Every year, nearly 30,000 Americans die from gunshot wounds. But because U.S. law has limited federal funding for gun violence researchopens in new window, such research receives far less money than that mortality rate would suggest.
$22 million
The amount of federal funding that went to gun violence research between 2004 and 2015, according to a 2017 analysis of federal spending and of mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
$1.4 billion
The amount of federal funding that would have been spent on gun violence research during that time, if gun violence were funded at a level proportional to the number of deaths it causes.
0.7%
Research on gun violence received less than 1 percent of the funding that goes to research on sepsis (blood infection), though the two kill around the same number of Americans each year.
1,738
The total number of research publications on gun violence in the MEDLINE database between 2004 and 2015. In comparison, there were 43,477 publications on sepsis during those same years.
Source: Funding and Publication of Research on Gun Violence and Other Leading Causes of Deathopens in new window, Stark, D.E., & Shah, N.H. JAMA, 2017
