The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel: Where’s the data?
The series of deadly mass shootings in Gilroy, Calif., El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio have the nation locked into another fruitless debate about gun violence.
Is access to guns the problem? Or is it a lack of services to diagnose and treat mental illness? That seems to be where most of the shouting occurs but focusing on either at the exclusion of the other is not going to solve the problem.
But data might. We don’t have the best understanding of the factors contributing to gun violence, in large part, because Congress in 1996 defunded any research at the Centers for Disease Control that could be construed as promoting gun control.

