Abstract:
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One measure of the health of research about gun violence and crime is the volume of articles being produced. To assess this, the authors built a unique dataset of peer-reviewed publications about gun violence over the last five decades by searching the SciVerse SCOPUS database-the world's largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature-for articles that contained in their title, abstract, or keywords at least one term related to firearms and one term related to ramifications on crime, violence, or safety. Identified articles were independently coded based on their content, and irrelevant articles were excluded. The annual volume of academic publications on the relationships between firearms and crime or violence rose markedly between 1980 and the mid-1990s and then fell by 60 percent from 1996 to 2010, consistent with the growth of interest in firearm injury and criminality as problems that could be subjected to social science, followed by the campaign against the CDC deterring such work. This trend reversed in 2013-14, where publications rose markedly, suggesting a renaissance of attention to this area.
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