D.C. Dems: Fund study of gun gore

A GROUP OF Democratic senators called on Congress Thursday to fund federal research into the causes of the gun violence epidemic that kills more than 33,000 people in the U.S. every year.

The senators, including Chuck Schumer of New York, Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, blasted critics of common-sense gun control reform and said the widespread death caused by guns should be treated as a public health issue.

“It is time to take our heads out of the sand when it comes to gun violence,” Markey said at a Capitol Hill press conference. “It is time to have better information as to what causes it and what can be done to prevent it.”

“No one should be afraid of science, or of the nonpartisan scientific research that this legislation calls for,” he said, referring to a bill he introduced last June that was blocked by NRA-backed Senate Republicans — who will likely block this measure as well.

The bill would allocate $10 million annually, for six years, for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study what causes gun violence and how it could be prevented.

Schumer said it is “absurd” that the CDC is barred from studying gun violence.

“To tackle this problem that is taking tens of thousands of lives every year, we need to more fully understand it so that we can face it head on,” he said.

The CDC receives zero funding to research gun violence in the U.S. By comparison, highway officials got $830 million to research vehicle and traffic safety, even though roughly the same number of people die in crashes as are killed by gunfire.