They started off as ideological enemies.

Mark Rosenberg pioneered the public health approach to preventing gun violence and opened a branch of the CDC to fund that research. Jay Dickey, the "NRA's point man in Congress", pushed a ban on CDC funding for gun violence research that lasted 20 years – and got Rosenberg fired. On this episode of Top of Mind, we tell the unlikely story of their friendship and what it can teach us about reducing gun violence in America.

Americans are split right down the middle on whether it's more important to control gun ownership or protect the right to own guns. But we agree that too many people die from firearms. They are the leading cause of death for children under the age of 19 in the United States today. Mass shootings are so common they barely capture headlines beyond a day. In 2024, about 40,000 Americans died from gun violence. More than half were suicides.

If Mark Rosenberg and Jay Dickie could come to agree on the need to reduce gun violence, while preserving the rights of law-abiding gun owners, can we do the same?

Podcast Guests:

Mark Rosenberg, MD, public health researcher, former director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCPIC at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199310073291506)

Jay Dickey, former Republican Congressman from Arkansas, gun rights advocate and sponsor of the “Dickey Amendment” (Dickey died in 2017 https://www.nwaonline.com/obituaries/2017/apr/23/jay-dickey-2017-04-23/. We hear archival tape in this episode)

Betty Dickey, former Arkansas State Supreme Court Justice, Congressman Jay Dickey’s ex-wife

Rachel Dickey Haithcoat, Congressman Jay Dickey’s daughter

Garen Wintemute, MD, emergency medicine physician, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program, University of California at Davis

Bindi Naik-Mathuria, MD, pediatric trauma surgeon, gun violence researcher