We might have a better debate if
Republicans would allow federal funding for research into gun violence:
But one reason the positions are so intractable is that no one really knows what works to prevent gun deaths. Gun-control research in the United States essentially
came to a standstill in 1996.
After 21 years, the science is stale.
“In the area of what works to prevent shootings, we know almost nothing,” Mark Rosenberg, who, in the mid-1990s, led the CDC's gun-violence research efforts,
said shortly after the San Bernardino shooting in 2015.
In 1996, the Republican-majority Congress threatened to strip funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unless it stopped funding research into firearm injuries and deaths. The National Rifle Association accused the CDC of promoting gun control. As a result, the CDC stopped funding gun-control research — which had a chilling effect far beyond the agency, drying up money for almost all public health studies of the issue nationwide.
. . . That hasn't stopped the rallying cry for “common-sense gun control.” But, as Rosenberg pointed out, we don't know what that looks like. Maybe background checks are not the answer. Maybe allowing guns on college campuses makes those places safer. Maybe there is a way to stop a single gunman from killing and wounding hundreds of people at a concert in Las Vegas.
But, many advocates say, it's impossible to have an honest debate about preventing gun violence when we can't study the issue.
Everyone agrees the Las Vegas shooting was a tragedy. But no one knows what might work to prevent the next one.
“If we get better data, we could get a lot of traction on this,” said Jennifer Doleac, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Virginia, who
has used gunfire-detection technology deployed in many cities to study how often guns are fired. “It's just so political.”
And this is defended with the spurious argument that a different agency ought to do the research that Republicans won't allow to be done at all.
