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The federal government spends over $5 billion on cancer research and over $200 million on colon cancer research. And guess what? Over the past few decades -- due in large part to this research -- the survival rates for many kinds of cancers have improved dramatically. For example, someone with metastatic colon cancer in 1975 had a 6% chance of living 5 years. Today I have a 14% chance.

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In fact, we limit federal funds to research gun violence prevention. In 1996, Congress restricted the Centers for Disease control (CDC) from funding gun violence research. The year before the budget was cut, the CDC was funding gun violence research at $2.6 million per year. By 2013, they were funding at $100,000 per year.

After the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, President Barack Obama issued an executive order reinstating gun violence prevention research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH sponsored $18 million worth of research until the order lapsed in Jan 2017.

To be sure, colon cancer kills more people than gun violence. But the difference in federal funding for gun violence prevention research cannot be explained by this fact alone. In the United states, gun violence kills about 10 people per 100,000 per year and colon cancer kills about 15 people per 100,000 per year, but colon cancer research funding is more than 100 times what gun violence prevention research is.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/25/opinions/gun-control-cancer-research-rosenthal-opinion/index.html