Giffords Applauds Congressional Majority for Including Funding for Gun Violence Research in Key House Appropriations Bill
For the first time in decades, House Appropriations Committee’s Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Bill includes investments in gun violence research
April 29, 2019 — Giffords , the gun violence prevention organization led by Representative Gabrielle Giffords, applauded the Democratic House majority for including new funding for gun violence research in an appropriations bill for the first time in over two decades. Today, the committee announced that the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Fiscal Year 2020 bill contains $50 million for dedicated research to address America’s gun violence crisis.
Robin Lloyd, Giffords Managing Director:
“Every day, more than a hundred Americans die from gun violence. It’s a horrifying reality that no place in America feels safe from becoming the scene of a shooting. The time for action has never been more urgent—that’s why we applaud the 2019 House majority for taking this issue seriously from day one. Along with passing stronger gun laws, they are finally allocating money for researchers to properly study this public health and public safety crisis. This is a critical step to fully understanding gun violence, how to address it, and how best to implement the solutions to keep our families and communities safe. ”
Giffords also began a partnership with leading medical and public health groups to focus on funding the CDC to study gun violence, gun deaths, and gun injury in order to better improve public health and safety. In a letter sent to Congressional leadership for the 116th Congress , the groups noted that over the past several decades scientific and medical research has led to policies that have saved countless lives related to automobiles, public sanitation, and cancer. The collective effort will call on Congress to properly fund gun violence prevention research.
Following a 1993 CDC-funded study that found individuals with a gun in the home are 2.7 times more likely to become homicide victims, Congress moved to strip CDC’s firearms research budget. Since then, federal investment in gun violence research has remained virtually absent at the nation’s premier institution for public health, despite gun deaths rising for the past three years to nearly 40,000 people in 2017. Recently, CDC and Trump administration officials have expressed CDC’s willingness and ability to restart this research, with CDC director Robert Redfield stating that his team is “ poised to do the research in this area if Congress chooses to appropriate the funding.”
Related Resources:
Fact Sheet: Funding Federal Gun Violence Research
Blog Post: The House Held a Hearing on Gun Violence Research. That’s Big News.