- Limits on Federal Gun Research Spur States to Step In Stateline by Michael Ollove — As deaths from mass shootings have mounted across the United States, some states are moving to collect hard data to guide their decisions about guns — even as the federal government has retreated from such research in the face of pressure from pro-gun groups. The New Jersey Legislature, for example, is weighing a measure that would create a gun-violence research center at Rutgers University. The center would be modeled on the new Firearm Violence Prevention Research Center at the University of California at Davis, which launched last summer with $5 million in state money over five years. The impetus for both initiatives is the vacuum created by the federal government's virtual abandonment of research into gun violence — its causes, its patterns, its perpetrators, its victims, and the best ways, based on scientific evidence, to curtail it. … "What isn't known?" Hemenway said. "Everything. Everything." For instance, there are no national studies of who owns guns, how gun owners acquired their weapons, the theft of guns, the number of households with guns, the attributes of a high-quality gun training, or the risk factors associated with gun violence. Without that knowledge, Hemenway said, "How are you supposed to come up with effective policy?"
- School Killings Spur Effort to Renew Government Gun-Violence Research Wall Street Journal by Kristina Peterson, Betsy McKay and Stephanie Armour — For more than 20 years, federal law has effectively halted the government's ability to research gun violence. Now, the shooting that killed 17 at a Florida high school in February has prompted a bipartisan group of lawmakers to take another look at the restrictions. As lawmakers tangle over other gun-violence prevention measures, Democrats and some centrist Republicans are pushing to eliminate a provision tucked into spending bills that has restricted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's ability to conduct research on the topic.