California Will Fund Gun Violence Research, Because Congress Refuses
How can we know what gun regulations work if we won't study it? At least in California, we might finally get some real data about the most effective methods to cut gun deaths.
It's been 20 years since Congress passed legislation that banned the Centers for Disease Control from conducting public health studies on the effects gun violence and ownership. In the years since, the gun violence epidemic in America has continued to make headlines, with some 33,000 firearm-related deaths a year. It's gotten so bad that even the Alabama Congressman who originally authored the research ban in 1996 at the behest of the NRA says he now regrets it. ("I wish we had started the proper research and kept it going all this time," former Rep. Jay Dickey told the Huffington Post, last year).