gun research [out of control]

Nature in its 06 October 2022 edition has an editorial calling for a public-health approach to gun terrifying mortality in the US. Which makes it such an outlier among high income countries. Not the first time in this journal, as legal ban on research on the topic has been systemic for many years.

“Given the prevalence of firearm injury and death in the United States, it is astounding that scientific understanding of the problem is so poor and that the research infrastructure and workforce are so underdeveloped.”

The tribune lists how interventions could reduce gun fatalities and address violence. However, it never mentions the elephant in the room, namely the legality of buying and carrying weapons on a scale with no comparison with other developed countries. This may be what they call “shift[ing] our national view of firearm-injury prevention away from a political issue”, but advocating treating the effect rather than the cause is delusional. (To be fair, Nature had another news article this year calling for scientific research into gun control.)