New Jersey lawmakers pushed back against the governor’s plan to slash the state research center’s budget, providing stability to the field amid shaky federal support.

he New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center has secured stable funding for another year after lawmakers rejected a $1 million budget cut proposed by Democratic Governor Phil Murphy.

The move comes after The Trace reported that the cut would have wiped out a third of the center’s budget and crippled its operations, including its ability to fund outside researchers and collect national data on gun-related topics.

New Jersey’s Legislature approved a $58.8 billion spending package on June 30. It included $3 million for the center for the next fiscal year, which runs from July 1 to June 30. Murphy signed the measure just hours before the July 1 deadline.

The funding provides some stability to gun violence research at a time when federal support faces uncertainty, and it could restore some hope among researchers that state-funded hubs like New Jersey’s can serve as a fallback in the absence of federal dollars. 

 “We feel a sense of greater responsibility given what’s happening on the federal level with gun violence funding going away — and how hard we had to fight, and our allies had to fight, to restore us to $3 million,” Thurman Barnes, the center’s assistant director, told The Trace “Now I think, how can we put more money in the hands of researchers?”

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