The Dickey Amendment: How It Blocked U.S. Federal Gun Violence Research for Decades

Table of Contents#

1. What Is the Dickey Amendment, Exactly?
2. 1996 Backstory: Why the Dickey Amendment Was Passed
3. How the Amendment Froze Federal Gun Violence Research for 22 Years
4. 2018 Clarification: What Changed (and What Didn’t)
5. 2024 Update: The Current State of Federal Gun Violence Research
6. Myths vs. Facts About the Dickey Amendment
7. Why This Policy Still Matters for Public Safety Today
8. References

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What Is the Dickey Amendment, Exactly?#

Named for former Arkansas Republican Representative Jay Dickey, the Dickey Amendment is a budget rider added to the 1996 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) appropriations bill. Its full original text reads:

"None of the funds made available in this Act for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control."

Critically, the amendment never explicitly banned research on gun violence. But combined with a simultaneous $2.6 million cut to the CDC’s injury research budget (exactly the amount the agency had spent on gun violence research the prior year), it created an immediate and devastating chilling effect that stopped almost all federal gun research for more than two decades.

The rider was later expanded to apply to all Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), extending the research freeze across the entire federal public health apparatus.

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1996 Backstory: Why the Dickey Amendment Was Passed#

The push for the Dickey Amendment followed a landmark 1993 CDC-funded study published in the New England Journal of Medicine led by public health researcher Dr. Arthur Kellermann. The study found that keeping a gun in the home increased the risk of homicide by a household member by 300%, even after accounting for other risk factors like domestic violence history.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) responded by lobbying aggressively to defund the CDC’s entire National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), the division that had funded the study. Lawmakers sympathetic to the NRA’s position introduced the Dickey Amendment as a compromise to avoid eliminating the NCIPC entirely. The amendment passed with bipartisan support and was signed into law as part of the 1997 omnibus spending bill.

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How the Amendment Froze Federal Gun Violence Research for 22 Years#

While the amendment only banned advocacy, CDC leadership interpreted the rule as a warning to avoid all gun-related research entirely, to avoid triggering further budget cuts or political backlash.

• Between 1996 and 2018, the CDC spent less than $10 million total on gun violence research, compared to more than$2 billion on tobacco control research in the same period.
• More than 600,000 Americans died from gun violence between 1996 and 2018, but federal researchers were barred from studying root causes, effective interventions, or policy solutions for the crisis.
• Even non-CDC federal agencies avoided gun research for fear of having similar riders attached to their own budgets.

Notably, former Rep. Dickey later publicly regretted the impact of his namesake amendment. In a 2015 op-ed co-written with former NCIPC director Dr. Mark Rosenberg, Dickey wrote: “We were on opposite sides of the battle over gun violence research 20 years ago. Today we agree: federal research is needed to reduce gun deaths while protecting Second Amendment rights.”

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2018 Clarification: What Changed (and What Didn’t)#

Following the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, public pressure pushed Congress to add clarifying language to that year’s omnibus spending bill. The clarification explicitly stated that the Dickey Amendment “does not prohibit the CDC from conducting research on the causes of gun violence.”

In 2020, Congress allocated $25 million in dedicated gun violence research funding, split equally between the CDC and NIH, marking the first time in 24 years that dedicated federal funds were available for this work.

But critical gaps remained:

• The original Dickey Amendment language banning the use of federal funds to “advocate or promote gun control” is still in place, creating a lingering chilling effect for researchers who fear their work could be framed as advocacy and lead to funding cuts.
• Initial funding levels were far lower than what public health experts say is needed to catch up on 22 years of lost research.

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2024 Update: The Current State of Federal Gun Violence Research#

As of 2024, annual federal funding for gun violence research has increased to approximately $50 million split between the CDC and NIH. This funding has already produced actionable, evidence-based insights, including:

• Safe storage laws reduce child and adolescent gun deaths by 32%
• Extreme risk protection order (red flag) laws reduce mass shooting deaths by 20%
• Community violence intervention programs reduce urban gun assaults by up to 60%

Even so, funding remains drastically lower than for other leading public health threats: motor vehicle crashes kill roughly the same number of Americans annually as gun violence, but receive $500 million per year in federal research funding, 10 times the amount allocated to gun research.

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Myths vs. Facts About the Dickey Amendment#

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Why This Policy Still Matters for Public Safety Today#

The 22-year research freeze created by the Dickey Amendment means policymakers are still flying blind on many critical gun safety questions: we still lack large-scale data on the most effective ways to reduce gun suicide (which makes up 60% of all U.S. gun deaths), prevent mass shootings, and reduce racial disparities in gun violence victimization.

Advocates are currently pushing for two key policy changes to address this gap:

1. Permanent, sustained funding of $100 million per year for gun violence research at the CDC and NIH
2. Full repeal of the remaining Dickey Amendment anti-advocacy language to eliminate the lingering chilling effect for researchers

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References#

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2023). Leading Causes of Death Among Children and Adolescents in the U.S.
2. Kellermann, A. L., et al. (1993). Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home. New England Journal of Medicine.
3. U.S. Congress, 104th Session. (1996). Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, 1997 (Dickey Amendment Text).
4. Dickey, J., & Rosenberg, M. (2015). We Won’t Solve the Gun Crisis Without Research. The Washington Post.
5. Giffords Law Center. (2024). Federal Gun Violence Research Funding: Current Status and Gaps.
6. RAND Corporation. (2023). The Effectiveness of Gun Safety Policies: An Updated Review of the Evidence.
7. National Institutes of Health (NIH). (2024). Gun Violence Prevention Research Portfolio.