Murphy praises funding for gun violence research

The U.S. House and Senate have agreed to spend $25 million researching gun violence, according to The Hill – the first time in decades the government will fund any such research.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Winter Park had led the effort in 2018 to overturn a 22-year federal ban on funding such research. But no money was actually spent, despite Murphy and other Democrats calling for $50 million in funding.

This year, the Democratic-led House was able to negotiate with the Republican

Senate to agree to a $25 million total as part of a new spending bill, which will be evenly split between for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

“One of my first successful battles in Congress was to help repeal the ban on federally sponsored research into ways to reduce gun violence,” Murphy wrote on Twitter on Monday. “I’m proud we’ve now won the next battle— obtaining $25 million to fund such research. Let’s use evidence-based policies to save lives.”

The 1996 Dickey Amendment had effectively banned any research into gun violence, and Murphy had originally sponsored a Gun Violence Research Act that sought to repeal the Dickey Amendment in its entirety.

While that bill failed to pass, new language secured by Murphy last year as part of a spending bill added that “the Secretary of Health and Human Services has stated the CDC has the authority to conduct research on the causes of gun violence.”

The law still mandates, however, that the CDC cannot “advocate or promote gun control.”

Murphy pushed for such research when she met with President Donald Trump along with other members of Congress in the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in February 2018.

Ex-U.S. Rep. Jay Dickey of Arkansas, the congressman who spearheaded the amendment, later regretted his role, telling NPR in 2015, “it wasn’t necessary that all research stop. It just couldn’t be the collection of data so that they can advocate gun control. That’s all we were talking about. But for some reason, it just stopped altogether.”