Peter J. McDonough, the senior vice president for external affairs at Rutgers.

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Peter J. McDonough is the senior vice president for external affairs at Rutgers.
 

Photography: 
Benoit Cortet

Rutgers researchers recently won a $2 million state grant to create the Center on Gun Violence Research, only the second such center in the country. New Jersey governor Phil Murphy and legislative leaders want to expand its scope to make the center the leading national  repository for data on gun violence.

The center—co-led by the School of Public Health, which is part of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, and the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University–Newark—will conduct research and offer policy recommendations to reduce firearms-related violence. It will draw on an array of experts in fields such as public health, criminal justice, psychology, sociology, medicine, law, social work, public policy, and engineering. You can read about the new center in “An American Epidemic.”

In researching myriad causes of gun violence through the accumulation and evaluation of new data, the center intends to prescribe clear and actionable policies and programs for issues such as prevention and victim assistance. The center is partnering with governments, nonprofits, and local, state, and national experts in the effort.

The Center on Gun Violence Research held its first symposium at Rutgers on April 23. Hundreds of people from across the state came to hear remarks from researchers associated with the center and from Governor Murphy, congressman Frank Pallone, and New Jersey General Assembly majority leader Louis Greenwald, three men who have long been gun safety advocates.

It’s good to have a policy initiative that the legislature and the governor all support. It’s great to have it at Rutgers.