Gun Ban Crowd Loses Battle to Eliminate Ban on Research Promoting Gun Control

The Hill reports today that the omnibus funding bill working its way through the House and later the Senate continues to ban federally funded research that promotes gun control:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has come up empty in her efforts to eliminate a budget rider that has halted nearly all government research into gun violence for 17 years.

The trillion-dollar spending bill unveiled early Wednesday morning keeps in place the controversial amendment, which Pelosi had told gun control groups was a priority in the budget talks. It is on page 936 of the 2,009-page bill.

The top House Democrat added the gun research ban to her list of demands for GOP leaders during budget negotiations — the only gun-related provision that she has put her weight behind publicly following the recent massacres in Colorado Springs, Colo., and San Bernardino, Calif.

It is a favorite myth of gun ban politicians and the gun ban lobby that the decades old ban on using taxpayer money to promote gun control has caused research on violence committed with firearms to almost completely end.

Why Congress Stopped Gun Control Activism at the CDC

The New York Times has an op/ed by an editor of Mother Jones that dispels the myth the San Bernardino shooting was the 355th mass shootings in 2015.  He is to be commended for setting the record straight on that point, considering he works for Mother Jones.  But then he ended the piece by repeating another myth lamenting that the media can't get good data because congress prevents research on the subject:

One thing we all need is better data. Since 1996, Congress and the gun lobby have prevented the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from conducting comprehensive research into gun violence. In the wake of the latest horror, and the confusion that followed, will that finally change?

Thankfully, we had Dr. Timothy Wheeler address that topic in an op/ed in The Hill on Monday.  Dr. Wheeler, is the director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership and was one of three doctors who testified before the House Labor, Health, Human Services and Education Appropriations Subcommittee in 1996. They detailed the misbehavior of the CDC. What congress actually did was put a stop to the CDC doing advocacy research:

Not surprisingly, the full committee report for the 1997 appropriations bill contained “a limitation to prohibit the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control from engaging in any activities to advocate or promote gun control.” Further, the committee warned CDC officials that it “does not believe that it is the role of the CDC to advocate or promote policies to advance gun control initiatives, or to discourage responsible private gun ownership.”

So contrary to Speier’s tale of great minds shackled and research suppressed, Congress in fact simply directed the CDC to stop promoting gun control.  To reasonable minds this is not at all controversial.  Congress should ignore the tricksters and continue holding the CDC to its mission of objective research, not pushing for gun control.

Wheeler appeared on NRANews earlier this week to discuss his article and provide the facts about what the CDC can and can't do with Congressional Appropriations.