Last edited Tue Feb 15, 2022, 03:46 PM - Edit history (1)
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studies a variety of public health threats every year, from infectious diseases to automobile safety. But for 15 years, the CDC has avoided comprehensive research on one of the top causes of death in the U.S.: firearms.
While the CDC keeps surveillance data on gun injuries and deaths, it has not funded a study aimed at reducing harm from guns since 2001. The CDC estimates that firearms are one of the top five causes of death in the U.S. for people under the age of 65, so advocates of gun safety say the lack of comprehensive research is particularly glaring.
The dearth of research funding goes back to 1997, when an amendment was added to an operations bill that passed in Congress with the language that the CDC will be barred from any research that will “advocate or promote gun control,” CDC spokeswoman Courtney Lenard told ABC News.
Called the Dickey Amendment after Rep. Jay Dickey, a Republican from Arkansas who served from 1993 to 2001, the amendment is often called a ban, but it did allow for research on injuries or deaths from firearms. However, Lenard pointed out that after the amendment, Congress cut funding for the CDC by the exact amount that had been spent on gun research in the year before. While that $2.6 million in funding was eventually restored, it was earmarked for traumatic brain injury research, according to a 2013 article in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/cdc-launched-comprehensive-gun-study-15-years/story?id=39873289And, an update:
After a 20-year drought, US lawmakers fund gun violence research
Gun violence research just got $25 million in federal funds, after a 20-year drought in funding for that purpose. The spending bill passed by US lawmakers today allocates half of the money to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and half to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Both agencies will use the money to fund studies on gun violence, which kills tens of thousands of people each year in the United States.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/19/21028779/gun-violence-research-funding-20-year-freeze-congress-bill-cdc-nih-dickey
= new reply since forum marked as read
