that gun violence is a “public health crisis” and as with any other public health crisis, if we’re to identify solutions and act upon them, then the Centers for Disease Control, who states as its role: “Tackling the biggest health problems causing death and disability for Americans” is the nation’s steward for public health and safety.
Alas, or so the story goes, the notorious Dickey Amendment prohibits the CDC from researching gun violence, and as a result, thousands continue to die. But what does the Dickey Amendment actually say? The key phrase is: “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”
Let me repeat that: advocate or promote gun control.
Nothing in the Dickey Amendment prevents research into gun violence but what happened is that many within the CDC decided that any such activity could lead to a curtailment of funding. The then Director of the CDC, Dr. Robert Redfield, in a 2018 interview with CBS This Morning clarified that the CDC was not prohibited from researching gun violence, but that the center was waiting for Congress to provide funding for such research. So when anti-gunners claim that the CDC is prohibited from researching gun violence, that is the lynchpin to their bait-and-switch.
Anti-gunners push two themes in their “need to research gun violence” message: First, that we don’t know the root causes of gun violence. And second, that there is no research into gun violence. Both of which are false.
The issue is that anti-gunners ignore the research—the science—when it doesn’t support their agenda, which sacrifices public safety for gun control. The root causes for gun violence are well-known since there are only three ways to be killed with a gun: accident, homicide, and suicide; and these modalities are substantially researched with your tax dollars.
Modality one: ACCIDENTS
Accidents are the results of negligence, somebody not paying attention to what they’re doing. You can have the best engineered equipment handled by expert operators and yet: “Not even God, the Creator of the Universe, can save you from your own stupidity.”
Anti-gunners obfuscate the gun control debate when they compare traffic accident deaths to gun-violence deaths, overlooking that traffic deaths are almost all the result of accidents while gun-violence deaths include accidents plus homicide and suicide. The anti-gunners pull stats from the CDC’s Fatal Injury Reports and cite that from 1981 through today, traffic accidents have declined 40 percent, the result of safety regulations and laws. In the same breath, they’ll also state, that over four hundred people are killed in gun accidents a year—more than one a day.
A deceptive argument because over that same time period, gun accident fatalities declined over 80 percent. You’d be hard pressed to find another metric tracked by the CDC that showed such movement in the positive direction. Furthermore, this decline was due almost entirely to the gun industry and law-abiding gun owners embracing gun safety—real gun safety, not the anti-gun code for gun control. And in 2020, for every person killed in a gun accident, over 76 were killed in traffic accidents. The truth is, and the data bears this out, that Americans as gun owners are safer than Americans as car drivers. More on this later.
Modality Two: HOMICIDE
When we think of gun violence, acts of homicide are what come to mind and it’s no secret that homicide is a symptom of violent crime. In this regard, Federal, state, and local governments plus universities and non-profits spend millions of dollars every year into researching violent crime, its effects, and possible remedies. For example, the FBI Homicide Tables break down incidents of violent crime with startling specificity. In 2019, homicides from: robbery, 509; motor vehicle theft, 38; drunken brawls, 46; gangland killings, 274; juvenile gang killings, 292. Other tables catalog the homicides by race, age, sex, location, weapon, etc.
Then, in 2018 while supposedly prohibited from researching gun violence, the CDC published Surveillance for Violent Deaths — National Violent Death Reporting System, 27 States, 2015, and its Table 4 lists when firearms were used in homicide and the circumstances such as lovers’ triangle, drugs, brawl, drive-by. Despite the anti-gun propaganda, there is no dearth of information from research into gun homicides.
The anti-gunners like to echo the term “rising epidemic of gun violence” even though prior to the pandemic, violent crime and homicides were trending downward. In her article “The Gentrification Effect: Lower Crime, More Displacement” from the Daily Trojan, University of Southern California,Ashely Zhang reported that in southern Los Angeles, from 1992 through 2018, violent crime and gang activity decreased 67 percent, which almost mirrors the state’s 64 percent decline in homicide over the same period. The article mentions that nationally, violent crime was down—as was homicide—citing gentrification and community involvement as the reasons. Not once was gun control listed as a factor for increased public safety, in California or anywhere else.
Modality Three: SUICIDE
Suicide is a troubling subject to discuss and for good reason. The suicide of a loved one or a close friend can be one of the most heartbreaking events anyone can ever experience.
When anti-gunners present the annual tally of US gun-violence deaths, that about two-thirds of those fatalities are by suicide is seldom disclosed. Sadly, and ghoulishly, when they do mention suicides, the anti-gunners don’t hesitate to put their spin on these tragedies. If someone dies by gun suicide, then according to them, access to a gun was the culprit. However, if a gun is not used, then the suicide is about what caused the person to commit suicide, not the means.
What causes someone to pursue this ultimate act of self-destruction? Research shows it is the result of depression and substance abuse. Depression brought on by a loss of self-esteem, humiliation, hopelessness, a feeling of “perceived burdensome,” anguish, and physical pain. Relief from that anguish and physical pain is sought through drugs and alcohol, which leads to addiction and a downward spiral into more self-harm.
Anti-gunners like to argue that suicide is an impulsive act even though there’s little agreement in clinical research about this. To quote Revisiting Impulsivity in Suicide:
Implications for Civil Liability of Third Parties from The National Center for Biotechnology Information: “…recent research demonstrates that most suicides are not attempted impulsively, and in fact involve a plan.”
Another talking point emphasizes that a gun is the most lethal means of committing suicide, the point made by comparing suicide by gun to suicide by taking pills or cutting, which are among the least lethal means of committing fatal self-harm. However, even when guns are available, people resort to other equally lethal means for self-destruction such as drowning, ingesting poison, jumping off a tall building or a cliff or in front of a train, and the most common method of suicide in the world, suffocation by hanging. Even though the numbers of death by fatal self-harm are greater than the total of those by gun violence, curiously, we have no epidemic of suicide.
Discussing suicide is indeed a macabre subject but it won’t go away by ignoring the problem or pursing an agenda not based on the facts.
The Wrap-Up.
If we are to develop real solutions to gun violence, research clearly demonstrates that we need to focus on eliminating accidents by promoting safety, reducing violent crime and homicides by investing better in our communities, and preventing suicides by improving access to mental health care.
In a future essay I’ll examine the Dr. Arthur Kellerman CDC report that prompted the Dickey Amendment and show how even this research concluded that the availability of a gun is not among the highest-risk factors for homicide.
While there is much more to explore into the topic of “gun-violence research,” I’ll end with this final thought. One big talking point by the anti-gunners is the premise that access to a gun makes one more prone to violence. But what does research into gun violence say about this? From the extreme gun-control John Hopkins School for Gun Policy and Research, and their course Reducing Gun Violence in America: Evidence For Change, they disclosed, when discussing who was responsible for committing violent crime, this interesting finding: “… a very important principle here is that gun owners who purchase a firearm legally, generally are even more law-abiding than your average person.”
Which is something we in the gun community have known all along.
Gun Violence Research: Another Bait-and-Switch