Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.
How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Flashback Friday post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.
If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 24th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.
This was originally posted on February 24, 2018. Sadly, not much as changed over the past five years.
The Dickey Amendment
Did you know that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is prohibited by federal law from studying firearm violence even though the American Medical Association calls gun violence in America an epidemic and has dubbed it as “a public health crisis”?
It’s true. In 1996, the Republican-majority Congress threatened to strip all funding from the CDC, which the National Rifle Association accused of promoting gun control, unless it stopped funding research into firearm injuries and death.
And in 1997, with strong backing from the NRA, the “Dickey Amendment,” named for Republican Congressman Jay Dickey of Arkansas, was passed by Congress. The Dickey Amendment to the federal congressional appropriations bill stipulated that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the CDC may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” As a result, the CDC stopped funding gun control research.
Although gun violence is one of the leading causes of death in America, it is also one of the most poorly researched. In relation to US mortality rates, gun violence research is the least-researched cause of death and the second-least-funded cause of death, after falls.
Critics of the restrictions argue that the government should not try to limit the collection of scientific information, which is by nature apolitical. Facts are facts, and public health researchers do not have a vested interest in politicizing the outcome of such studies.
Non-partisan research could uncover any number of constructive actions that might help stem the tide of gun violence that don’t necessarily include limiting access to guns. But with these gun violence research restrictions, policymakers have very little up-to-date data about what causes gun violence or how it can be prevented or reduced.
So just why are the NRA and congressional Republicans so determined to prevent research into gun violence? My guess: follow the money.
Maybe now might be a good time to contact your senators and representatives and encourage them to consider allowing funding for gun violence research.
After all, before he died last year, none other than the man behind the Dickey Amendment, Jay Dickey, expressed a desire to turn gun violence research “over to science and take it away from politics.”
This, That, and the Other 
I can’t understand the refusal to save lives. 😔
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There’s no rational reason…other than money and politics.
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It’s very sad =(
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Yes it is.
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Wow. Ouch.
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Sadly it’s getting worse every day and I can’t see a way to stop it.
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I wish I had an answer, but I don’t.
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And would you believe we now have a gun lobby in the UK wanting to permit guns here ….? And now I’ve updated my own Flashback Friday link to this more recent post: https://margaret21.com/2023/02/24/fog-and-mist-cloud-and-sun-revisited/
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🥺
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Gun manufacturers love (and fund) the gun lobby, where the mission is to arm every man, woman, and child in the country. It’s all about greed.
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This is a timely post as some nincompoop has sponsored a bill to make the AR our National Gun. Beyond idiocy and cruelty.
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That’s like sponsoring a bill to make COVID-19 our national disease.
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https://lightmotifs.wordpress.com/2023/02/24/trouble-with-distance-fff/
Pingbacks aren’t working anywhere 😟
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Is it only the CDC that is banned from it? One would think that having their scope reduced would mean they could do their job in other areas better. Apparently no, though. That’s an interesting tidbit, btw, that “falls” are the very least researched cause of deaths.
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I meant… very-least-funded for research as a cause of death.
That brings up in my mind the man who recently
fell into a vat of molten metal at work.
How fascinating:
After all, before he died last year, none other than the man behind the Dickey Amendment, Jay Dickey, expressed a desire to turn gun violence research “over to science and take it away from politics.”
We also don’t have any [via the cdc or anyone else] comprehensive way for keeping track of police shootings or corrupt police officers.
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