from The Verge:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now have the government’s permission to resume gun violence research, in writing: the massive omnibus spending bill that President Donald Trump signed today (Mar 23, 2018) clarifies that a 22-year-old ban on using federal funds to advocate or promote gun control doesn’t actually ban research.
While the bill is a step in the right direction, researchers will only believe that the landscape of gun violence research is actually changing when they see money for it in the CDC’s budget. “It’s not bad news — it’s good news,” says Jeffrey Swanson, a professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University. “But I’m skeptical that it’s going to really turn things around without some money being made available.”
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The omnibus bill that the president signed today could help thaw long-frozen investigations into the public health risks posed by firearms. But John Donohue III, a law professor at Stanford University, can think of two reasons to be wary of the change. One possibility might be that “if the CDC goes anywhere near this, they’ll get their funding cut back by Congress — which could hurt,” he says. Plus, Donohue says, “This could be a ploy to funnel money to some of the fringe researchers whose goal is to promote gun rights.”
" “There are bound to be political risks.”"
So the CDC might be cautious about venturing back into such a politically fraught arena, says Philip Cook, professor emeritus of public policy at Duke University. “There are bound to be political risks,” Cook told The Verge in an email. For example, if CDC-funded research were used to support calls for gun control, “there will be hell to pay with the NRA [the National Rifle Association] and their many friends in Congress,” Cook says. “So my guess is that we will not see such funding any time soon.”
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