Connecticut Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy are calling on Congress to end a decades-old ban on federal research into gun violence.
In 1996, a Republican lawmaker from Arkansas slipped an amendment into a spending bill that, in effect, banned the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from conducting any research on gun violence that could be interpreted as advocating for tougher gun laws.
That congressman, Jay Dickey, has since admitted he regretted the amendment.
In 2013, President Barack Obama lifted that ban, but Congress still refuses to fund any research related to gun violence.
In Hartford on Tuesday, Murphy put the blame squarely on the gun lobby. "The gun lobby knows exactly what the CDC would find," he said. "The CDC would find that stronger gun laws, keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, reduces levels of gun violence."
Last year, then Speaker of the House John Boehner said the CDC should not fund this kind of research, because "a gun is not a disease."
Blumenthal countered that with 33,00 deaths a year attributed to gun violence, it has become a public health epidemic, and Congress has regrettably put its head in the sand.
"Which means that there are no evidence -based programs into how to stop a teenager from committing suicide, how to prevent a toddler from having access to guns, how to store guns as safely and securely as possible," Blumenthal said. "These programs depend on science and common sense, which Congress has barred."
Both senators are calling for a bipartisan effort in Congress to lift the ban on gun violence research. Murphy, who sits on the Senate Committee on Appropriations, said he's hopeful it can get done this year, after the measure was almost included in last year's budget deal.
