Andy Hamilton Pens WaPo Op-Ed About Gun Control
“The America I have come to know has never wanted not to know the answer to important questions. Certainly not when children’s lives are at stake.”
In the increasingly frenetic conversation about gun control in the United States, NYU President Andrew Hamilton shared his thoughts on the matter in the opinion pages of The Washington Post.
As a scientist and university bureaucrat, Hamilton didn’t make any suggestions on actual policy surrounding gun control. Rather, he focused on the need to fund further research into guns and gun safety programs to provide “empirical data.” Hamilton asserts that this data would give advocates and policy makers on all sides of the issue facts to arm their arguments, as opposed to the opinions they are using now.
And, in this quest for facts, no institution could prove more valuable than the university. He makes this case by providing examples of times when university studies were used to find cures for diseases and other ailments of our society.
His essay also asserts that foreigners’ opinions about Americans not being able to resolve the gun debate in a reasonable manner are incorrect. He believes that ultimately, the desire to protect of children will make Americans think more critically about gun safety.
These assertions are all well and fine until you think about the realities of his statements: American politics are rarely ever rooted in “fact.” If scientific data was enough to give weight and validity to vital debates happening in US government right now, Scott Pruitt probably wouldn’t be head of the EPA.
The overwhelming desire to protect children from Americans has been met with a shocking amount of backlash against children who have suffered through gun violence. Survivors from Sandy Hook and Stoneman Douglas have been regularly assailed as crisis actors.
This is not to say that academic research would be rendered valueless in the attempts for gun safety. But the assertion that with investment into more university studies “we can steer toward effective, informed debate and public policy,” Hamilton seems to be embarrassingly naive about how the American government functions.
This is after all, a country where beloved policy maker Ted Cruz just made a SONG (60 second radio ad) for his senate campaign.
Hamilton ends his op-ed with a call to action:
“So, as we search for and debate various solutions to school shootings, let’s put an end to a ‘know-nothing’ approach; restore funding for objective, thoughtful, university-level public health research; and put facts back into the debate.”
Maybe this wasn’t a completely sound piece of writing, but it is an editorial after all. It’s honestly the best fundraising he’s done for NYU this year.
