What Will It Take to End the Ban on Gun Violence Research? [View all]
On Dec. 18, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives passed the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill to fund the government through next year. The bill included a Republican rider to continue a 17-year-old ban on funding gun research — the Dickey amendment.
Named after former Rep. Jay Dickey, the ban prohibits government spending on gun control advocacy. Though it doesn’t explicitly ban research on gun violence, this clause and its attendant risk to funding has caused government researches to avoid the topic for many years.
Even former Rep. Dickey, who wrote the original research-blocking legislation, is no longer happy about it.
“Research could have been continued on gun violence without infringing on the rights of gun owners, in the same fashion that the highway industry continued its research without eliminating the automobile… it is my position that somehow or someway we should slowly but methodically fund such research until a solution is reached. Doing nothing is no longer an acceptable solution.”
https://sojo.net/articles/what-will-it-take-end-ban-gun-violence-research
= new reply since forum marked as read