This is from us in California

Last summer, the California Department of Justice mistakenly published the personal information of about 192,000 gun owners on the open internet. Gun owners protested; attentive 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 US gun violence research, largely because it has kept detailed records of its gun owners since 1996. The state maintains an extensive repository of firearms data and, unlike other states, has historical

the

data available to scientists studying the root causes of gun deaths.

A lawsuit brought by gun rights activists is now threatening that longstanding data infrastructure. And though the federal government started funding gun violence research again in 2019 after a two-decade drought, that funding is under threat from House Republicans, who have vowed to kill it.

Over the past four years, federal funding and data from California have helped. Scientists are just getting started

to understand the factors that put Americans

most

with the risk of firearm injury. The double whammy of ending federal funding and cutting off researchers’ access to California’s data could set the field back years away.

With no federal money or the Gold State records, federal funding or the California records,

Researchers would have to survive on grants from private entities and limited government funding. Academics could get off work, Garen said

winter mood,

who runs a gun violence research center at UC Davis. The number of investigations into weapons would decrease. Scientists’ understanding of the violence that kills tens of thousands of Americans each year would stagnate.

The data made public last June was collected as part of an effort to quantify and publicize how many Californians wanted to carry a concealed firearm in public. The state also keeps meticulous records of every firearm transaction, every sale, every transfer. Under California law, even private gun transactions must be made through a retailer. The state maintains a single file that records every legal transfer of handguns since 1996 and every transfer of rifles and shotguns since 2014. No other state has anything like it.

The capacity to answer questions with that data in California really makes sense for the rest of the country, said Cassandra Crifasi, a firearms researcher at Johns Hopkins University. Part of the job that [California researchers are doing] you literally couldn’t go anywhere else, because of their decision to prioritize this information.

For decades, senior academics outside California have actively discouraged young researchers from studying gun violence, Crifasi said. Megan Ranney, now dean of the Yale School of Public Health, said she didn’t study guns early in her career. She was an ER at the time, and a series of cases unnerved her: a domestic violence victim who was shot by her partner; a young man who

m

Ranney’s team saved from a first gunshot wound, but who

m

they couldn’t save a second; a young man who took his own life

one of the

firearms from his parents. The incidents stuck with Ranney, but mentors across the country warned her that investigating the matter was “too politically charged”.

Scientists elsewhere envied the Golden State, but lacked the financial resources to conduct the research that was possible here.

That changed in 2019, when Congress authorized new federal funds for gun violence research for the first time since 1996. With the new money, $25 million a year, academics could finally start doing what California researchers have been doing since before the turn of the century.

The field exploded. Seven years ago, almost every scientist was researching firearms injury prevention

a bit more than

a dozen people met in a single room

on WHERE GEOGRAPHICALLY?

Ranney told The Times. Last year, gun violence researchers held their first-ever conference devoted solely to the prevention and treatment of gun injuries.

More than

500 researchers gathered in Washington, DC

,

to discuss research-backed methods of reducing gun violence.

All that new science is now at risk. In Washington, where Republicans now control the House of Representatives, partisan disagreements could lead to a government shutdown by late September and lawmakers may have to scramble to reach a deal. President Biden and Senate Democrats may not make a point of defending a $25 million line within a $1.7 trillion spending bill.

It will be a fierce battle, said Mark Rosenberg, a former

Center for Disease Control and Prevention

official who oversaw early efforts to investigate gun violence in the 1990s. He emphasized that Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), the powerful credit chair in the House, has said she wants to get rid of what little money there is.

Granger’s office did not respond to a request for comment. But House Republicans reaffirmed their intention to get rid of this year’s gun violence prevention appropriation bills. Their increase proposal for next year’s Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Act cuts funding, calling it “controversial.”

In

In October, California gun rights activists challenging state law requiring the state to share gun transaction data with investigators won an injunction barring the state from enforcing the law as their case unfolds. Since then, gun violence investigators have been unable to access current information about gun transactions in California.

Column: On gun violence research, California fills another gap left by the federal government

That’s a big deal, Winterute said. Scientists regularly use California’s data to compile cohorts of firearm buyers and track them over time. At one point, Wintemute’s team tracked two groups: Californians convicted of violent crimes trying to buy a firearm before the state banned those demographics from buying guns, and a group with the same conviction trying to buy firearms after the policy changed. The researchers found that the second group, who were not allowed to purchase the firearm, had 25% fewer arrests.

That finding suggested that California’s decision to bar people convicted of violent crimes from owning guns made them less likely to commit violent crimes in the future. In a country where the vast majority of gun laws are unsupported by evidence, such findings are rare.

Gun industry interests, which have consistently resisted efforts to provide academics with data on gun violence, know that their political efforts stand in the way of potentially useful research. Laws blocking access to data prevent researchers from conducting accurate studies with the number and distribution of firearms as a variable, Josh Savani, the

National Rifle Assn.s

director of research and information, wrote in a 2021 internal report.

According to Andrew Morral, who leads a team at the R.

other

corp that monitors the current state of weapons research. The Morrals group has found supporting evidence that, for example, hidden carry laws reduce violent crime, but no conclusive evidence that such laws affect suicide rates. Moderate evidence suggests that minimum age requirements prevent suicide, but only limited evidence supports the idea that bans on assault weapons prevent mass shootings, despite the fact that

a lot of

Mass shootings involve assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Gun violence research is severely underfunded compared to other causes of death

The quality of research in this area has been uneven, Morral said. As a result, if you are really committed to a certain perspective, you can put icing on the cake

–

choose research that supports your perspective.

Researchers said they hope other states embrace California’s approach to data access, but note that the state’s information infrastructure is the product of decades of work. How the data-sharing lawsuit is resolved could set the tone for the rest of the country, especially for other states considering similar policies.

Some jurisdictions have taken small steps toward replicating California’s data infrastructure, researchers noted. Michigan now offers expanded access to data for extreme-risk protection orders, said April Zeoli, a weapons researcher at the University of Michigan. Cities like Chicago have made strides in collecting and analyzing gun violence data.

But on a national level, Ranney stressed, data

Are

Scarce: Academics lack data on the secondary effects of a bullet being fired, in other words, the damage done to family and friends of those harmed by gun violence, in addition to witnesses. They lack a lot of data on the best ways researchers can collaborate with law enforcement and how to identify the people most at risk. They are still trying to better understand how different demographics perceive gun violence differently.

Zeoli said her state’s data-sharing policies vary wildly

by

from California. “California is so, so unique,” she said. “I don’t know if any state is going to or wants the data systems around firearms that California can have.

“

Research pressure in California has blossomed during the 23-year funding freeze, as the state tends to take the lead on issues when other states can’t, Wintemute said.

On balance, the absence of funding elsewhere made it easier to get funding here in California, he said. If governors of other states run for senior office on very conservative platforms, this state will probably say, “Not here.” We are different.’