BMJ 2015;351:h6672 doi: 10.1136/bmj.h6672 (Published 8 December 2015)
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NEWS Doctors’ group urges Congress to lift ban on gun violence research Owen Dyer Montreal
More than 5000 doctors have signed a petition asking the US Congress to lift a 20 year ban preventing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from conducting research into gun violence. “Scientific data have saved lives from motor vehicle accidents, sudden infant death syndrome, lead poisoning, and countless other threats to people’s health,” the petition notes, yet the government has remained wilfully ignorant about the epidemiology of gun violence since 1996, when the Dickey Amendment stipulated that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”
The ban grew out of a seminal 1993 research paper, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which measured gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home.1 The article received widespread media attention for its finding that gun owning households faced a higher overall risk of homicide and drew the ire of the National Rifle Association. The pressure group, arguably Washington’s most powerful, responded by campaigning for the elimination of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention, which had funded the study.
The center survived, but the 1996 spending bill passed by Congress stripped $2.6m (£1.7m; €2.4m) from the CDC—exactly the amount spent on gun research in the previous year—and inserted the Dickey Amendment, named after a Republican congressman from Arkansas. The amendment does not explicitly ban all research into gun violence, but the CDC, fearful of losing more funding, has interpreted it broadly and spent no more than $100 000 in 2013 on the prevention of injury by firearms.
In 2011 a clause identical to the Dickey Amendment was added to the part of that year’s appropriations legislation covering funding of the National Institutes of Health. This was in response to a 2009 paper in the American Journal of Public Health, which found that owning a gun increased fivefold the risk of being shot in an assault.2 The research had been funded by the NIH’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
Even an executive order by President Obama, ostensibly restoring funding to gun violence research after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook primary school, was insufficient to overcome the caution of agencies which recognize that Congress ultimately holds the purse strings. Obama’s funding requests were denied by legislators. For personal use only: See rights and reprints http://www.bmj.com/permissions
Presenting the doctors’ petition, Nina Agrawal, a pediatrician from South Bronx, said, “It’s disappointing to me that we’ve made little progress in the past 20 years in finding solutions to gun violence. In my career I’ve seen children’s lives saved from measles, sudden infant death syndrome, motor vehicle accidents . . . because of federal scientific data and research. It’s frustrating that the CDC is not permitted to do the same type of research for gun violence.” The petition was organized by the group Doctors for America and supported by, among others, the Doctors Council, National Physicians Alliance, American College of Preventive Medicine, American Medical Student Association, and American Academy of Pediatrics.
But the most notable supporter was former Congressman Jay Dickey himself, who has said that he “has regrets” about the legislation bearing his name and who sent a letter to be read out by the petition’s supporters.
“Research could have been continued on gun violence without infringing on the rights of gun owners, in the same fashion that the highway industry continued its research without eliminating the automobile,” wrote Dickey. “It is my position that somehow or some way we should slowly but methodically fund such research until a solution is reached. Doing nothing is no longer an acceptable solution.”
Doing nothing is the almost certain outcome, however, as experts agree that the National Rifle Association today has a stronger grip than ever on Congress. The Republican Party has adopted a position of no concessions whatsoever on gun matters, arguing that any compromise is the beginning of a slippery slope to confiscation. Any Republican congressman who breaks ranks can expect a primary challenge from a well funded opponent. The scale of the challenge was illustrated the day after the petition’s submission, when all 54 Senate Republicans, including four presidential candidates, voted against a Democratic sponsored bill to prevent the sale of firearms to people on the US government’s no fly terror watch list. 1 2
Kellerman AL, Rivara FP, Rushforth NB et al. Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home. N Engl J Med 1993;329:1084-91. Branas CC, Richmond TS, Culhane DP, Ten Have TR, Wiebe DJ. Investigating the link between gun possession and gun assault. Am J Public Health 2009;99:2034-40.
