What Research Says About Mass Shootings

Short Wave

NPR

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4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2022

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

Parkland, Fla. Buffalo, NY. Uvalde, Texas. Every mass shooting in the U.S. raises calls for better policies to prevent such tragedies. There's evidence suggesting that certain kinds of laws may reduce deaths from mass shootings, say scientists who study the field — but those policy options are not the ones usually discussed in the wake of these events. Furthermore, the amount of resources devoted to studying gun violence is paltry compared to its public health impact.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:05.7	Buffalo, New York, Yvaldi, Texas.
0:08.9	These towns have now been added to the growing list of places that have had deadly mass
0:13.0	shootings.
0:14.6	You know, honestly, it's hard to even tune into the news right now.
0:18.0	It just feels excruciating, especially because everyone knows it's just a matter of time
0:23.3	before the next mass shooting and the next town's name added to that list.
0:28.9	But we hear it Shortwave wanted to dig into that sense of inevitability.
0:34.0	And we wanted to ask, does science tell us anything about how to prevent mass shootings?
0:40.0	There is some research on this, but not a lot.
0:43.0	And you would know, Nell Greenfield, Boyce, is NPR science correspondent you've been
0:47.2	covering gun violence research for some time.
0:49.8	Yep, I have.
0:50.8	So tell me more about that.
0:52.9	Mass shootings get a lot of attention from the news media, but they don't get all that
0:56.8	much attention from scientists.
0:59.2	Well, the problem is there's really just so little gun violence research in general.
1:04.6	And that's because of a lack of funding over the last quarter century.
1:08.6	And I'm guessing that's because government agencies have shied away from this research
1:12.2	because of all the politics around guns.
1:14.9	Yeah.
1:15.9	Like in 1996, Congress told the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention not to use
	...

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