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As gun violence plummets in California, Legislature funds gun-violence research

Last week’s carnage against an Orlando gay nightclub apparently spurred the California Legislature to approve legislation that its own statistics on gun violence couldn’t justify.

The bill allocates $5 million to fund a new California Firearm Violence Research Center, to be hosted at one of the University of California campuses, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

The center’s creation is portrayed as a response to congressional restrictions on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s ability to study gun violence, although the National Institutes of Health is funding $7.5 million across 13 gun-violence research projects.

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UC-Davis itself already runs a Violence Prevention Research Program, directed by Prof. Garen Wintemute, and gun violence is actually on a 15-year decline in the Golden State:

In California the rate of firearms deaths — which include homicides, suicides, and unintentional injuries — has dropped from 9.12 deaths per 100,000 people in 1999 to 7.58 in 2014, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics. Dr. Wintemute said he would like the new research center to explore the unknown causes of that decline.

Another gun researcher, the University of Washington’s Frederick Rivara, said that more gun-violence research would produce similar outcomes as research on motor-vehicle deaths and injuries: “safer vehicles, seat belts, airbags.”

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