Dickey Amendment

The Dickey Amendment is a provision first inserted as a into the 1996   which mandated that "none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the  (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote ." In the same spending bill, Congress earmarked $2.6 million from the CDC's budget, the exact amount that had previously been allocated to the agency for firearms research the previous year, for -related research.

The amendment was lobbied for by the  (NRA). The amendment is named after its author, a member of the  from. Although not an explicit ban on gun research, the Dickey Amendment's vagueness has since blocked the CDC from funding studies on, for fear that the CDC would be financially penalized; as a result, the amendment is sometimes referred to as a ban on CDC-funded gun research.

Adoption and effect
In 1993, the  published a study by and others found that guns in the home were associated with an increased risk of  in the home. The research was funded by the CDC's (NCIPC). The NRA responded by lobbying for the elimination of the NCIPC. The NCIPC was not abolished, but the Dickey Amendment was included in the 1996 Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 1997.

In a December 2012 article published in the , Kellermann wrote: "Precisely what was or was not permitted under the clause was unclear. But no federal employee was willing to risk his or her career or the agency's funding to find out. Extramural support for firearm injury prevention research quickly dried up."

Equivalent "Dickey Amendment" language was added by Congress to the funding the  (NIH). This language was also lobbied for by the NRA.

Calls for repeal
In response to this amendment being adopted, the adopted a resolution condemning it. In December 2015, multiple medical organizations, including, the , and the , called on Congress to repeal the amendment. That same month, the also called for an end to this amendment. Other groups calling for repeal of the Dickey Amendment include the, , , , , and.

, the former director of the, has described this amendment as "a shot fired across the bow" at CDC researchers who wanted to research gun violence. In a 2012 op-ed, Dickey and Rosenberg argued that the CDC should be able to research gun violence, and Dickey has since said that he regrets his role in stopping the CDC from researching gun violence, saying he simply didn't want to "let any of those dollars go to gun control advocacy."

In a 2016 article in  on the impact of the Dickey Amendment, Rosenberg says: “It was the leadership of CDC who stopped the agency from doing gun violence research ... Right now, there is nothing stopping them from addressing this life-and-death national problem." As the article notes this assertion runs counter to the "conventional wisdom" of the Dickey Amendment "as blocking the agency [i.e. the CDC] from conducting research on firearms deaths and injuries."

Following the in 2012, President  directed the CDC and other federal agencies to "conduct or sponsor research into the causes of gun violence and the ways to prevent it." The CDC responded by funding a research project and conducting their own study in 2015. That month, a spokeswoman for the agency, Courtney Lenard, told the Washington Post that "it is possible for us to conduct firearm-related research within the context of our efforts to address youth violence, domestic violence, sexual violence, and suicide. But our resources are very limited."

In October 2015, 110 members of Congress, all of whom were Democrats, signed a letter calling on Congress to reject the amendment. Despite the efforts of House Democratic Leader to have the Dickey amendment removed from the spending bill for the following year, Congress passed this bill with the amendment still in it.

Subsequent history
On March 21, 2018, Congressional negotiators reached a deal on an Omnibus continuing resolution. The $1.3 trillion spending agreement also includes language that codified Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar's interpretation of the Dickey Rider in testimony on February 18, 2018, before the US House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee. While the amendment itself remains, the language in a report accompanying the Omnibus spending bill clarifies that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can indeed conduct research into gun violence, but cannot use government appropriated funds to specifically advocate for gun control. It was signed into law by U.S. President Donald J. Trump on March 23, 2018.