Want to reduce gun violence? Researchers are ready to help, but they need funding

The measure of any society is how it treats its most vulnerable, including children. But what happens when we fail to keep our kids safe from danger by burying our heads in the sand about threats and how to confront them?

Gun violence is the leading cause of death among children in the United States, yet for far too long, the federal government eschewed funding evidence-based research about this public health crisis and how to protect children and others. Without strong investments in expanding our knowledge about all forms of firearm violence — homicides, suicides, mass shootings, domestic partner violence and much more — we cannot make educated policy decisions to ensure we lower risk.

Gun violence currently accounts for almost 30% of deaths in children and adolescents nationwide, and this number continues to rise. As concerning, a recent large-scale study found that now more than ever, young people are carrying and using firearms to settle disputes.

These trends are paralleled in Texas, with gun violence historically accounting for most adolescent deaths and injury across the state.

With shocking findings like these, we are left asking why this is happening, and more importantly, how we can effectively reduce the risk of firearm injury and death?

Before we can determine worthwhile solutions, we need to understand why various forms of gun violence happen and what has worked — or failed — in the past. It is in our national interest to support a robust and reliable stream of federal public-health research funding to this issue.

Despite the prevalence of firearm deaths and injuries in the US, it wasn’t until 2020 that Congress directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health to award grants to study gun violence and the effectiveness of local and state-based policy responses. Rep. Kay Granger of Fort Worth, the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee, should be applauded for her part in effecting this important change.

CDC and NIH followed through by funding apolitical, unbiased research in such critical issues as prevention of suicides among veterans, firearm safety training and mechanisms to confront the recent rise in urban gun crime.

Given the politically inflammatory nature of the gun safety debate at large, it is critical that these unbiased studies do not pre-assign partisan policy prescriptions to gun violence issues. Instead, the research is here to fill in gaps in knowledge and help us understand how we must best ensure that our entire society, including our youngest generation, can be safer from gun violence.

This research also benefits our region. Included among the initial round of federally funded gun violence research is a project at Baylor University focused on understanding firearm epidemiology in larger urban areas. Texas institutions deserve further federal dollars to design and implement studies that fit our state’s needs for evidence-based firearm knowledge.

More can, and should, be done. While Congress appropriates $12.5 million per year for the CDC and NIH to award these grants, this is by far insufficient to the need that we know exists. Congress should provide steady and robust increases for this critical priority.

As Congress continues to negotiate legislative responses to recent mass shootings and other forms of gun violence, it is critical that Granger and other lawmakers understand the key role that federal funding for prevention research can and will have to make our communities safer.

Jo-Ann Nesiama is a pediatric emergency medicine physician and associate professor of Pediatrics at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Asha Tharayil is a pediatric emergency medicine physician and assistant professor of pediatrics at UT Southwestern.