Not Yet Known—Or Is It?

“The shooter’s motive is not yet known.” This is a phrase which has appeared a demoralizing amount of times in American media over the past decade. Almost every time it is uttered, it is in reference to yet another mass shooting. It also provokes discussion of another, more complex question, one that divides the country in half each time it is asked: “What can be done about gun violence?”

To get anywhere with this question, both sides of the aisle must find a common ground through statistics and empirical evidence. Undoubtedly, these are the two most powerful weapons in the arsenal of any commentator or debater, no matter the issue. So which side do data and history favor?

Let’s start with some backstory. The 1996 omnibus spending bill included a provision called the Dickey Amendment, which mandated that funds for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) could not be used to promote the cause of gun control or regulation. As expected, the amendment was heavily lobbied for by the NRA, as it would supposedly restrict the CDC from performing research with findings in favor of left-wing gun policies. Since the bill was passed, many critics have cited the Dickey Amendment as a “ban” on gun research, one that stifles reform and hinders any chance at productive discussions by limiting the amount of data that both liberals and conservatives have to work and argue with.

The Dickey Amendment was unclear on the definition of “promoting” gun control. Would it apply to all studies on gun laws and statistics? Or would it ban the publication of research that supported the cause of gun control? Since the amendment diverted funds for studies on gun policy to other areas, one must assume that it is the former; the proponents of the amendment did not want any research being done on guns in America.

However, as famed criminologist Gary Kleck recently revealed, the CDC did in fact perform a study of gun-related crimes and interactions, perhaps in secret. The researchers asked the people taking the survey if during the last 12 months, they had “confronted another person with a firearm, even if [they] did not fire it, to protect [themself], [their] property, or someone else.” The results were astonishing; respondents used (legal) firearms eight times more in defensive situations than in offensive situations, such as robberies or shootings.

The reason for why the study was not published or even mentioned by the CDC is currently unknown, as its existence was only discovered recently. It could be that the CDC feared reprisal for a possible violation of the Dickey Amendment. Alternatively, the researchers may have been disinclined to publish their findings due to the potential political ramifications. Either way, the study proves that the Dickey Amendment did not completely stifle all research by the CDC on gun crime and usage.

Furthermore, what the critics of the amendment don’t take into account is the very real impact that the private sector has on gun policy research. Not-for-profit organizations and independent researchers have conducted groundbreaking and in-depth studies of the effects of various governmental policies over the years. For example, in 1995, Kleck (the same researcher who uncovered the aforementioned CDC study), working with Marc Gertz, conducted a nationwide survey of gun usage in defensive situations. Kleck and Gertz found that in the year before the survey was conducted, nearly 2.5 million American adults legally possessing a firearm used their weapon in a defensive manner, no matter if the gun was discharged or not. This means that on average, defensive gun usage outranked gun crimes by five times in 1995.

Restrictions on research are almost always done with political motivations in mind, left or right. However, in the case of the Dickey Amendment, the fact of the matter is that government oversight simply does not extend to private investigations and studies. The amendment (an example of such oversight) failed to halt gun policy research, as proved by the CDC study, and did not apply to non-governmental studies, so its passage did not harm the general debate on policy.