I'm not a big fan of so-called gun violence research. I'm not a fan of it because, as we've seen over the years, it's absolute garbage. The supposed researchers aren't searchers for truth, they're activists trying to create a rubber stamp for gun control.
And folks in Virginia, you're getting your very own center for this quality research.
I wish I were making crap up, too, but I'm not. Virginia Commonwealth University just opened the doors on it.
The Virginia Commonwealth University School of Public Health has established the Center for Gun Violence Research to advance the science of gun violence prevention and translate research into strategies that reduce firearm-related harm and strengthen communities.
The center will serve as a research hub for VCU experts across disciplines who are focused on:
- Understanding the biological, psychological, developmental, social and structural pathways to firearm-related harm.
- Developing and rigorously testing strategies to prevent firearm violence, suicide and related harm.
- Advancing methods, data, technology and innovation in gun violence research.
- Determining how effective approaches can be implemented, scaled and sustained in communities and systems.
Gun violence remains a major public health challenge in the United States. In 2024, 44,447 people died from firearm injuries, and nearly two-thirds of those deaths were suicides. Firearms were also the leading cause of death among young people ages 1 to 17 for the fifth consecutive year.
Yay.
Just what Virginia needs.
Nicholas Thomson, Ph.D., has been tapped to be the director, which might hint that he's not the worst candidate around for this. After all, his own research really doesn't get into advocating for mandates. Instead, he seems to be focusing on the roots of violence and non-legislative interventions, the kind of thing that many of us could latch onto in our own debates on the merits, or lack thereof, of gun control.
Unfortunately, I'm not getting excited just yet.
“There are multiple pathways to gun violence, so the science has to be multidisciplinary as well,” Thomson said. “At VCU, we can study these problems across multiple levels, from individual and biological mechanisms to families, schools, neighborhoods, structural conditions and policy environments. Just as importantly, we can take discoveries and move them toward intervention development, rigorous evaluation, implementation and, ultimately, real-world prevention to save lives.”
[Emphasis added.]
And that worries me.
It's not that it's wrong to look at how policy impacts violent crime; it's just that I see little evidence that Thomson's own research is motivated by a disagreement with gun control as a concept. As a result, I can't help but believe we're going to see the same anti-gun shenanigans that we see at almost every other "center" in academia.
Virginia doesn't need that, and the rest of us don't need that.
What we tend to see is that anti-gun research is celebrated, pro-gun research findings are vilified, and the media only amplifies the parts that fit the anti-gun narrative. Then the fact that there are so few researchers who actually try to find the truth and who will look at gun control policy critically gets used as some kind of justification. "All the research says-"
Yeah, it says it because your academia buddies are cooking the damn books.
Yes, I'm salty about it, but that's because science is supposed to be the search for truth. Not convenient truth, but truth. Yes, I expect some bickering because one person's findings contradict someone else's, but as noted in the link just above, that doesn't happen in gun research because so few people publish anything that's remotely pro-gun. They keep it to themselves.
And now Virginia has a place set to potentially crank out more of it.
Considering the current political environment in the Old Dominion State, are we remotely surprised about this?
