Brady Applauds Congressional Leadership, Appropriating First Federal Funding to Study Gun Violence in Over 20 Years

Washington, D.C., December 16, 2019 - Today, Brady applauds the United States Congress for taking decisive action and appropriating $25 million to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes for Health (NIH). This is the first such funding since 1996.

Brady Vice President of Policy Christian Heyne stated:

“Today’s announcement from Congressional Appropriators that they will dedicate $25 million to research gun violence is a huge victory in our nation’s commitment to addressing and solving the gun violence epidemic. This is the first such funding since 1996, meaning that students graduating from college this spring have never lived in a United States where the federal government studied this issue. That ends today.”

Congress has not appropriated funding to study gun violence since 1996 due to a conservative interpretation of a provision in the 1996 omnibus spending bill, known as the Dickey Amendment. In 2018, Congress clarified that this provision does not prohibit research into gun violence, clearing the way for Congressional Appropriators to earmark these funds.

Heyne concluded:

“This funding will catalyze our ability to understand and therefore to effectively fight the gun violence epidemic in the United States. For 23 years, incredible private researchers and organizations have helped us to understand this issue, to develop policies to prevent mass and personal tragedies stemming from gun violence and to solve this public health crisis that kills over 36,000 America a year. With this funding, our federal government will uplift this effort and help to identify new policies and programs that could prevent this loss of life. In 2017, we worked to elect a gun safety majority to the United States Congress. Today’s action shows why that matters. Elections have consequences. We must never forget that today’s victory is a direct result of that effort.”

With this funding, the research community will have an increased ability to study pressing issues such as the root causes of violence, the impact and extent of gun injury in the U.S., suicide prevention and programmatic fixes to help mitigate unintentional gun violence such as family fire.