Government Spending Bill is a Win for National Security
This week President Trump signed into law a major spending package to fund the government through October 1, 2020. Both parties negotiated a compromise on major federal expenditures, ranging from defense to healthcare. The deal also contains a major victory in the fight to end gun violence. For the first time in over twenty years, the federal government is set to support the study of the impact of guns in this country, appropriating $12.5 million to the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health each. Representative Rosa DeLauro, who helped push for this funding, called the gun violence epidemic a “public health emergency” that Congress has failed to address for decades.
But with record numbers of mass shootings in recent years, gun violence in America, which is often only considered a domestic issue, has also become a threat to our national security. There have been 223 mass shootings this year alone. At least five times more Americans are shot and killed by guns each year within our own borders than the number of service members whose lives have been lost in the Global War on Terror. In 2017 alone, 39,773 people died from guns in the U.S., compared to the approximately 7,000 U.S. military casualties over almost 20 years from the post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. With these numbers, it is easy to see why some national security experts, including retired four-star general John Allen, are calling mass shootings a domestic terror threat.
Recent events like the December 6 shooting at a Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, place the issue of gun violence squarely within the national security debate. Underscoring the failings of existing law, the gunman, a foreign national from Saudi Arabia, legally obtained a firearm after being issued a hunting license, using the weapon to kill three U.S. sailors on their own military base. Earlier this year, the mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, stoked concern among active-duty military, who worry about their families’ safety at home while they themselves are deployed in combat zones.
In El Paso, U.S. Army doctors in nearby hospitals treated the wounds of those injured, noting that the emergency room echoed a war zone, but for the fact that the civilian victims they saw lacked the protective body armor they were used to seeing on soldiers. Authorities believe the firearm used in the El Paso shooting, a semi-automatic version of a Romanian military AK-47 weapon, was legally purchased in the U.S., imported from a foreign manufacturer. In Dayton, the shooter’s AR-15 style rifle was also purchased legally.
Mass shootings like these must be considered acts of domestic terror, and demand the same examination and scrutiny afforded to violent extremism that originates outside our borders. The individuals who carry out these acts share the same intent as terrorist actors abroad. Both seek to create a climate of fear that disrupts the rhythm of our communities, and challenges the democratic norms we associate with a free society. Suddenly our schools, movie theaters, shopping malls, workplaces, and places of worship are threatened with the instability of violence typically seen in combat zones.
Since there is no evidence-based consensus on how to predict a mass shooting, what we do know is that currently military-grade firearms have widespread availability across the country and are used in 58% of mass shootings. We also know that existing laws have not been enough to prevent these horrific events from happening. Seriously tackling this problem will require an in-depth threat analysis to anticipate future events, including research — which this new legislation would afford — to expose how gaps in our legal system are enabling dangerous individuals to access firearms created for the battlefield, and using them on American civilians.
Three years before the mass shooting in Columbine, the passage of the Dickey Amendment in 1996 zeroed out funds previously allocated for firearms research, and had a chilling effect on subsequent government funding for the study of gun violence. As a result, the U.S. funds less research on gun violence than nearly every other leading cause of death in America. This glaring absence of government-funded research has come at our collective peril.
The White House National Security Strategy is predicated on the principle that an America that is “safe, prosperous, and free at home” is able to strongly lead with these values abroad. Mass shootings — and what we still don’t know about gun violence in America — compromise our ability to credibly engage on the global stage by suggesting we don’t have our house in order at home. The spending deal negotiated by Congress offers an unprecedented opportunity to invest in the assessment of what policies might make a difference, and how to disrupt the escalation of violent beliefs before they lead to tragedy.
Cailin Crockett is a senior research consultant for Everytown for Gun Safety and a Truman National Security Fellow
