It’s hard to see in the dark. Citizens who own guns and those who don’t have a great deal in common. The vast majority of both groups want the same basic, sensible gun ownership policies, and both groups have been driven into the same corner. We all face serious decisions about the safety of our children and our schools without any trustworthy information to guide us.

Active-shooter drills started after the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. Emergency drills have subsequently appeared in the nation’s schools. In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, the NRA announced its National School Shield Task Force and published a report on “best practices” for making schools safe. It put a strong emphasis on the “proven” benefit of “armed school officers.” It suggested the arming of teachers when schools can’t afford an officer, and called for “properly conducted security drills.”

The report did not include any peer-reviewed research evidence for its positions. It presented eight recommendations, one offering the NRA and its NSS program as an “umbrella national organization to advocate and support school safety.” A second offered NSS as the resource to create professional-quality, online self-assessment tools to help schools develop security plans. The report described how these tools were necessary because costly, private consulting services were often the only source of guidance in the absence of any public information. The report did not address the reality that neither the NSS nor private consultants have any nationwide, public research data to support any recommendations. They are as blind as we are.

The NRA has not publicly published any updates to the NSS report in any searchable national media source, or in searchable content on NRA-TV: nothing about progress toward online tools, nothing about the growth of NSS certified schools, fundraising, number of grants or research data guiding NSS activity.

This has not stopped the NRA from being very public about recommendations for its “best practices.” We now have lockdown drills and silent-safety drills in pre-schools, schools and churches throughout the country. We now have sequestered weapons and armed teachers in some of the nation’s schools, in addition to armed school “resource officers.” We now have two New Hampshire task forces studying school safety and presumably exploring the role of these drills and the extent to which adults will be armed in our schools.

As we debate drills and who to arm in New Hampshire schools, let’s not underestimate the impact of these measures on our children. The emotional cost is real and we have no information about its extent or how long children keep paying it. Anecdotes tell us something about what children absorb. Those about how safety drills are not surprising: a 10-year-old thinks about blocking the classroom door to protect classmates; a 4-year-old hunches under a table at home, absolutely still, practicing “silent safety drills,” until her feet fell asleep.

But anecdotes are batted down by vested interests claiming “proven” benefits without citing proof. They get away with it in the absence of federally funded research into the effects of drills and weaponized classrooms.

It’s been almost 20 years since Columbine. Researchers could have been following survivors and subsequent classes exposed to drills to assess the short and long-term impact of those experiences. This is standard public health practice for measuring significant safety risks. Twenty-eight thousand gun-related deaths in 1999 certainly qualified as significant.

The National Library of Medicine cites more than 10 million health-related studies published since 1999. There are zero citations for federally funded studies reporting the after effects of the Columbine killings on American students. There were 33,000 gun-related deaths in 2012, when the Sandy Hook killings occurred, but the library cites no federally funded studies of the impact of that massacre or any other. About the same number of people were killed by automobiles in 2012. In contrast, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration maintains 29 federally funded databases and reporting systems examining both driver and car. Automobile deaths dropped by 10,000 in the years between Columbine and Sandy Hook, while deaths from gun violence rose by about 5,000.

Thanks to the NRA, there has been no federal funding for studies that could inform us about the effects of drills and armed teachers on our children. The NRA effectively stopped federal agencies from pursuing studies related to gun violence in 1996, and has insured that the blackout continues.

In 1998, the largest civil suit in American history was settled against the tobacco industry for intentionally misleading the public about the risks of cigarette smoking. Since then, reliable research has guided our decisions about our own smoking and how smoking affects our children and our public spaces.

Imagine instead, that the tobacco industry had pushed through legislation in 1978, stalling any federally funded research into the risk of cigarette smoking. Twenty years later, there would have been no consensus about the risks of cigarette smoking or passive exposure to inform the states that filed the suit, and no settlement. Imagine just finding out about their deception now, after 20 more years of smoking-related deaths? How upset would you be?

That’s how upset we deserve to be now, 20 years into the NRA’s entrenched work to keep us as blind as the tobacco industry did. They would keep us ignorant for another 20 years and more. Regardless of political affiliation or gun ownership status, we have to get past these lesser issues and stop this blackout together.

A substantial majority of New Hampshire citizens agree on the basics of sensible gun ownership policy in New Hampshire. It’s time for legislation. It is time to collect actual data about the effects of sensible policies in our state and country so we are not left with anecdotes. Let’s establish real best practices for the safety of our children and our schools. Let’s not be divided and kept in the dark any longer.

(David Coursin of Northwood is a board-certified adult psychiatrist and fully trained as a child psychiatrist. He is also a member of the medical review subcommittee of the Board of Medicine, investigating complaints before the board about psychiatric care.)