Editorial: The real issue is violence
We won’t shed tears with President Obama over his executive action last week, a move that likely won’t reduce the number of people killed by gunfire. The president overstepped his authority and Congress has nobody but itself to blame. Congress increasingly cedes responsibility to the president that belongs firmly on the legislative body’s shoulders, as the president’s executive actions bypassing Congress and aiming at gun control illustrate.
For the record, this newspaper’s editorial board supports the Second Amendment. We would be hypocritical fools to say the First Amendment is ironclad and the Second Amendment is shot full of holes; these critical constitutional clauses aren’t pieces of fruit you can squeeze and smell and decide which ones you want. We further think the Founding Fathers understood that a citizenry left without the ability to defend itself can never be truly free.
Why our nation is so bitterly divided over the Second Amendment and related issues is largely due to the lack of reliable information. Isn’t the absence of hard data usually at the center of misunderstandings, which lead to bitter divisions? And with reasonable people, don’t those splits improve with the presence of valuable information? In North Idaho, for example, much of the consternation over Environmental Protection Agency mine waste assessments and subsequent remediation plans evaporated when a team of scientists tackled the subject and separated hard fact from enflamed fiction.
Leaders who want to bring this nation together, and we’re talking about presidential candidates on down, should apply the same remedy to the issue of violence in America. Statistics tell only part of the story; Partisanship-free, peer-reviewed research is needed to show Americans what is and isn’t happening with violence.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of a congressional ban on funding Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research on gun violence. Today, only sparse university research is being conducted, at best providing random pieces of an incomplete or even misleading puzzle.
What we think needs to be done — before executive actions or significant policy shifts from administration or Congress — is to thoroughly research violence in America, with guns as just one component of that research.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, each year more than 6 million Americans are the victims of violent crime. Hundreds of thousands are seriously injured or killed. Those numbers are staggering compared to the pain, suffering and financial cost of most diseases, yet extensive federal research is conducted on lesser personal and societal afflictions.
As a nation, we must take this topic out of the political arena and place it firmly in the scientific one. Let’s learn what we can, dispassionately and apolitically, about why we rape, strike, stab and shoot each other at such insane rates. Until we have a better scientifically based understanding of the answers to that question, those arguing for and against guns will just keep shooting in the dark.