Just over a month ago, in the wake of the Orlando Pulse nightclub mass shooting, California’s legislature voted to establish a $5-million gun violence research center at the University of California. What makes this particularly newsworthy is that this is the first such publicly-funded research center in the entire country.
As you might be aware, the federal government has long had their hands tied when it comes to funding gun violence research, primarily due to NRA backing of a controversial law that makes it extremely difficult for any federal agency to gather or analyze statistics on gun violence.
And while it’s possible for private research groups, like universities, to fund research on their own, most colleges are notoriously hesitant to propose gun violence studies. Many fear that their funding will be pulled, especially when research can be disproportionately funded by a few wealthy donors.
But state legislatures have no such intrinsic restrictions when it comes to funding studies. And while they lack the funds and the reach of the federal government, they may be our best bet for researching the causes and possible solutions surrounding gun violence – something that has been nearly impossible to do for the last several decades.
In recent years gun violence research has been mostly funded by privately-funded studies, which have serious financial limitations, so this state funding is a welcome change of pace into an area of research that is woefully under-studied. Granted, $5 million is not a massive investment in the scheme of things – but it’s a start. If other states were to follow suit, we might have some real data on our hands.