Whether or not guns themselves are a problem in our society may be a matter opinion, but one thing that we should all agree on is that we should have good data on how and why gun violence is committed (as well as the who, what, where, and when).  Both private citizens and law enforcement deserve to know when they might be at risk and what they can do to protect themselves, while doctors would better understand how to identify high-risk patients with mental health issues that might predispose them to violence. This should make sense regardless of political affiliation or how you feel about gun ownership.

And yet we have very little data. In fact, we perform almost no research at all on gun violence in our country. And the reason is entirely political – provisions in the annual appropriations bill (which directs federal funds toward research) prevents any money from being spent on gun control… and for decades, the NRA has been successful at branding “gun violence prevention research” as a sub-category of “gun control”.

It was 1996 when we passed legislation intended to strip the CDC of the ability to fund gun control research. The law was taken a step further, however, and the CDC essentially stopped performing any gun violence research at all. Since then, this ruling has also been applied to the National Institute of Health (NIC). As a result, for the past 20 years the United States has collected virtually no data on gun violence that could be used to curb or head off future incidences before they happen. And the result is that we have only limited private studies to look at when trying to figure out what to do about gun violence outbreaks, leaving our law officers and doctors mostly powerless. Even the senator who wrote the bill expresses deep regret at the results of his actions, stating that the law has been over-interpreted and resulted in unnecessary loss of life.

On top of all this, the NRA has fought in recent years to restrict doctors from asking their patients questions related to gun violence prevention. While they have been unsuccessful in preventing doctors from doing their jobs, they still have managed to force language into the Affordable Care Act and other provisions preventing the collection of data. They have managed to keep medical professionals from treating gun violence deaths as a “preventable disease”, despite similar causes of death being treated as such.

While there have been efforts to reverse these restrictive laws and open up the field of research for the public good, so far these attempts have amounted to nothing. The NRA and legislative allies have decided that public knowledge is a threat to the 2nd amendment, despite the fact that most Americans support gun ownership. The most recent attempt to end the ban on gun violence research is likely to go nowhere, at least until public opinion changes on the matter enough to pressure congress into taking action.

For now, we’re firing in the dark.