Skip to content Skip to footer

Why Is It Illegal to Research the Impact of Gun Control on Public Health?

It’s time to start treating gun violence like one of the biggest public health crises in the US.

Time is running out to make a tax-deductible donation to Truthout before the end of 2015! If you want to contribute this year, don’t wait – click here now!

The US is in the midst of a full-blown public health crisis.

Around 282 people every day – more than 32,000 people every year – are dying from a totally preventable cause.

This totally preventable cause, by the way, just isn’t a problem in most other developed nations.

See more news and opinion from Thom Hartmann at Truthout here.

They’ve either eliminated it altogether or responded to previous outbreaks in such a way as to make future ones rarer and much less deadly than the ones we have here.

I’m talking, of course, about gun violence.

Yes, that’s right, gun violence.

It’s not something that most people think about when they think about the biggest public health crises in the US – they usually think of cancer, heart disease or drug addiction – but that’s exactly what gun violence is: a public health crisis.

It’s a public health crisis because it’s an ongoing and substantial threat to the safety of the citizens of this country.

No one, I repeat no one, is safe, at least not with the NRA out there spending millions of dollars every election cycle to make sure weapons of war stay on our streets.

And that raises a really important point: We know what the problem is when it comes to gun violence.

The problem is that it there are too many guns in too many hands.

So the logical thing to do would be something like what we did when Ralph Nader revealed that shoddy automobile manufacturing was causing deadly car crashes or when scientists revealed that cigarettes were causing cancer: get real scientific information on the problem and then pass laws, informed by that science, that eliminate the problem at its root cause.

When it comes to gun violence, this would mean passing laws that make it much harder to buy and sell guns of any kind, especially assault rifles and other weapons of war that have no business being in the hands of private civilians.

This isn’t really up for debate.

The NRA can pump out whatever “good guys with guns” propaganda it wants, but the fact of the matter is that Americas are safer with fewer, not more guns, on the streets.

The latest proof of this comes out of Missouri, which in 2007 repealed some of its most important gun control laws, including universal background checks.

According to a new study from Johns Hopkins University, this caused a 16 percent jump in the Show Me State’s gun homicide rate.

Missouri was always a violent place – its gun homicide rate was actually 13.8 percent higher than the national average before the 2007 repeal – but doing away with common sense things like background checks made things much, much worse.

Between 2008 and 2014, the first eight years after repeal of their control laws, Missouri’s gun homicide rate was 47 percent – yes, 47 percent – higher than the national average.

It’s a pretty straightforward equation: More freely available guns equals more gun deaths – and fewer freely available guns equals fewer guns deaths.

Period.

End of story.

Which raises the question: If gun violence caused by easy access to guns is such an obvious public health problem with such an obvious solution, why doesn’t our government treat it like one?

The answer to that question has a one-word answer – Republicans.

Believe it or not, it’s actually illegal for the Centers of Disease Control to conduct any research whatsoever into the impact of gun control on public health.

That’s right – illegal!

This is all thanks to former Arizona Republican Congressman Jay Dickey, who in 1996 pushed for and helped pass an NRA-backed law that bans government research into the relationship between gun ownership and public health.

This law is now called the Dickey Amendment after its creator, and, outside of NRA money, it’s one of the biggest roadblocks in the way of our having a sensible gun control policy in this country.

Even Jay Dickey thinks so, which is why he now opposes the law he once helped create.

The government – the institution we trust with our safety – shouldn’t be prevented from researching a major public health problem just because that research could make a profitable business look bad.

We wouldn’t give the auto industry or the tobacco industry that kind of exemption, and we shouldn’t give it to the gun industry either.

It’s time to repeal the Dickey Amendment and starting treating gun violence like what it is: one of the biggest public health crises in the US.

Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn

Dear Truthout Community,

If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.

We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.

Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.

There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.

Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?

It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.

We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.

We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.

Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.

We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.

With love, rage, and solidarity,

Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy