It's been nearly twenty years since Congress passed an amendment to an appropriations bill that banned the Centers for Disease Control from using funds to "advocate or promote gun control." In the years since, that amendment has been used to prevent the CDC from conducting research on gun violence. Meaning that, over that period, the CDC has been largely prohibited from studying the effects of Columbine, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, Tucson, Aurora, Newtown, Charleston, and all the rest. Now, The Guardianreports, a group of 141 medical organizations are calling on Congress to reverse the policy and allow the CDC to study how guns are affecting Americans' health.

Those organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, have signed on to a letter requesting that the CDC receive adequate funding for gun violence research. It asks Congress to "end the dramatic chilling effect of the current rider language restricting gun violence research and to fund this critical work."

"The medical and public health communities continue to believe gun violence, which claims an average of 91 American lives daily, is a serious public health threat that must be handled with urgency," Dr. Alice Chen, executive director of Doctors for America, said in a statement. "Federal research has addressed many of our nation's most pressing public health challenges and it is time do the same with gun violence. Congress must lift the barrier to research that has persisted for nearly 20 years and fund the work that we need to save lives and prevent future tragedies."

A 2011 New York Times report explored the ways in which the National Rifle Association has prevented federally funded firearms research. During the 1990s, the NRA and its congressional allies initially tried to dismantle the CDC completely when some of its officials began making more assertive calls for further gun violence studies. They settled for the Dickey amendment—named for the Arkansas Congressman who pushed it through—but the episode has served as a cautionary tale ever since for CDC officials and the researchers they partner with. The issue surfaced again in 2014 when, at the height of the Ebola crisis, Republicans in Congress refused to confirm President Obama's nominee for surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, because of comments he made that characterized gun violence as a public health issue.

It's unclear yet whether the medical community's mobilization is part of any larger shift. Dickey, for his part, regrets his role and has called on Congress to strike his amendment and begin funding research. After all, shouldn't an agency tasked with keeping Americans healthy be able to study a phenomenon that injures or kills well over 30,000 Americans each year?

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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