DEATH BY NRA.....
NRA lobbying led to law that stopped CDC from using federal funds to study gun violence
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention receives no federal funding to study gun violence, thanks to a 1996 law the NRA succeeded in ramming through Congress. Now two lawmakers are sponsoring a bill to give the CDC $10 million a year to study why guns kill people.
BY Erica Pearson , Ginger Adams Otis
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Thursday, May 29, 2014, 2:16 AM
Read more: nydailynews.com
Guns kill 32,000 Americans a year, but not one penny is given to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to find out why.
Victims of gun violence can thank the National Rifle Association for squeezing off that funding.
The NRA began lobbying Congress in the 1990s to limit the CDC’s funding after the agency gave financial backing to an independent study that found that keeping a gun in the home was strongly associated with an increased risk of homicide.
The pro-gun behemoth succeeded in ramming legislation through in 1996 that forbade the CDC from using federal funds for studies that “advocate or promote gun control.”
Known as the Dickey Amendment for Rep. Jay Dickey (R-Ark.), who sponsored it, the bill didn’t outright ban gun research — but made it clear the CDC risked all its funding if it gave financial support to studies that might not suit the NRA’s agenda.
After the Dickey bill passed, Congress took $2.6 million from the CDC budget — the amount the agency had spent on the study about guns in homes — and redirected it to a study of brain injuries.
 New York Daily News CDC funding is used in many ways ... but not for studies on gun violence.
The chilling effect caused by those actions has kept Americans in the dark about many aspects of gun violence, according to John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety.
“For more than 20 years, NRA leadership has advanced policies to obstruct access to and prevent analysis of gun violence and its causes — and blocked questions from police, military officers and even doctors to learn more. We support efforts to increase funding for scientific research that will help us end the gun violence that kills 86 Americans every day,” said Feinblatt, who was former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s chief policy adviser on guns.
The NRA did not respond to requests for comment.
The CDC budgeted $59 million in 2014 to study coal mining deaths — there have been 18 this year.
The CDC, the nation’s main health protection agency, has budgeted $10 million to study Lyme disease, $105 million on the effects of tobacco and $67 million on diabetes — yet it doesn’t get a single dollar of funding to research firearm deaths.
Read more: nydailynews.com
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