State and private funding for gun violence research has surged following a series of high-profile mass shootings, The New York Times reports.
Arnold Ventures last year announced it would spend $20 million to fund research grants in the field via grants through the RAND Corporation, while Kaiser Permanente said it would set aside $2 million for its own research program.
At the University of California, Davis, a $5 million investment from the state has led to the formation of the Violence Prevention Research Program. A similar center will be established at Rutgers University in New Jersey after the state legislature approved $2 million for its funding.
"All these new people are coming," Garen Wintemute, a professor who directs the program at Davis, told the Times. "It used to be a dozen people in the country — now there are a dozen people in my building."
Researchers are also publishing more studies on gun violence, according to the Times, but many have called on the U.S. government to conduct more research on the topic.
"If you think of firearms deaths along the lines of traffic crashes and smoking, you think about a really big project," said Andrew Morral, a senior behavioral scientist at RAND. "I think of this as a large effort of a magnitude that only the federal government would be able to support."
The report comes three days ahead of the 10-year mark of the massacre at Columbine High School, where two teens went on a shooting spree, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20 before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide.
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