You wouldn’t call him a Second Amendment zealot.

But, from the moment that he announced his candidacy in the 2016 presidential race, Democrat-for-now Bernie Sanders has been in the crosshairs for a number of votes that no doubt elicited backslaps, fist pumps and high fives at the headquarters of the National Rifle Association.

Sanders’s pro-gun reform critics typically highlight three of these — his votes:

against the Brady handgun bill;

for allowing Amtrak passengers to check their guns onto trains; and

for giving immunity to gun dealers and manufacturers from lawsuits by victims of gun violence and their families.

What seems to have eluded most observers so far is Bernie Sanders’s vote for an NRA-backed House Appropriations Committee amendment that totally gutted a 1990s Centers for Disease Control research program that studied the causes and effects of all gun-related injuries and deaths — including those attributable to violence.

The amendment killed this new CDC program “in the crib” — and instituted a de facto ban on CDC gun research that continues to this day.

Indeed, in the wake of Charleston — 200 mass shootings ago — the House Appropriations Committee voted to extend the research ban by defeating an amendment that would have restored funding for the program.

In recent weeks, there have been renewed calls to restore funding, including from a coalition of nine medical associations and more than 2,000 physicians that held a press conference yesterday— just hours before San Bernardino — to call gun violence what it is: a public health crisis.

It all started in 1996, when NRA extremists went after the CDC program — demagogically branding the CDC’s publication of any scientific research results showing the negative impacts of gun access and ownership as propaganda for gun control.

Rep. Jay Dickey (R-AR), the NRA’s point person on the Appropriations Committee, pushed through an amendment cutting funding for the CDC by $2.6M — the exact amount that the previous year’s federal budget had appropriated for the CDC program on gun research.

Once the bill got to the floor of the full House, on 11 July 1996, Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) offered an amendment to reverse the Dickey amendment — and to restore full funding for the CDC program.

Lowey demanded and received a recorded vote on her amendment.

Bernie Sanders voted against the Lowey amendment — i.e., he voted for gutting the CDC program on gun research, as the NRA wanted. The amendment failed.

(Of course, a certain other presidential candidate’s husband signed the amendment into law.)

For a summary of the Lowey amendment, see item #41 here.

The roll call showing Sanders’ No vote is here.

Bernie Sanders needs to explain this vote — now.

Worth noting: Voted out of Congress in 2001, Jay Dickey now says that he regrets his role and says that Congress should repeal the law he pushed for the NRA.

Does Bernie Sanders have his regrets of his own?

What has Sanders done, in the nearly 20 years since his NRA-approved vote, to advance federal research into the causes of gun violence?

We’re all ears.

For more information on the Sanders-abetted gutting of CDC research on gun-related injuries and deaths — and what the consequences of the funding ban have been — see this article.