Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he is encouraged that the new leader of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the agency can research gun violence.
Schumer said Thursday that he met with Director Robert Redfield about the prohibition on gun violence research.
“I just had a very encouraging meeting with the new CDC director where he agreed there is no longer a prohibition on the CDC conducting research on the gun violence epidemic,” Schumer said. “That is a good first step, but we have a lot of work to do to ensure the CDC initiates this extremely important research in the near future.”
The meeting comes a month after Democrats secured language in a spending bill that said the CDC can study gun violence. The language sought to clarify a spending rider called the Dickey Amendment, which has prohibited CDC from conducting research that gun rights supporters say would advocate gun control. The amendment was created in 1996 and has been added to spending bills ever since.
Although the CDC had not been prohibited from conducting the research, Democrats have said that the Dickey Amendment puts a chill on it.
The language in the latest spending bill says the amendment does not prohibit CDC from studying gun violence.
Schumer said he hopes that “CDC will use some of their newly increased resources from the omnibus spending package to get this done.”
