Fund a State Center for Gun Violence Research

• Gun violence prevention research is woefully underfunded compared to other public health concerns.
• In 1996 the United States Congress forbade the CDC from spending funds to “advocate or promote gun control” and since then, the agency’s spending on gun violence prevention research fell by 96%.*
• California has invested in critical research at UC Davis which now has a Firearms Violence Prevention Research Center to examine the current landscape of gun violence and develop solutions.
• Solutions like these help close the gap in research caused by the lack of federal funding.

Sources

* Masters, K. (2016, April 4). Former CDC Leaders Say the Agency Could Do A Lot More to Research Gun Violence. The Trace. https://www.thetrace.org/2016/04/cdc-gun-violence-research-dickey-amendment/

Alcorn, T. (2017). Trends in Research Publications About Gun Violence in the United States, 1960 to 2014. JAMA Internal Medicine, 177(1), 124. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.7076