A U.S. Senator and a member of the House of Representatives, both Democrats, filed what will likely be identical bills on the same day. Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey filed S.2514, and Rep. Marilyn Strickland from Washington’s 10th District filed H.R. 4821 on July 29. The text for Markey’s bill is not online, but Strickland’s bill is available, and it’s amazingly short. It’s entitled “The Gun Violence Prevention Research Act of 2025,” and there’s just a single paragraph:
“There is authorized to be appropriated to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention $50,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2026 through 2031 for the purpose of conducting or supporting research on firearms safety or gun violence prevention under the Public Health Service Act. The amount authorized to be appropriated by the preceding sentence is in addition to any other amounts authorized to be appropriated for such purpose.”
Six years; $50 million a year. That’s $300 million that might as well be set on fire in the Capitol Rotunda for all the good it will do. And that’s $300 million on top of any other funds allocated. I am not sure the CDC has ever had that kind of money for any type of gun research.
What are they going to study? The same things the CDC was funding before the Dickey Amendment? Dr. Arthur Kellermann’s thoroughly debunked 1993 study about guns in the home is a perfect example of CDC-funded propaganda.
The Dickey Amendment only prohibited the CDC from funding biased “research” promoting gun control. Specifically, it said: “(N)one of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”
But gun control zealots claimed Congress had shut down all research. In the Journal of the American Medical Association’s December 2012 edition, Dr. 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. Even today, 17 years after this legislative action, the CDC’s website lacks specific links to information about preventing firearm-related violence.”
The CDC’s website is also missing links to preventing knife violence, blunt-object violence, hand-and-foot violence, and so forth. In addition, it’s missing tips on preventing hanging or poisoning suicides.
Curiously, even without Uncle Sam footing the bill, there were plenty of studies after 1996. Anti-gun private foundations and individual donors sponsored the research, and what they funded was pretty much the same garbage the CDC was paying for before 1996. If it’s all going to be more propaganda, why should taxpayers foot the bill?
RAND undertook the daunting task of reviewing the available studies. First published in 2018 and updated in 2023 and 2024, the RAND review covered several thousand studies but found just 182 that met their criteria. Even in the best case, 94% of the studies RAND looked at were flawed and were discarded.
Markey and Strickland have to realize their bills aren’t going anywhere in this session or in President Trump’s second term in office. If they really don’t know, their optimism would make Pollyanna jealous and attract the attention of mental health professionals.
Perhaps the reason for the filings is an affliction common to gun-grabbers: They do the same things over and over again, always expecting a different outcome. By all the available data, guns still save more lives than gun control laws.
About Bill Cawthon
Bill Cawthon first became a gun owner 55 years ago. He has been an active advocate for Americans’ civil liberties for more than a decade. He is the information director for the Second Amendment Society of Texas.
