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336 – Collecting Data on Gun Violence: Why Is It so Hard, and What Are We Missing?

Discussion of Why Collecting Data on Gun Violence Is so Hard

at University at Albany-SUNY

Numerous mass shootings over the past several years have prompted new conversations about gun violence research, culminating in a 2013 presidential task force on gun violence led by Vice President Joseph Biden. This task force delivered a series of recommendations, including that funding be provided for the National Academies of Science "to develop a 21st century research agenda, relevant to various federal agencies (e.g., NIH, FBI, CDC, NSF and DoJ) to inform gun violence prevention and intervention efforts." This recommendation comes in the context of a historically negative climate for gun violence research. Specifically, the 1996 Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 1997 included the following language: ""none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control."" As Dr. Arthur Kellerman later noted in an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, ""Precisely what was or was not permitted under the clause was unclear. But no federal employee was willing to risk his or her career or the agency's funding to find out. Extramural support for firearm injury prevention research quickly dried up."" This lack of federal funding for gun violence research has continued to present-day, when Congress has denied funds specifically earmarked for ""Gun Violence Prevention Research"" in the last two fiscal years in proposed budgets for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Committee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights proposes that the current negative climate surrounding gun violence data collection and research represents a restriction on scientific freedom. Key researchers at the forefront of this debate will present the history of federal support for gun violence research, the current state of data collection, and ultimately the impact on policy of such research challenges and limitations.Speakers: 1. Ted Alcorn, Research Director for Everytown for Gun Safety, talcorn@everytown.org; "How Good Science can Influence Advocacy and Policy" 2. David Hemenway, Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, hemenway@hsph.harvard.edu; "Data and Funding Issues on Firearm Injuries: A Researcher's Perspective" 3. Mark Rosenberg, President and CEO of Task Force for Global Health, mrosenberg@taskforce.org; "A Historical Review of Gun Violence Research" 4. Laurel Eckhouse, UC Berkeley Political Science, eckhouse@berkeley.edu; "Who watches the watchers? The Missing Data on Police Violence, and its Consequences for Community Gun Violence"