The recent spate of shootings has brought fresh denunciations of the “Dickey Amendment,” a 1996 law seen as restricting the Centers for Disease Control from researching gun violence. To its critics, the Dickey Amendment is part of the NRA’s “anti-science” agenda to cover up embarrassing evidence.
Personally, I’m uncomfortable with any restrictions on topics that the CDC might reasonably investigate. But given how gun research is politicized, it’s easy to sympathize with gun-rights supporters who are leery of funding more studies that would be carried out by their opponents. When the American Medical Association declares gun violence a “public health crisis” in the context of reiterating its support for gun control, it’s clear that major parts of the medical establishment are not interested in a balanced look at the evidence.
In fact, critics of the Dickey Amendment openly acknowledge that they want federal research to focus on the why and the how of gun control. Take the conclusion of a recent Washington Post op-ed by Milly Turakhia, a physician at Northwestern’s medical school:
We need more robust research at the federal level into the full costs of gun violence, and the burden it places on our already strained physical and mental health systems. This research will provide facts; the ammunition — risk factors, potential solutions — that will illustrate to legislators the need to enact changes to gun laws throughout the United States.
In other words, the purpose of gun research is to explain why we need gun control.
Advocates also want to use federal research money to develop political strategies. Last week two Boston University professors argued that the public health campaign against smoking is a useful model for taking on guns:
Taking a broad, societal approach is exactly what we have done with other public health problems, such as smoking. Public health research helped identify a proven set of programs and policies that denormalized smoking, such as limitations on smoking in public places and anti-smoking media campaigns. Thanks in large part to these societal-level public health interventions, cigarette smoking prevalence dropped to its lowest level in history last year. [emphasis added]
Apparently, they want taxpayer money to be spent on stigmatizing guns in the same way the government stigmatized smoking.
Is it any wonder that gun-rights supporters are “anti-science,” when the science in question is undisguised advocacy? I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: Distrusting politicized science is not close-minded — it’s a rational reaction to past experience. So here is a suggestion for advocates of federal gun research: Rather than denouncing skeptics as know-nothings, try giving them some reason to believe the new research would be apolitical.