Republicans agree to include a provision in the $1.3 trillion spending bill to fund the government to clarify that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) can research gun violence, the Hill reports.
Democrats were pushing for a repeal of the Dickey Amendment, which prohibits the CDC from using funds “in whole or in part, to advocate or promote gun control.” Critics of the amendment argue that, while it doesn’t explicitly ban research on gun violence, it has nonetheless led federal funding for gun-related research to dry up.
During the course of his presidency, Barack Obama made multiple requests for $10 million in funding to re-establish the CDC’s research on gun violence and prevention; he was always denied by the House of Representatives.
Now, rather than a full roll-back of the Dickey Amendment, Republicans agreed to make clear that it never prohibited gun research to begin with.
