The CDC Could Totally Study Gun Violence?It Just Needs Money

They’ve been using that status to fight to get $50 million explicitly earmarked for studying the underpinnings of America’s gun violence problem.“Gun violence prevention research is critical to dealing with the public health emergency we are facing,” representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) said in a statement to WIRED this week.As chair of the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee, DeLauro helped usher through $25 million each for the CDC and the National Institutes of Health earlier this year.“Their research can help inform further proposals to help us save lives, especially with regard to suicide by firearm, the link between domestic violence and gun violence, safe gun storage so kids do not hurt themselves, and identifying risk factors for those who seek firearms with the intent of murdering innocent Americans,” DeLauro said.The Looser a State's Gun Laws, the More Mass Shootings It HasHow to Reduce Gun Violence: Ask Some ScientistsThe Weird, Dark History of 8chanAs firearm deaths ticked up and Congress dithered, many nonprofits, universities, and states have devoted resources to fill in the glaring gap left by the lack of federal funds. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has tried as hard as he can to prevent bills that even mention firearms from seeing the light of day on the Senate floor he so mightily controls.“The recent, devastating mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton make it all the more clear that gun violence in the United States is a serious public health epidemic that must be combatted,” representative Carolyn Maloney (D-New York) said in a statement. The Senate must quickly follow the House’s leadership—inaction kills.”Even as nonprofit and academic researchers produce solid, data-driven studies on their own, many experts insist that federal funds have a crucial part to play if the US is going to tackle the problem of gun violence. “We already know a lot, but right now all this just needs to be refined.”"One hundred lives are claimed every day by gun violence, and securing significant funding for research is the first step towards prevention."Representative Carolyn MaloneyAdvocates like Slutkin argue that scientists within the federal government are the best situated to tackle these issues.