This is extraordinary.
www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/03/dickey-amendment-gun-research-terrified-the-nra-explains-how-congress-finally-got-it-right/
For more than two decades, the government has repressed research on gun violence. Now, Congress has declared that a law often credited with halting the study of gun violence does not actually block federal research. On Friday, President Trump signed a spending bill to fund the entire federal government, which includes a provision clarifying that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can, in fact, study the causes of gun violence. It is a step toward federal gun violence research, though critics call the move inconsequential without funding.
The freeze traces back to a provision in a 1996 spending bill that prevented government funds from being used to “advocate or promote gun control.” It’s known as the Dickey Amendment after its sponsor, former Rep. Jay Dickey (R-Ark), and Congress has renewed the rule annually. Dozens of Democrats—in the House and the Senate—have called to repeal the amendment after the February mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.
Republicans maintain the Dickey Amendment never forbade gun research, and only prohibited advocacy. Researchers say the chilling effect came from the message behind the amendment—and shutting off funding. In the 1996 bill, Congress took away the $2.6 million that the CDC had earmarked for studying gun violence. Between 1996 and 2012, CDC funding to research gun violence fell by 96 percent, according to the gun-control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.
The current spending bill does not repeal the amendment. Rather, an accompanying report states that the CDC is not barred from conducting research on the causes of gun violence. But the spending bill offers no funds for new gun violence research. “When I actually see dollars appropriated, I’ll see a reason for celebration,” Daniel Webster, a professor of American health at Johns Hopkins University, says.
In the ’90s, the National Rifle Association spearheaded the push behind the Dickey Amendment after CDC researchers published gun violence research—such as a landmark study that showed having a gun at home put its occupants at greater risk. The gun rights group says its stance, then and now, is that “tax dollars should not be used to take sides in a policy debate.” The NRA’s advocates focused on statements like those from the director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Dr. Mark Rosenberg. “We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes,” Rosenberg said in 1994. “It used to be that smoking was a glamour symbol, cool, sexy, macho. Now it is dirty, deadly, and banned.”