With a stroke of his pen, President Barack Obama yesterday ended a de facto freeze on US government research into gun violence as a public health problem – in place since the mid-1990s.
"We don't benefit from ignorance," Obama said, directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, to assess existing strategies to reduce gun violence and identify pressing questions that should be answered.
The executive order is one of 23 Obama signed as part of measures drawn up in response to the horrific killing last month of 20 children and six s at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Obama also wants the US Congress to release $10 million for new research, including investigating whether playing violent video games and being exposed to other violent media makes people more likely to commit gun crimes.
With gun violence claiming some 11,000 lives in the US each year, you might imagine that reducing this toll would be near the top of the public health agenda.
For a while, in the early 1990s, it was – with CDC-backed research finding, for instance, that people with guns in the home were more likely to become victims of homicide.
