Government Funded 'Gun Violence' Research Is Really Political Propaganda

On Monday, House and Senate negotiators announced a deal where $25 million in taxpayer funds will be spent on gun violence research, $12.5 million is earmarked exclusively for public health researchers. If history is any guide, but of the rest will also end up going to public health researchers. 

Headlines claimed: “Congress reaches deal to fund gun violence research for first time in decades.” The funding described as “a major win for Democrats.” While that may sound like a good idea at first glance, it wouldn’t do anything to reduce gun violence in our country.

It should go without saying that everyone opposes gun violence. But it’s important to take effective measures to deal with this problem and not simply take actions that sound appealing but won’t really save lives.

The idea behind the research funding is to have medical professionals apply tools they developed to study cancer, heart disease and other diseases and use them to study crime, accidental death and suicide. But to state the obvious, gun violence and diseases are two very different things.