The Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 1997 contained language stating that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” Although the bill did not explicitly ban research on gun violence, Congress took the money previously appropriated for firearm injury research and earmarked it for another purpose.
The ban on CDC research on gun deaths and injuries, which has remained in place ever since, was prompted by the results of a 1993 study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which concluded that keeping a gun in the home increased the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance. In response, gun control opponents, concerned that findings from such research would be used to advocate for new restrictions or bans on firearms, campaigned (unsuccessfully) for the elimination of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention, then settled for the appropriations language instead.
Following the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, President Obama issued a directive instructing Federal agencies to interpret the appropriations language literally — as a restriction on funds for advocacy, not for research; however, the CDC has hesitated on acting on the directive, both because of limited funding and, some believe, fear of a political backlash. The President also requested $10 million (which Congress denied) for broader CDC research into the relationship between violence and entertainment media.
More recently, during a June 2015 mark-up of the 2016 Labor–Health and Human Services–Education spending bill, the House Appropriations Committee defeated, 19 to 32, an amendment to remove the longstanding gun violence research ban. The subsequent committee report stated, “The restriction is to prevent activity that would undertake activities (to include data collection) for current or future research, including under the title ‘gun violence prevention,’ that could be used in any manner to result in a future policy, guidelines, or recommendations to limit access to guns, ammunition, or to create a list of gun owners.”
Speaker of the House John Boehner (OH-R) defended the language, saying, “The CDC is there to look at diseases that need to be dealt with to protect public health … a gun is not a disease.”
The author of the original 1993 amendment has since expressed regrets, however, stating, “I wish we had started the proper research and kept it going all this time.” He added, “The problem was that the research that we were looking at was designed with the agenda of gun control — not with the agenda of gun violence. What I regret is we didn’t go forward and say, ‘We do need research, but we need research with integrity.”
For more background on gun safety, see the March 2013 issue of Congressional Digest on “Gun Violence Prevention,” the November 1999 issue of Congressional Digest on “Firearms in America,” the April 2010 issue of Supreme Court Debates on “Gun Control in the States,” and the May 2007 issue of Supreme Court Debates on “The Second Amendment.”
