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    US government cuts imperil life-saving gun violence research. As doctors, we fear for the future | Jessica Beard and Elinore Kaufman

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    We don’t have a reliable count for how many people have been shot in the United States this year. We don’t know how many were shot last year either. Or the year before that. These most basic numbers should inform our gun violence prevention efforts. But they don’t exist.This is the void of information that is created and persists when critical research is suppressed.For those struggling to keep up with our erratic news cycle, what we saw unfold in February at the National Institutes of Health – with communication blackouts, funding freezes and cuts that will obstruct life-saving research efforts – may feel inconsequential. But make no mistake: the peril hanging over our country’s research efforts remains, and we in the gun violence research community are bracing ourselves for a dangerous situation we know all too well.Our field has already experienced the devastating consequences of defunding and censorship. The story of how we got here begins in the 1990s.Buoyed by the success of a public health approach in curbing traffic fatalities, researchers were hopeful that the same approach – track the problem, identify and test solutions, share findings and implement what works – could be used to prevent gun violence. The researchers got to work, and that work advanced rapidly. But some of the findings that emerged – in particular, that owning a gun increased one’s risk of being murdered in one’s home – angered the powerful gun lobby.The late congressman Jay Dickey, who served as the National Rifle Association’s point person in Congress, took up the cause, introducing a provision into an omnibus bill that called for no federal funds to be used “to advocate or promote gun control”. The Dickey Amendment, passed in 1996, did not ban gun violence research outright, but research dollars within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were reallocated, and the search for solutions was reduced to a trickle.Sixteen years later, days after the Aurora theatre mass shooting, Dickey co-authored an op-ed reversing his stance. In it, he urged more scientific research, not less, and stated the truly “senseless” part of gun violence “is to decry these deaths as senseless when the tools exist to understand causes and to prevent these deadly effects”.Six months later – and one month after Sandy Hook – then president Barack Obama directed the CDC to “conduct or sponsor research into the causes of gun violence and the ways to prevent it”.But even with the public outcry that followed these mass killings, even with Dickey’s reversal, even with the president’s directive, the pause in research continued.In 2018, on the heels of yet another high-profile mass shooting – this one at a high school in Parkland, Florida – then president Donald Trump signed a bill clarifying that the Dickey Amendment did not actually prohibit gun violence research.But it wasn’t until 2021 that these policy changes would lead to the first dedicated federal funding for gun violence research in 25 years. By this time, we lacked the most fundamental tools to support gun violence research: expertise, mentorship, basic data, surveillance and the infrastructure to implement that critical public health approach to address and prevent gun violence.The year the funding returned, 2021, was also the deadliest on record for gun violence in the US: 48,830 lives lost to guns over the span of just 12 months. As trauma surgeons in Philadelphia, we witnessed this heartbreaking moment in our country’s history firsthand. We were bombarded by the dying and the desperate and the so many who were harmed by this disease of gun violence – a disease our government had, for 25 years, not deemed consequential enough to cure.Because the CDC tracks gun deaths but not the total number of people with non-fatal firearm injuries each year, we don’t know exactly how many people were shot during that 25-year funding pause. But we do know that hundreds of thousands of lives were forever altered or lost. And the research community could not ask why, could not ask how, could not find the answers we so desperately needed then and so desperately need now.The suffering of our patients motivates us to do research to prevent gun violence – and the suffering we witnessed during the pandemic-related surge of gun violence very nearly brought us to our knees. We want research to stop our patients from being shot. We want research to stop them from dying.The moment we find ourselves in today is especially painful because with renewed research efforts over the last few years, we had finally begun to untangle the root causes of gun violence and identify and test solutions. We had also been making progress with gun violence prevention policy nationally.Three years ago, with bipartisan support, Congress passed the first major federal legislation addressing gun violence prevention in decades. Two years ago, we saw the creation of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which implemented an all-of-government approach to tackling gun violence. And last year brought the landmark US surgeon general’s advisory, which deemed gun violence a public health crisis that demands attention.What’s more, we’ve seen the rate of gun violence decreasing. Here in Philadelphia, the total number of shooting victims over the last year is down about a third from the same point just before the pandemic.We had so much reason for hope, until January, when the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention was shuttered. Then in February, there were broad attacks on scientific research. And this month, the surgeon general’s gun violence advisory disappeared from the government’s website.We loathe to think of what the next news cycle may bring.We were among the first to document the rise in violence in 2020, anticipating the catastrophic years that would follow. Now, as we watch a cascade of executive orders threaten public health and public safety, as we see fears of economic disempowerment sowed across this country, we trauma surgeons are bracing ourselves for another surge in gun violence.We should be filled with hope, not fear.But here we are, fearing for our patients, for our communities and for the countless many who will die from this preventable and treatable disease of gun violence because the research that could have saved them was defunded and censored yet again.No matter your political allegiances, no matter your life experiences, no matter your job, your income, your religion, your age or your race, we must stand firmly, together, in support of research that will help us understand this disease that causes suffering for so many – and one day, find its cure.

