California has been 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.
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 everywhere could finally start to do what Californian researchers have been doing since before the turn of the century.
Dr. April Zeoli speaks with the Anchorage Daily News about how the funding is critical to states like Michigan who have begun to expand access to data for researchers.