Back in December 2014 I organized and ran a national conference on gun violence which was held at the headquarters of the state medical society in Waltham, MA. I had difficulty finding enough researchers to populate an 8-hour conference schedule which ran over two days.
This week, an organization which calls itself The Research Society for the Prevention of Firearm-Related Harms is holding its second annual conference in Chicago, and like the 2022 conference, the event is sponsored by the usual suspects in gun-violence research who are listed here.
I couldn’t take the time to do a detailed count, but the program for this year’s meeting appears to contain at least one hundred academic researchers who are presenting papers, or participating in panel discussions, or are engaged in one of the workshops or other events.
I am pleased to see that what was a rather intimate gathering of researchers in front of a modest-sized audience has become not just an academic cottage industry, but clearly a serious and significant academic and research initiative and will doubtless continue to grow over the years to come.
That being said, let’s look at the other side of the coin. Since the 2014 Waltham conference, somewhere around 380,000 – 400,000 Americans have been killed with guns. The CDC has entirely abandoned any attempt to calculate the number of individuals who have received serious wounds from guns, but I would be willing to bet that the non-fatal injury number for the past nine years is at least another 800,000, if not more.
Not only has the number of deaths and injuries from guns continued to increase, but the rate of gun violence has also gone up by at least somewhere around 40% to 50%.
That’s right. In 2015, the gun-violence rate was 11.03, in 2021 it was 14.62. We don’t have numbers yet for 2022 or 2023, but the estimates from the Gun Violence Archive and other unofficial sources indicate that gun deaths, never mind gun injuries, have climbed and are climbing higher still.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming The Research Society for the Prevention of Firearm-Related Harms in any way for being responsible for a public health problem which is not only epidemic in scope, but to paraphrase my dear friend, the late Katherine Kaufer Christoffel, is an epidemic which has become endemic as well.
On the other hand, America’s love for guns and our tolerance for this continued and growing form of violence simply cannot be blamed on the so-called ‘power’ and financial excesses of the NRA and like-minded groups. For all the talk about how our elected representatives are bought off by donations from the NRA lobbying in D.C. and many states, the entire campaign cash doled out by pro-gun interests doesn’t add up to 5% of what is spent every year on political campaigns.
Get a bunch of the researchers attending this week’s conference in a room and ask them why we experience and sustain such a high level of gun violence and the first words you’ll hear are words to the effect that gun violence is associated primarily with access to guns.
This idea happens to be the fundamental axiom upon which all gun violence research rests and It has been substantiated again and again by research first published by Art Kellerman and Fred Rivara back in 1992 and 1993. I note, incidentally, that Professor Rivara is a Board Member of the group meeting in Chicago this week.
All well and good that the research community has adopted a post hoc ergo propter hoc explanation which ties gun violence to the existence of guns. Unfortunately, this analysis isn’t shared by a majority of Americans, which even includes many Americans who don’t own guns.
The last time Gallup asked Americans whether a gun in the home made them more or less safe was in 2014, and 63% said guns in the home made their residence a safer place. A survey by Pew in 2023 said the same thing, i.e., 81% of gun owners said that a gun made them feel safer and 57% of non-gun owners agreed.
Now, if we live in a country which not only gives Constitutional protection to private gun ownership but us a country in which a clear majority of its population believes in an idea which thirty of evidence-based research does not support, then it seems to me that the people conducting all that research need to ask themselves how come the general public disagrees with what they have found out.
And you can blame the NRA all you want for this sorry state of public opinion affairs, but I think it’s rather difficult to sustain an argument in which a majority of non-gun owners happen to agree on this basic issue with the NRA.
Again, I haven’t had time to read then entire Chicago program with detailed care, but at first glance I didn’t see one, single contribution or panel discussion which would lead me to believe that this large group of researchers, of whom many have published significant works, will be spending one minute figuring out how to speak about gun violence to anyone except themselves.
The keynote speaker, who works at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, is going to talk about how Twitter posts by self-identified gang members can be used to connect AI and social media to firearm harm prevention. That’s fine. But has Doctor Patton ever considered taking a 30-mile ride up I-476 to speak at a meeting in Telford of the Friends of the NRA? Since I’m a Patriot Life Benefactor Member of the NRA, I’d be happy to ask them on his behalf.
Or if that would be a little too difficult for Dr. Patton, how about he asks his hospital to schedule some talks before high school PTA meetings in Philadelphia? How about if every member of The Research Society for the Prevention of Firearm-Related Harms Board commits to at least one monthly appearance before a group of parents whose kids are young teenagers and beginning to get interested in guns?
I’ll offer right now to contribute $10,000 to this society if they would start talking to the people who need to hear about gun risk and stop talking just to themselves.
Recent Comments