This is one of those programs that was long overdue. You can’t address gun violence if you’re not allowed to share basic data about it. You can’t have good safety measures in place without knowing what the trends are or where the issues occur. There have been several good studies that have come out recently that show important trends.
From the article about a study on gun injuries in Utah:
Nearly three-quarters of all unintentional injuries in the state are to males between the ages of 15 and 44, most of whom accidentally shoot themselves while mishandling or cleaning the weapons. With funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Utah streamlined its data collection on gun injuries and used that information to create a public service campaign to help prevent accidental gun injuries.
Sounds like basic gun safety training would help in Utah…
The biggest issue with the EPA setting limits is finding labs that can measure to those levels with any sort of accuracy or precision. In the article they mention California’s limits are 5 parts per trillion. That’s 10^-12 or 0.000000000005. It’s really hard to find equipment that can measure that low with out some dilution factors. This makes it hard to set standards. If you can’t measure it, you can’t regulate it.