(Author’s note: This piece is in no way intended to seek the wholesale confiscation of firearms or alter the Second Amendment’s clear intent. All law-abiding Americans can “keep and bear’ arms as they see fit. This is about ignoring a health issue for political purposes.)

We are facing an enormous health crisis in this country. The leading cause of death among children ages 1 to 17 is firearms.

Let me say that again.

The leading cause of death of children in the United States of America in the 21^st century is firearms. (Center for Gun Violence Solutions | Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (jhu.edu))

In 2022, the number of deaths by firearms in the United States was 48,204.

27,032 were suicides.

2,526 were children and teens (an average of 7 per day)

Black children and teens had a homicide rate 18X that of white children. (There’s that assumed “long in the past” racial bias showing itself again.)

The rate of Hispanic/Latino youth firearm deaths has doubled.

Among leading causes of death the US comes in at 74^th worldwide. We have a higher mortality rate than Canada, Mali, Congo Republic, and Myanmar.

Fifty countries in the world have lower infant mortality rates than the United States.

 You get my point.

So why is there a lack of government-funded research into this deadly health issue? Why are we so afraid of what we might learn by studying a problem that it takes two years to see meaningful data?

In simplest terms, the Dickey Amendment.

The “Dickey Amendment” effectively bars the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from studying firearm violence.

Studies such as Kellermann (1993) linked gun access to increasing rates of violence, this shifted the narrative of gun violence to a public health policy issue. Because the CDC created a new center in 1992 to study gun violence, the National Rifle Association (NRA) accused the CDC of bias in favor of gun control.

They enlisted the aid of a willing Congressman, Jay Dickey, who added a provision to the 1996 spending bill that said,

“..none of the funds made available in this title may be used, in whole or in part, to advocate or promote gun control.”

In 2018, responding to the increasingly deadly level of gun violence, an amendment to the appropriations bill made a slight concession. It didn’t explicitly ban research on gun violence, nor did it rescind the Dickey Amendment. The wording of the new amendment left the original ban largely intact.

We devote enormous resources to medical research to combat diseases and causes of death, except for firearms. Congress has approved only $25 million in research studies by the CDC and NIH into firearm health risks. Why would we not seek a solution to the leading cause of death among children?

Recently, that amount increased to only $165 million. The US Military spends $84 million on Viagra.

One might think it is high time to repeal the Dickey Amendment (no pun intended) and put gun violence research on a much higher level than erectile dysfunction solutions for those serving the country. If the military seeks to care for its members, why wouldn’t we want to care for the most vulnerable among us?

Suppose we discovered a new strain of virus or bacteria that was the leading cause of death among children. Wouldn’t there be an overwhelming demand for research and developing a solution?

Why does the specter of what the research might tell us about gun violence frighten those so much they wish to avoid the issue? And why are they so willing to sacrifice children for the continuity of their ignorance?

Of course, we could just resign ourselves to the situation and accept the fact that guns kill more of our kids than any other health threat, unlike most other prominent and wealthy nations.

Or we can do something that every other nation seeking to be great would do, protect our children.

I prefaced this piece by stating it was not about confiscating guns from law-abiding Americans. But I wonder, should we ever find the resolve to research the issue, if one of the most effective solutions was to do just that, eliminate firearms from private ownership, what would we do?

Would we refuse such action and let kids die for a concept envisioned as necessary in the 18th century yet arguably mute in the 21st century?

Conversely, should the research demonstrate just the opposite, that gun ownership is not the risk factor it seems to be, I wonder if we would move forward with the results of that research and follow the derived solutions?

The issue is not what we need to do to address the problem. The issue is that we don’t fundamentally understand the situation and are letting politics cloud sound judgment based on emotional attachment to certain causes, preventing us from seeking a rational solution.