    Dr Jessica Beard is the director of research for the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting, a Stoneleigh Foundation Fellow, and director of trauma research at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University; Dr Elinore Kaufman is the research director for the division of trauma at the University of Pennsylvania and chair of the Pennsylvania Trauma System Foundation Research Committee. Both are trauma surgeons in Philadelphia. More

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      Trump is now a member of the mass shooting survivor’s club – will it change anything?

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      The assassination attempt on Donald Trump has put the former president in a category that hundreds of other Americans have been forced into in recent decades: the victim of a high-profile mass shooting.For those who have been at the scene of public shootings or lived through the media whirlwind that followed a loved one’s death to mass violence, the past week has felt like a “rinse and repeat” of more than a decade of this type of violence, said Christian Heyne, the chief officer of policy and programs at Brady, a gun violence prevention organization named after the former White House press secretary Jim Brady, who was shot in the head during an assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in 1981.“Every time this type of gun violence happens, it dredges up a lot of trauma,” said Heyne, whose mother was killed and father was injured in a shooting rampage in Thousand Oaks, California, in 2005. In addition to Heyne’s mother, a police officer was killed in the attack, and five other people were injured.After Saturday’s shooting, Heyne was brought back to the day his mother was killed and his community was terrorized. He is troubled that more people now face the trauma he has lived with for nearly 20 years.“The thing that baffles me is that we can be in this cycle of rinse and repeat but we’re not tapping into a conversation about how we prevent the next shooting,” he added.For many like Heyne, Saturday’s shooting was a reminder of their own losses and a stark reminder that gun violence can touch anyone, including a presidential nominee surrounded by armed law enforcement. The policy solutions, they say, are the same they have asked for following every mass shooting tragedy.“The fact that a 20-year-old with an AR-15 was able to get that close to killing a previous head of state is the reason that we have to focus on the gun at the end of the day,” said David Hogg, co-founder of March for Our Lives, a violence prevention group founded after 17 of his classmates were killed at their high school in Parkland, Florida.As the news of the Trump rally flooded television, one of Hogg’s first thoughts was of his mother, who he says is deeply affected by news of shootings. Then, he began calling out what he sees as the fallacy that more guns will ensure protection from mass shootings. “We’re not going to bulletproof our entire society,” he said.Now, he is looking forward with hope that the near-killing of the leader of the Republican party will push lawmakers to build the trust among themselves needed to pass gun policies at the state and federal levels.“The former president of the United States has heightened security and additional Secret Service, and this still happened. We need to change the conversation.“We have to have some semblance of trust between these major party political leaders,” Hogg continued. “Do I think Republicans are actually going to step up to the plate and do something? I don’t think so. But I hope so after the crown jewel of their movement was threatened.”The only similarity Hogg saw between the Parkland shooting and Trump’s assassination attempt was the deluge of conspiracies, speculation and misinformation that have become commonplace following high-profile shootings at Parkland and Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. “This is America, people love conspiracy theories in general,” he said.“There’s this range of public outcry that we continue to live through,” echoed Mark Barden, whose seven-year-old son Daniel was one of 26 people killed in the 2012 tragedy in Connecticut. “There’s sympathy, empathy, outrage and anger. There’s sadness, there’s horror and fear and then conjecture.”After 12 years of advocacy through Sandy Hook Promise, the organization he co-founded with Nicole Hockley another parent whose child was killed in the attack, Barden says he has grown used to the intense news cycle that follows high-profile shootings. He has found a way to move past the ugliest parts of the post-mass shooting news cycle, he said, to focus on spreading awareness about identifying the warning signs and behaviors that often precede mass public violence.“I spend all of my intelligence and mental capital on getting people to know the signs and giving them the tools to make an intervention on themselves or somebody else,” he said.“I think this could be – depending on how this unfolds – a catalyst moment,” Barden said of the rally shooting in Pennsylvania on Saturday. “There’s an opportunity for folks to understand that this doesn’t have to be our way of life.” More

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      Parkland survivors call for GOP extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene's resignation

