Dive Brief:
- Just as the San Bernardino, CA shooting last week claimed 14 lives and injured 20, a number of physician groups comprising more than 2,000 doctors from across the U.S. had begun pushing a joint petition urging Congress to end restrictions on research into gun violence, as well as to provide annual funding.
- Democrats appear to be on board, saying last week they would be aiming to end the ban on gun-related research via the upcoming spending bill that will need to pass to avoid a government shutdown Friday, The Wall Street Journal reports.
- Congress blocked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from gun research in 1996 and extended limitations to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2011, resulting in a "chilling effect on gun violence research," stated Doctors for America.
Dive Insight:
The participating physician groups argue U.S. gun violence is a public health problem because it kills 90 people each day. They note while there has been almost no publicly funded research on gun violence since 1996, when the research restrictions began, the federal government has spent $240 million per year to research traffic safety, which kills about the same number of people per year.
The letter adds there was an executive action by President Obama in 2013 that allowed the CDC to resume gun violence research, but that restrictive language has remained in place and funding has not been provided.
"As a result, many questions remain unanswered on the most effective ways to prevent gun violence," the groups' announcement states.