Ten years ago, 20 children and six of their teachers were murdered in an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. The nation was horrified. Congress debated. But nothing happened.
Year after year, month after month, the shootings continued. More people died. And still nothing happened.
This past May, 19 children and two of their teachers were murdered in an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex. The nation was once again horrified, and Congress once again debated. But this time, something happened. The most significant piece of federal gun legislation in nearly 30 years gained bipartisan support and became law.
What changed? The evidence: Specifically, evidence showing what policies work and why. The evidence also made clear that huge majorities of Americans over all and in red or Republican-leaning states in particular support gun reforms.
After 25 years of investments by philanthropy, Congress had the research and hard data to create policy based on the facts — and to transcend the politics of the moment. Several of the provisions in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, marked in a White House ceremony last week, were supported by that evidence.
The new law, for instance, includes $750 million in funding for crisis intervention or so-called red-flag laws, which aim to prevent access to guns by those deemed at risk of harming themselves or others. During the past several years, the Joyce Foundation, which I lead, has funded research on the effectiveness of these laws and found that they can prevent suicide and mass shootings when properly enforced.
One such study of California’s red-flag laws, conducted by the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California at Davis, found that the law was used to remove guns in 58 cases where mass shootings were threatened, six of which involved minors targeting schools. The researchers also uncovered 75 cases in which guns were removed from those threatening self-harm and found that no suicides occurred among those who were subject to the orders. Another study, funded by the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research, examined similar laws in six states and discovered 626 credible threats of mass shootings in which orders to remove guns were used.
Other provisions in the legislation, such as closing what’s known as the boyfriend loophole and new funding for community violence-intervention strategies, were backed by research conducted by nonprofits and academic institutions and funded by philanthropy.
These studies were almost certainly instrumental in helping Congress decide what to include in the new gun-safety policy. The research was cited in thousands of news articles, quoted by lawmakers, and helped to inform and shape the conversation differently than in the past. And none of it would have existed without funding from a collective of grant makers, including Arnold Ventures, California Wellness Foundation, the Fund for a Safer Future, the Heising-Simons Foundation, Kaiser Permanente, the Missouri Foundation for Health, and the Joyce Foundation.
Stepping In When Congress Backed Out
These foundations stepped in when Congress effectively banned federal funding for gun-violence research in 1996. The situation improved somewhat in 2020 when Congress approved a modest $25 million a year to study gun-violence prevention. While certainly helpful, it isn’t nearly enough. Government funding for gun-violence research remains far behind the amount allotted to study other major public-health epidemics in the United States. For example, it is less than 1 percent of the funding for research on sepsis treatment and prevention, even though gun violence and sepsis kill roughly the same number of people every year.
A study we supported with Arnold Ventures found $120 million a year in additional funding is needed to help answer a multitude of remaining questions, including in which circumstances red-flag laws are most effective and what it will take to expand use of these programs.
Support for research needs to be combined with philanthropic investments to effectively implement red-flag laws and other aspects of the legislation. For instance, while the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act includes an additional $250 million for community violence intervention, much more support is needed for nonprofits on the ground tasked with carrying out these strategies, including for hiring and training more workers.
The Joyce Foundation has joined forces with a national donor network called Fund for a Safer Future, which supports gun-violence-prevention research, community mobilization, litigation strategies, and the education and advocacy campaigns necessary to ensure that smart, common-sense policy can save more lives. I encourage others in the philanthropy community to join us.
While passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is an important milestone, it is just the beginning. A little more than two weeks after the legislation was signed into law, another young man with an assault weapon murdered seven innocent people at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill. And the Supreme Court’s ruling last month allowing more people to carry guns in public adds another obstacle to the fight against gun violence in this country.
Yet the body of evidence we have now tells us that progress is possible.
The gun debate was different this time, but the overarching issue remains the same. Our nation is awash in guns that kill more than 45,000 people a year. Until we address that fact head on, including with research that points to solutions, we will fall short of creating the safe communities we all want and deserve.
