The History — And Future — Of Gun Violence Research
Last month, Congress passed a spending bill that included language allowing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to resume “conducting research on the causes of gun violence.”
The Democrats who wrote that part of the bill intended to reverse the 1996 so-called Dickey Amendment, that banned the CDC from using money to “advocate or promote gun control.” The amendment didn’t directly ban research, but it had a chilling effect, and according to Dr. Mark Rosenberg, along with funding cuts, ended up reducing research into gun violence by 90 percent.
Rosenberg, who was in charge of gun violence research at the CDC in the ’90s before it stopped, calls the language in the new bill very important. He tells Here & Now‘s Robin Young that there are ways to research gun violence without infringing on gun rights.
After the shooting
