How does the NRA "block" the CDC from doing anything?...please don't say lobbying...it does not hold water...
As for statistical citations...just do some googling...I admit not all the data is from this year...most of the CDC stats are in PDF form but what I cited is factual...
Google it. NRA specifically lobbied to pass a law in 1996 to have ALL firearms related research cut from CDC's budget. CDC used to do such work as a routine part of injury prevention. NRA didn't like it and the CDC budget was cut with specific instructions not do do firearms work.
Here is an article about it from the NY Daily News in May this year:
No funds for studies on gun violence - NY Daily News
Guns kill 32,000 Americans a year, but not one penny is given to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to find out why.
Victims of gun violence can thank the National Rifle Association for squeezing off that funding.
The NRA began lobbying Congress in the 1990s to limit the CDC’s funding after the agency gave financial backing to an independent study that found that keeping a gun in the home was strongly associated with an increased risk of homicide.
The pro-gun behemoth succeeded in ramming legislation through in 1996 that forbade the CDC from using federal funds for studies that “advocate or promote gun control.”
Known as the Dickey Amendment for Rep. Jay Dickey (R-Ark.), who sponsored it, the bill didn’t outright ban gun research — but made it clear the CDC risked all its funding if it gave financial support to studies that might not suit the NRA’s agenda.
After the Dickey bill passed, Congress took $2.6 million from the CDC budget — the amount the agency had spent on the study about guns in homes — and redirected it to a study of brain injuries.
The chilling effect caused by those actions has kept Americans in the dark about many aspects of gun violence, according to John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety.
“For more than 20 years, NRA leadership has advanced policies to obstruct access to and prevent analysis of gun violence and its causes — and blocked questions from police, military officers and even doctors to learn more. We support efforts to increase funding for scientific research that will help us end the gun violence that kills 86 Americans every day,” said Feinblatt, who was former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s chief policy adviser on guns.
The NRA did not respond to requests for comment.
The CDC budgeted $59 million in 2014 to study coal mining deaths — there have been 18 this year.
The CDC, the nation’s main health protection agency, has budgeted $10 million to study Lyme disease, $105 million on the effects of tobacco and $67 million on diabetes — yet it doesn’t get a single dollar of funding to research firearm deaths.
