Gun violence researchers fight California Department of Justice’s plan to withhold data

California’s top gun violence prevention experts and activists admonished the Department of Justice on Thursday during a public hearing to consider the agency’s proposal to withhold certain data from a state-funded center tasked with evaluating firearm laws.

They sought to halt the department’s proposed regulations to withhold certain information in gun violence restraining order data it is required by law to provide to the UC Davis California Firearm Violence Research Center.

Without those records, researchers say they’re unable to complete studies on whether California’s gun violence prevention laws are working.

“This change in practice makes it impossible to conduct up-to-date, practical research,” said Dr. Garen Wintemute, who leads the research team as the center’s director. “Deaths, injuries and crimes that might have been prevented will not be and the health and safety of Californians will be adversely affected.”

Lawmakers are also pressuring the department to back off its proposal.

In a March 9 letter, nine legislators urged the agency to revise its proposed regulations to ensure researchers can still do their work.

“As representatives of the people of California, we rely on the best possible scientific evidence to help us fulfill our duty to serve the public’s interest,” they wrote. “We view the draft regulations as obstructing the development of that evidence and hope that the department will reconsider.”

In 2016, the Legislature passed a law to set up and fund the center’s research on gun violence prevention policies. Lawmakers hoped that independent research by experts who’ve studied gun violence for decades would help them craft better policies to decrease firearm-related deaths and injuries.

Former Attorney General Kamala Harris supported the law, which tasked the department with transferring “the data necessary for the center to conduct its research.” The information often includes personal identifiers like names, court case numbers, dates of birth and gender or sex.

But starting in 2017, the year Attorney General Xavier Becerra took office, researchers said the agency started challenging their data requests, despite that legal mandate to release the records.

The Legislature intervened, and passed another law to reestablish the agency’s obligation to release the data, which it did. With those records, the center published a 2019 study that determined gun violence restraining orders help prevent mass shootings.

Researchers hit another roadblock last year, Wintemute said, when they requested fresh data for a study on the department’s system to identify and remove guns from illegally armed people.

This time, Wintemute said, the department requested his team to terminate the study and destroy existing data the agency had already released. The agency also said it was unable to provide certain identifiers, like names, in its annual gun violence restraining order data.

Stanford researchers also risk having to shut down a study to determine mortality risk associated with handgun ownership.

The department has defended the proposal as a way to “protect Californians’ privacy” by ensuring identifiable information isn’t made public.

But Dr. David Studdert, Stanford professor of law and medicine and a gun violence prevention researcher, said the proposed policy jeopardizes California’s standing as the “best place in the country, maybe the world” to conduct this research. He also said the regulation would deeply fracture a longstanding relationship between the Department of Justice and the world-renown research institutions.

Studdert also said his team worked diligently to prevent a data breach, which he said would be “catastrophic” for the researchers who handle the records.

The researchers’ final hope is that the Legislature will pass a measure that would again codify the department’s legal duty to provide the identifying information in the records.

The department has said it supports gun violence research, but is legally obligated to protect identifying and confidential information.

“The California Department of Justice values data-driven research and its role in pushing forward informed public policy to help combat problems like gun violence,” an agency spokesperson said in a March 3 statement. “We also take seriously our duty to protect Californians’ sensitive personally identifying information, and must follow the letter of the law regarding disclosures of the personal information in the data we collect and maintain.”

The department said it plans to review public comments about its proposal. If the agency decides to modify the regulations, it will then post a notice and hold a 15-day public comment period. From there, the final proposal will be submitted to the Office of Administrative Law.

Correction: A previous version of this article misquoted Dr. David Studdert.

This story was originally published March 12, 2021 at 5:25 AM.