Lowey and DeLauro call for end to prohibition on federal gun violence research

Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Ranking Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee and the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee, today renewed their call to end the twenty-year prohibition on federal funding on research related to gun violence.

“It is shameful and indefensible that Congress continues to willfully blindfold the American people about gun violence by preventing research about its causes and prevention strategies,” said Lowey.  “As we continue grasping to understand mass shootings and daily gun violence, it is time, once and for all, to undertake commonsense reforms like allowing researchers to study this public health crisis.  Continuing this mindless prohibition on studying gun violence does not make the crisis go away; it makes it worse.” 

“We conduct evidence-based studies into car crashes, prescription drug usage, smoking, and all sorts of other accidents and injuries,” DeLauro said.  “But for years now, this type of federal inquiry on firearms has been effectively banned for ideological reasons. We should be conducting more examinations into how to prevent these injuries and save lives. Congress should be doing everything possible to enhance public health, not intimidating researchers. We must end the prohibition on federal gun violence research.”

The 2016 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill, reported on June 24th by the Appropriations Committee, continues a “general provision to prevent any funds from being spent on gun research,” including data collection, according to the Committee report. 

The practical effect of the provision is to prohibit the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), our nation’s premier public health agency, from researching the causes of gun violence and strategies that could reduce gun violence, which resulted in more than 33,000 deaths in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available.  There is a disproportionate impact on young Americans, as guns kill more Americans under age 25 than automobile accidents.

Lowey offered an amendment during the Labor-HHS-Education markup to remove this mindless prohibition, which was defeated by a unanimous Republican majority.

Former Rep. Jay Dickey (R-AR), who initially sponsored the prohibition on federal funding for gun violence research in 1996, has reversed course and regrets his work for this policy.  “I wish we had started the proper research and kept it going all this time,” he told the Huffington Post.  He continued, “If we had somehow gotten the research going, we could have somehow found a solution to the gun violence without there being any restrictions on the Second amendment.”

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