A position paper published by the American College of Physicians (ACP) on November 20, 2018, argued that firearm-related deaths and injuries in the United States need to be addressed. The paper stated:
“The ACP is concerned about not only the alarming number of mass shootings in the United States but also the daily toll of firearm violence in neighborhoods, homes, workplaces, and public and private places across the country.”
The National Rifle Association responded with a tweet that said:
“Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control. Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves.”
In 1993, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study found that having a gun in the home endangered the people living there. In 1996, Congress passed the Dickey Amendment — after its sponsor, Representative Jay Dickey (AK-R) — which said that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” That ended the funding that supported such studies. In 2012, after the Sandy Hook school shooting, President Barack Obama directed the CDC to rethink funding gun violence research, but there was not a substantive response.
Some research is done privately. For example, a group that advocates for gun control called Everytown for Gun Safety estimates that over 35,000 people in the United States die from gun-related deaths every year. The group uses numbers compiled from CDC figures. One issue for organizations seeking to find such statistics is that the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco is forbidden from sharing its databases outside of police organizations.
For more background on gun law reform, see the March 2013 issue of Congressional Digest on “Gun Violence Prevention,” the November 1999 issue of Congressional Digest on “Firearms in America,” the April 2010 issue of of Supreme Court Debates on “Gun Control in the States,” and the May 2008 issue of Supreme Court Debates on “The Second Amendment.”
