One of the canards we kept hearing after Newtown was that the CDC was somehow banned from doing research on gun violence, and that this was somehow a contributing factor in the problem. The President used it, Secretary Clinton used it, and the media latched on to it.
The problem is, it is an absolute lie. The CDC can do all the studies they want. However, if they want to do
advocacy, they don't get federal funding to do so.
Their crusade against guns (particularly handguns) started in the 1970's, but things reached a head in 1993 with the publication of Arthur Kellerman's “Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home” study, which despite being
easily and soundly debunked, was published and repeated like crazy among the media and gun-control advocates. Any time you hear "you're X times more likely to get shot if you own a gun," it's a reference to this study.
And Kellerman wasn't alone. Just about every article on the matter published in the
New England Journal of Medicine and the
Journal of the American Medical Association were obviously written to advocate for the banning or reduction of handguns, even when data didn't line up with that conclusion.
In 1994, Dr. Katherine Christoffel, a member of the CDC-funded Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan was quoted as saying, “guns are a virus that must be eradicated… They are causing an epidemic of death by gunshot, which should be treated like any epidemic…you get rid of the virus…get rid of the guns, get rid of the bullets, and you get rid of deaths.”
Later that year, CDC head Mark Rosenberg told the
Washington Post, “we need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like we did with cigarettes. Now it is dirty, deadly and banned.” He also published an article in one journal entitled "The Bullet as Pathogen."
This was pretty much the height of the gun-control movement in America. They had the sympathetic, unquestioning ear of the pre-internet, three-channel media. They had an administration in the White House who was willing to sign off on any legislation they could get through congress.
Then the Republicans took control of Congress, and in 1996, the Dickey Amendment was inserted into an omnibus spending bill. It stated, "none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote gun control." The $2.6 million that had been allotted for gun research was reallocated to the study of brain injuries.
At no point was any money actually cut from the CDC budget. In no way is the CDC prohibited from doing gun research. The only thing the Dickey Amendment does is deny funding for advocacy. When a politician or Twitter celebrity claims the CDC is somehow barred from researching the issue, that person is plainly lying.