Basic Gun Violence Research Is Seriously Underfunded [View all]

[frizzled]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by GP6971 (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: Huffington Post

NEW YORK (AP) — Amid the bloodbaths of 21st-century America, you might think that there would be a lot of research into the causes of gun violence, and which policies work best against it. You would be wrong.

Gun interests, wary of any possible limits on weaponry, have successfully lobbied for limitations on government research and funding, and private sources have not filled the breach. So funding for basic gun violence research and data collection remains minuscule — the annual sum total for all gun violence research projects appears to be well under $5 million. A grant for a single study in areas like autism, cancer or HIV can be more than twice that much.

There are public health students who want to better understand rising gun-related suicide rates, recent explosions in firearm murders in many U.S. cities, and mass murders like the one this month at an Oregon community college, where a lone gunman killed nine people.

But many young researchers are staying away from the field. Some believe there's little hope Congress will do anything substantive to reduce gun violence, regardless of what scientists find. And the work is stressful — many who study gun violence report receiving angry emails and death threats from believers in unrestricted gun ownership.


Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/basic-gun-violence-research-is-seriously-underfunded_561aa218e4b0dbb8000ef5f0

---

Preventing the fifth biggest killer of Americans under 64 gets less than $5M a year funding! How is this possible?