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Abstract
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On December 20 , 2019, the Trump administration approved a fiscal 2020 spending agreement
that will allocate 25 million dollars to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research on gun violence. This agreement ends an effective ban on federal funding of gun violence research in place since 1996, and represents an important opportunity to depoliticize the gun violence epidemic by using a public health approach.
State of Research on Gun Violence
Efforts to study gun violence have been stymied for over two decades by a provision in Congressional appropriation bills known as the Dickey amendment. Though the amendment does not explicitly prohibit federal funding of firearm research, it forbids the CDC from using “funds made available for injury prevention and control...to advocate or promote gun control.” The amendment was introduced largely in response to lobbying by the National Rifle Association (NRA) following the release of a CDC study that found an increased risk of gun homicide in gun-owning households.
Since then, the debate on firearm research has centered on the contention that research would be used to justify gun control. As a result, there has been a marked reduction in gun violence research: between 1998 and 2012, there was a 96% reduction on federal spending on firearm injury research and a 64% decline in the number of publications on this topic. The National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine has stated that “the scarcity of research on firearm-related violence limits policy makers’ ability to propose evidence-based policies that reduce injuries and deaths and maximize safety while recognizing Second Amendment rights ...
Language: en |