Cite this as: BMJ 2015;351:h6672 © BMJ Publishing Group Ltd 2015
Subscribe: http://www.bmj.com/subscribe
BMJ 2015;351:h6672 doi: 10.1136/bmj.h6672 (Published 8 December 2015)
Page 2 of 2
NEWS
For personal use only: See rights and reprints http://www.bmj.com/permissions
Subscribe: http://www.bmj.com/subscribe
Page 1 of 2
News
NEWS Doctors’ group urges Congress to lift ban on gun violence research Owen Dyer Montreal
More than 5000 doctors have signed a petition asking the US Congress to lift a 20 year ban preventing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from conducting research into gun violence. “Scientific data have saved lives from motor vehicle accidents, sudden infant death syndrome, lead poisoning, and countless other threats to people’s health,” the petition notes, yet the government has remained wilfully ignorant about the epidemiology of gun violence since 1996, when the Dickey Amendment stipulated that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”
The ban grew out of a seminal 1993 research paper, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which measured gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home.1 The article received widespread media attention for its finding that gun owning households faced a higher overall risk of homicide and drew the ire of the National Rifle Association. The pressure group, arguably Washington’s most powerful, responded by campaigning for the elimination of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention, which had funded the study.
The center survived, but the 1996 spending bill passed by Congress stripped $2.6m (£1.7m; €2.4m) from the CDC—exactly the amount spent on gun research in the previous year—and inserted the Dickey Amendment, named after a Republican congressman from Arkansas. The amendment does not explicitly ban all research into gun violence, but the CDC, fearful of losing more funding, has interpreted it broadly and spent no more than $100 000 in 2013 on the prevention of injury by firearms.
In 2011 a clause identical to the Dickey Amendment was added to the part of that year’s appropriations legislation covering funding of the National Institutes of Health. This was in response to a 2009 paper in the American Journal of Public Health, which found that owning a gun increased fivefold the risk of being shot in an assault.2 The research had been funded by the NIH’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
Even an executive order by President Obama, ostensibly restoring funding to gun violence research after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook primary school, was insufficient to overcome the caution of agencies which recognize that Congress ultimately holds the purse strings. Obama’s funding requests were denied by legislators. For personal use only: See rights and reprints http://www.bmj.com/permissions
Presenting the doctors’ petition, Nina Agrawal, a pediatrician from South Bronx, said, “It’s disappointing to me that we’ve made little progress in the past 20 years in finding solutions to gun violence. In my career I’ve seen children’s lives saved from measles, sudden infant death syndrome, motor vehicle accidents . . . because of federal scientific data and research. It’s frustrating that the CDC is not permitted to do the same type of research for gun violence.” The petition was organized by the group Doctors for America and supported by, among others, the Doctors Council, National Physicians Alliance, American College of Preventive Medicine, American Medical Student Association, and American Academy of Pediatrics.
But the most notable supporter was former Congressman Jay Dickey himself, who has said that he “has regrets” about the legislation bearing his name and who sent a letter to be read out by the petition’s supporters.
“Research could have been continued on gun violence without infringing on the rights of gun owners, in the same fashion that the highway industry continued its research without eliminating the automobile,” wrote Dickey. “It is my position that somehow or some way we should slowly but methodically fund such research until a solution is reached. Doing nothing is no longer an acceptable solution.”
Doing nothing is the almost certain outcome, however, as experts agree that the National Rifle Association today has a stronger grip than ever on Congress. The Republican Party has adopted a position of no concessions whatsoever on gun matters, arguing that any compromise is the beginning of a slippery slope to confiscation. Any Republican congressman who breaks ranks can expect a primary challenge from a well funded opponent. The scale of the challenge was illustrated the day after the petition’s submission, when all 54 Senate Republicans, including four presidential candidates, voted against a Democratic sponsored bill to prevent the sale of firearms to people on the US government’s no fly terror watch list. 1 2
Kellerman AL, Rivara FP, Rushforth NB et al. Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home. N Engl J Med 1993;329:1084-91. Branas CC, Richmond TS, Culhane DP, Ten Have TR, Wiebe DJ. Investigating the link between gun possession and gun assault. Am J Public Health 2009;99:2034-40.
Cite this as: BMJ 2015;351:h6672 © BMJ Publishing Group Ltd 2015
Subscribe: http://www.bmj.com/subscribe
BMJ 2015;351:h6672 doi: 10.1136/bmj.h6672 (Published 8 December 2015)
Page 2 of 2
NEWS
For personal use only: See rights and reprints http://www.bmj.com/permissions
Subscribe: http://www.bmj.com/subscribe
