GVPanorama: How One Amendment Became the Real Reason America Can’t Solve Mass Shootings
The continuing deadly consequences of the Dickey Amendment
In America, statistics abound that metaphorically grab us by the shoulders and scream, You’ve got a massive gun violence research problem! Such as: “Between 2008 and 2017, sepsis and firearm violence killed the same number of people, yet gun violence received less than 1% of the federal research budget allocated for sepsis.”
There are numerous reasons why most never seem to hear those stats — increasingly conservative-leaning social media algorithms, network news outlets who don’t think hard facts get ratings, etc. The major reason is that one little provision in one big law, the Dickey Amendment, passed back in 1996 that severely restricts tax-funded research into the effects of gun violence and development of policy solutions.
So we have to rely on advocacy organizations, nonprofits, and scrappy journalists to dig up the stats which them arrive without the authoritative backing of a federal office. Aside from some minor adjustments — and the Surgeon General listing gun violence as a public health crisis last year — the budgetary restraints have remained.
With time, this legislative detail has been easy for the gun lobby to sweep under the rug of outrage over increased mass shootings, while continuing to offer dystopian “cures” like arming school teachers and yet more metal detectors.
As a new federal administration arrives to probably suggest those same scary options, it is worth always going back to that huge 1996 legislative mistake and work to have it revised.
This recent article from Reckon does just that and more. It gives a good history of of the Dickey Amendment provision, its awful legacy, and some positive developments that step around the maddening lack of research in the meantime. This piece also delves into the many factors that can lead to the tragic instance of someone picking up a gun to solve a problem.
Check out the full article here.
Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay.