Researchers studying gun violence get federal funds for the first time in nearly 20 years
As a result of executive orders from President Barack Obama, federal money is funding research efforts relating to gun violence for the first time in nearly 20 years.
On Sunday, National Public Radio reported that the federal funds have led to a significant increase in the ability of research facilities to gather data and report information concerning gun violence. According to NPR, several top research facilities are trying to create a comprehensive database in order to identify the victims of gun violence, as well as to figure out where, when and why shootings are occurring.
“For essentially the last 20 years, there has been almost no federal support for research on a health problem that kills upwards of 30,000 people a year,” said Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis, to NPR. “There are such data systems, and have been for decades, for motor vehicle injuries, and that sort of continuing flow of data has done a great deal to shape our efforts to prevent motor vehicle injuries.”
There is, of course, a logistical problem of getting various law enforcement entities to work together, NPR reported. However, the bigger problem, he says, has been political: Congress has linked gun violence research to gun control and stopped funding it since the mid-1990s.
Dr. Demetrios Demetriades of Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center told NPR that there are holes in the current reporting system so that many gunshot victims don’t get added to any national registry. “You’ll be able to address the problem only if you have reliable information,” Demetriades said to NPR. “Without reliable information, you cannot take the appropriate corrective action—you cannot allocate the resources as needed.”
Now, the Center for Disease Control is offering more than $7 million in grants to states to expand the CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System. Epidemiologist Alex Crosby of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, who is one of the leaders of this expansion effort, said that he hopes to expand the system from covering 32 states to all 50.
