New Gun Research Center Funded by Firearms Executives Aims to Diversify Debate

Most other gun research at universities is funded by the government or private foundations, as well as gun-control supporters in some instances.

Its opening comes amid a renewed debate over gun control following a recent pair of mass shootings in California and a rise in gun violence during the first two years of the pandemic.

The Firearms Research Center’s founders, law professor

George Mocsary

and gun historian

Ashley Hlebinsky,

declined to disclose the names of their backers or how much money had been donated. They said the center, which also includes an additional law professor and a researcher, will offer public lectures and a website with legal scholarship and exhibits on firearms history. 

They said they hope to research issues including how to prevent suicides involving firearms, and to hold symposia on gun-policy issues that include people such as hunters, members of the military and law-enforcement officers.

“To have credibility, we have to welcome all voices,” said Mr. Mocsary, who has previously done research and written articles opposing some gun regulations and arguing that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms. “It’s important for this to be an ongoing conversation, not just when a tragedy happens.”

Business interests in the U.S. such as the tobacco, oil and tech industries have previously sponsored academic research in an effort to sway public and political opinion of their products.

Mr. Mocsary and Ms. Hlebinsky said donations from gun-industry executives won’t influence their work.

Researchers on gun violence and gun policy from other universities said such donations raise questions about the center’s impartiality.

“I would hold an industry-funded center for research on firearms with the same level of respect that I would hold for a tobacco industry-funded center for research on the effects and use of tobacco,” said

Garen Wintemute,

director of California Firearm Violence Research Center at the University of California, Davis, which is funded by the state of California. 

The California center was founded in 2017 and has produced studies on the effectiveness of gun policies, including one showing that California’s red-flag law was used 58 times between 2016 and 2018 to temporarily seize guns from individuals threatening mass shootings.

Academics who believe existing research is biased toward gun control welcomed the new center.

Robert Leider,

an assistant law professor at George Mason University, said at other centers researching guns and gun violence, “if you look at what their scholars are doing, it’s all pro gun-control…There is very much a need for a center that goes in the opposite way.”

Mr. Leider is a legal scholar who has argued for a broader interpretation of the Second Amendment and for societal benefits of civilian gun ownership.

Mr. Leider and others who believe existing firearms research is biased in favor of regulation often point to the gun-research center at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which bears the name of

Michael Bloomberg,

the former mayor of New York and a prominent gun-control advocate. A spokeswoman for the university said funders don’t influence its researchers’ work. 

David Yamane,

a Wake Forest University sociologist studying American gun culture, said he hoped the center in Wyoming would work to include differing views when holding conferences or producing research. But he worried it might become just a resource for gun-rights advocates to turn to bolster their arguments.

“I do feel like it’s going to be a he said-he said or they said-they said situation,” he said of the work the Firearms Research Center will produce compared with that from other academic institutions.

Research into gun ownership, gun violence and the effectiveness of public policy was limited for many years because of lack of public funding. After Congress passed a provision in 1996 forbidding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from advocating for gun control, the CDC cut its funding for research on the topic.

In 2018, after a string of mass shootings, Congress clarified that the CDC could fund impartial research. With increased government and private funding, more research is being conducted than ever before, scholars say.

Write to Cameron McWhirter at [email protected] and Zusha Elinson at [email protected]