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      Survivors of the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, are asking congressional Republicans to publicly censure Marjorie Taylor Greene for suggesting the school shooting was a “false flag” and for harassing a teenage survivor on Capitol Hill in 2019, as well as calling for Greene’s resignation.Greene, the newly elected Georgia congresswoman who is known for her support of the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory, was filmed in March 2019 as she followed 18-year-old David Hogg, one of the students who survived the shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school, outside Capitol Hill.In the clip from 25 March, Greene can be heard calling Hogg a “coward”, demanding that he explain how the students were able to set up meetings with so many lawmakers, and telling him that she herself was a gun owner. Greene tells Hogg that gun control will not work, and that his classmates would not have been killed if one of the law enforcement officers assigned to guard the school had “done his job”.She later addresses her viewers, echoing false yet frequently spread conspiracy claims that mass shooting survivors and family members of victims are “crisis actors” and the attacks that killed their loved ones were staged as a plot to pass gun control laws.“She hasn’t disowned any of it,” Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, was among the 17 students and staff killed in the shooting, told the Guardian on Wednesday. “She hasn’t said, ‘I was wrong.’ She hasn’t said, ‘I’m sorry to the families I’ve hurt.’ She hasn’t said, ‘I accept the truth around Parkland, Sandy Hook, and 9/11.’ She has let the lie live. That makes her incapable of serving as a representative in Congress.”Guttenberg said he had told Greene publicly via Twitter that he would be “more than happy to share proof with her” that his daughter’s murder was real, but that he received no response.Guttenberg called on the top Republican in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, to take a public stand against Greene. “McCarthy loses any ability to talk about integrity, about unity, about service to the country if he refuses to deal with this,” Guttenberg said.Hogg himself wrote to McCarthy on Twitter, arguing Greene “basically has threatened to kill” gun violence survivors, “trying to trigger our PTSD”. “In that video you see a group of people most of whom are 18 or 19 acting calm, cool and collected – what you don’t see are the sleepless nights, the flashbacks, the hyper-vigilance and deep pitch-black numbness so many of us feel living in a society where we are told our friends dying doesn’t matter, “ Hogg wrote.“Take her Committee assignments away,” Hogg pleaded. Greene’s committee assignments have not yet been announced, but the congresswoman has said she will sit on the education panel.The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, protested on Thursday.“Assigning her to the education committee when she has mocked the killing of little children at Sandy Hook, when she mocked the killing of teenagers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas – what could they be thinking?” she said, referring to the 2012 elementary school shooting in Connecticut and the school at Parkland.The committee chair, Democrat Bobby Scott, said in a strongly worded statement that House Republicans must explain why they appointed Greene to the committee, after her documented history of promoting conspiracy theories.On Wednesday, the California representative Jimmy Gomez said he would be introducing a resolution to expel Greene from Congress.Hillary Clinton said she should be “on a a watch list”, not in Congress.March for Our Lives, the youth gun violence prevention advocacy group founded by students from Parkland, is collecting signatures on a petition calling for Greene to resign, with the message: “Conspiracy theorists have no place in Congress.”Greene in recent days has faced renewed scrutiny of her past social media comments, with CNN reporting that past posts indicated support for executing Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Responding to those revelations, McCarthy has said that he “planned to have a conversation” with Greene.Greene’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.On the day of the incident, Hogg was on Capitol Hill along with other student activists to mark the anniversary of the 2018 March for Our Lives, delivering letters from constituents pushing senators to pass a law mandating criminal background checks on every gun sale. Greene was a rightwing commentator at the time.“I’m a gun owner, I’m an American citizen and I have nothing. But this guy with his George Soros funding and his major liberal funding has got everything. I want you to think about that,” Greene told her viewers.In reality, said Eve Levenson, one of the college students who helped organize the advocacy event, the advocacy event and the meetings with senators had been organized by college kids, including herself, from the floor of her dorm room.Another student activist who was present that day said Greene’s behavior had been “scary” and had left her shaken. Linnea Stanton, a college student and March for Our Lives activist from Wisconsin, recalled that Greene had first confronted the students as they delivered letters to lawmakers inside a Senate office building.“All of a sudden, this blonde woman was yelling, and someone was recording us with an iPhone,” Stanton said.After the students started chanting to get the Capitol police to intervene, Greene left, but she waited for the group outside the building, where she continued to harass and film them once they exited, Stanton said.Stanton said she had only learned on Wednesday that the woman who had harassed her group in 2019 was now an elected member of Congress. “It’s just kind of horrifying,” she said. “It’s bizarre to me that someone who can act like that towards another human being, much less towards a teenager who survived a mass shooting, is allowed to hold power.“I would love to see some accountability, or her acknowledging what she did, but it feels like wishful thinking,” Stanton added. “The last four years have showed time and again there will be no consequences.”Additional reporting by Amanda Holpuch in New York More