by The Trace reported on February 19th that the RAND Corporation will be discontinuing two of its major research projects dealing with “gun violence” and “gun policy”. They are the Gun Policy in America project and the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research.
The RAND Corporation is sunsetting two major gun violence research initiatives as funding has shrunk under the Trump administration. Experts lamented the closures as a significant loss for policymakers, advocates, and researchers who have relied on the think tank’s work to prevent shootings.
The Gun Policy in America project, an initiative that evaluated how researchers conducted their studies and what they found, concluded with a final update to its Science of Gun Policy report on January 29, Andrew Morral, a RAND senior behavioral scientist who co-led the project, told The Trace. The project provided what experts called the most sweeping and reliable synthesis of evidence on the effectiveness of various gun laws, from background checks on gun sales to assault weapons bans.
Another RAND initiative, the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research, which has poured at least $24 million into gun violence research since 2018, is also ending. In November, the collaborative awarded grants to three post-doctoral researchers examining Extreme Risk Protection Order laws, or red flag laws, which allow courts to temporarily disarm people deemed dangerous. The awards were likely the initiative’s last, said Morral, who also directs the collaborative.
It appears that without government funding and add-on funding from certain non-profit trusts that the RAND Corporation is having to lay-off almost 200 staffers. While they self-funded the gun policy research, those funds are now needed to supplement research in other areas.
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