Newtown Resident Petition: Allow CDC Gun Violence Research

Survivors from inside the Inland Regional Center are escorted from the scene by police on Dec. 2, 2015. Patch photo by Renee Schiavone.

A Newtown resident whose mother worked at Sandy Hook Elementary School during the 2012 shooting created a petition to allow the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to research gun violence.

The mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif. left 14 dead and 14 wounded. It is the 355th mass shooting on the year in the U.S.

There have been 43,002 homicides where a gun was used in the U.S. between 2010 and 2014, according to the FBI.

“How are we expected to come up with the most impactful solutions if we can’t even study the problem,” said petition creator Sarah Clements.

Related:

• Link to petition
• California Mass Shooting: What We Know About Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik

Others are also calling on Congress to fund the research. A group of doctors delivered a petition signed by more than 2,000 physicians to Congress asking lawmakers to lift the nearly two decade restriction, according to the Washington Post.

Former Rep. Jay Dickey of Arkansas authored an amendment restricting funding for research into gun violence. He recently said in an NPR interview that he regrets it and that the intent of the amendment was to not fund gun control advocacy.