Taste it
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/dems-want-50-million-for-biased-research-to-attack-gun-ownership
Democrats in the U.S. House are likely to approve spending $50 million in taxpayer funds for public health research on gun violence. While that may sound like a good idea at first glance, it really wouldn’t do anything to reduce gun violence in our country.
I testified Thursday before the House Appropriations Committee’s health subcommittee to inject facts into the discussion of the Democratic bill.
It should go without saying that everyone opposes gun violence. But it’s important to take effective measures to deal with this problem and not simply take actions that sound appealing but won’t really save lives.
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The idea behind the $50 million in research funding is to have medical professionals apply tools they developed to study cancer, heart disease and other diseases and use them to study crime, accidental death and suicide. But to state the obvious, gun violence and diseases are two very different things.
The National Rifle Association – regularly demonized in the media and by many Democrats – has been blamed for preventing academics from doing research on firearms. So supporters of the bill that would spend $50 million to research gun violence as a public health issue say their bill is needed to stop the NRA from blocking vital research that will save lives.
But there’s a big problem with the argument: it’s not true.
Opponents of the Second Amendment who are eager to impose as many restrictions as possible on firearms falsely claim that a measure enacted in 1996 called the Dickey Amendment – named after former Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Ark. – barred research on gun violence to be funded by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But in reality, here is what the reviled Dickey Amendment states: “None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” (Italics added).
The point of that plain language is to say CDC-funded research is fine. CDC advocacy is not. So despite what gun-control zealots say, objective research based on facts is allowed under the Dickey Amendment.