“We are not having any conversations here that are an ‘us and them’ narrative. We are about reducing kids dying.”
Rebecca Cunningham has only one kind of memory from her early childhood: violence. Her father shattered mirrors, tore up the house, and beat and threatened to kill her mother. Cunningham, then less than 5 years old, remembers her older sister trying to protect her.
It's one of myriad questions about firearms and violence that remain unanswered, largely because of a dearth of funding to explore them. Guns are the second-leading cause of death of children and teens in the United States, after motor vehicle crashes. In 2016, the most recent year for which data are available, they killed nearly 3150 people aged 1 to 19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Cancer killed about 1850.
The grant is not designed to answer one particular question. Rather, the goal is to lay out what questions need answering first. The researchers are building a user-friendly archive of existing data and launching pilot studies. And they are training the young scientists who they hope will come after them.
The young trauma patients Cunningham sees here underscore the need for research on guns and children."The teen suicide survivors that I remember most clearly are kids or young adults who have blown off the front of their face," Cunningham says."Those are some of the worst trauma patients I have seen because they are awake and utterly miserable. And they are going to have just devastating injuries.
Family and friends commemorate DrayQuan Jones, 16, who was shot and killed this spring in Flint, Michigan. Guns disproportionately kill African-American children.In 2010, Cunningham finally published a paper with guns in the title—a survey of handgun access in teens visiting the emergency department in Flint. Four years later, she came across a bigger opportunity.
Four months later, a 19-year-old former student gunned down 17 students and staff at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland."My inbox was flooded with researchers wanting to join FACTS—even to volunteer," Cunningham says."The idea that the topic is too political to study is passing with the urgency created after Parkland."Cunningham's own sense of urgency predates any news event.
Their animating principle is that gun violence, like any other public health bane, can be tackled scientifically, divorced from any political agenda."There is a science to injury prevention," Cunningham says. She and others note that decades of studies on motor vehicle safety led to evidence-based policies such as car seat and seat belt laws, which have dramatically reduced childhood motor vehicle fatalities even though many more cars are on the road.
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