The GOP and the NRA want to stop gun violence research. California is a target
WASHINGTON — Last summer, the California Department of Justice accidentally published the personal information of roughly 192,000 firearm owners to the open internet. Gun owners protested; Attorney General Rob Bonta apologized and launched an investigation.
But perhaps the most surprising aspect of the leak is that the data existed in the first place.
California is the epicenter of American gun violence research, largely because it maintains an extensive repository of firearms data and, unlike other states, has historically made much of the data available to scientists studying the root causes of gun deaths.
A lawsuit brought by gun-rights activists now threatens that longstanding data infrastructure. And although the federal government began funding gun-violence research again in 2019, following a two-decades-long drought, that funding is under threat from House Republicans, who have vowed to kill it.
Scientists have only begun to understand the factors that put Americans at risk of
