Receiving almost no attention in all the discussion about gun control legislation is the NRA-mandated Dickey amendment, which was passed in 1996 and forbids the CDC to spend any money on research on gun violence.
The result is virtually no empirical data to consult when and if we ever do try to craft legislation to limit gun violence. It is simply because the NRA will not allow their congressional puppets to vote to fund such research.
I remember when this passed in 1996. I knew someone who, at the time, worked in the CDC office where they were just beginning to tackle the effects of gun violence as a public health problem. I know the anguish and disgust the people at CDC felt toward the politicians who let themselves be controlled by the NRA.
New York Times op-ed columnist Charles M. Blow concludes his essay on this subject with these words:
"The American idea is caught up in carnage. Its very beginning is rooted in gun violence. It is by the barrel that this land was acquired. It is by the barrel that the slave was subdued and his rebellions squashed. . . .
"We have venerated the gun and valorized its usage. America is violent and the gun is a preferred instrument of that violence. America, in many ways, is the gun."
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