WASHINGTON — The nation’s leading public health agency has not touched gun violence research in nearly 19 years, despite the view shared by many health officials that the topic represents a serious epidemic, like an infectious disease. Further pressure to resume research came in 2013, weeks after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., when President Barack Obama ordered the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to get back to studying the causes of gun violence.
And the CDC still did not budge.
The problem is that since 1996 Congress has threatened to strip the CDC of funding — if it studied gun violence. The CDC had funded these studies for years, until the National Rifle Association accused the agency of promoting gun control. The NRA and other gun-rights activists have argued the CDC tipped its hand and cannot be trusted to study the issue.
On Wednesday, a group of 110 U.S. representatives made the latest push to get the CDC back in the game. The effort, spearheaded by U.S. Rep. David Price, D-N.C., calls on House leaders “to reject short-sighted and unnecessary riders that freeze gun violence research.”
A letter written by Price points out that while solutions to gun violence might be debated, “we should all be able to agree that our response should be informed by sound scientific evidence.”
