Guns by the numbers

This article was published on 01.31.13

As the debate begins about changing gun laws in the United States, the RN&R crew went in search of relevant information. One fun fact we discovered, according to a Jan. 17 CBS news report: In 1996, the NRA successfully lobbied Congress to put this restriction into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's budget: "None of the funds made available … may be used to advocate or promote gun control. … CDC funding into gun violence research has plummeted 96 percent since 1996, to just $100,000 of last year's $5.6 billion CDC budget.”

Much of the information we could find came from gun rights advocates. And many of the sites contradict each other. We tried to go with the most agreed-upon numbers we could find, but some, like the National Rifle Association’s, were worth printing anyway.