Trauma surgeons: We are bracing for a return to the rates of gun violence we witnessed five years ago
We face new attacks on research — with communication blackouts, funding freezes, and cuts at the NIH — that threaten to halt the progress we’ve made since 2020.
Nearly five years ago, from separate hospitals across Philadelphia, the horrifying reality of what we were facing came into focus. What had once been intermittent became incessant: police cars arriving at our doors, with patient after patient who’d been shot.
We were among the first to document the rise in gun violence in 2020, anticipating the heartbreaking years that would follow as the pandemic sowed fear and economic disempowerment. We now see a new wave of apprehension and uncertainty building — and we are bracing ourselves for a return to the distressing rates of gun violence we witnessed five years ago.
But there’s a notable difference between then and now. Five years ago, we were just coming out of a 25-year pause on gun violence research that saw devastating consequences across the United States. Today, we face new attacks on research — with communication blackouts, funding freezes, and cuts at the National Institutes of Health — that threaten to halt the progress we’ve made since 2020, with generational impact.
Gun violence prevention research was advancing rapidly until political obstruction halted progress in the mid-1990s. Aiming to replicate successes in curbing traffic fatalities, researchers had been hopeful the same public health approach — track the problem, identify and test solutions, share findings, and implement what works — could prevent gun violence.
But the research findings that emerged — including that owning a gun increased one’s risk of being murdered in one’s own home — angered lobbyists from firearm manufacturers, leading to the passage of the 1996 Dickey Amendment. While the text of the amendment did not ban research outright, it stipulated that no federal funds be used “to advocate or promote gun control.” Gun violence research dollars within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were reallocated, and a shadow was cast over the field of gun violence research for more than two decades.
Sixteen years later, in 2012, Rep. Jay Dickey, who had put forward the 1996 amendment as the point person for the National Rifle Association, coauthored an op-ed reversing his stance, urging more scientific research, and stating the truly “senseless” part of gun violence “is to decry these deaths as senseless when the tools exist to understand causes and to prevent these deadly effects.”
Six months later, President Barack Obama directed the CDC to “conduct or sponsor research into the causes of gun violence and the ways to prevent it.”
But it wasn’t enough.
In 2018, President Donald Trump signed a bill clarifying that the Dickey Amendment did not actually prohibit gun violence research.
Still not enough.
Not until 2021 — the deadliest year on record for gun violence in America, including here in Philadelphia — would we see the first dedicated federal funding for gun violence research in 25 years.
Gun violence prevention research was advancing rapidly until political obstruction halted progress in the mid-1990s.
The quarter-century gap resulted in a lack of essential infrastructure to support gun violence research, including expertise, mentorship, basic data, surveillance tools, and that critical public health approach noted above. Palpably present was a reticence by many to embark on research that could upset the same powerful lobby that brought about the Dickey Amendment of the ‘90s.
In recent years we have finally been emerging from our horrific state of inaction. And the rate of gun violence has been decreasing. In Philadelphia, the total number of shooting victims over the last year is down about a third from the same point just before the pandemic. Our renewed research efforts have been working. Lives are being saved. There’s so much reason for hope.
And yet, here we are. Back into chaos, back into economic uncertainty, back into a struggle for our nation’s essential research efforts. But it is a cause worth standing up for.
» READ MORE: Cutting NIH funding puts my life on the line — and maybe yours, as well | Opinion
As trauma surgeons, the suffering of our patients motivates us to do research that will prevent gun violence. We want our research to stop our patients from getting shot; we want it to stop them from dying. And so, even amid these most uncertain times — and perhaps especially during these most uncertain times — we must not stop asking questions, we must not stop searching for solutions.
We must all stand up for science. We must all stand up for our neighbors. We must all stand up for the untold many who will surely die from preventable and treatable diseases — be it cancer, diabetes, or gun violence — if the research that could have saved them simply didn’t get done.
Jessica Beard and Elinore Kaufman are trauma surgeons and public health researchers in Philadelphia. Beard is also a Stoneleigh Foundation fellow and the director of research for the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting. Kaufman is the research director for the division of trauma at the University of Pennsylvania and chair of the Pennsylvania Trauma System Foundation research committee.