For a long time, there wasn’t any federal money going toward gun research. Contrary to what many have argued, the law didn’t prohibit it. It just said federal money couldn’t go toward advocating for gun control. It was the CDC that decided gun control research counted as advocacy and stopped using money for that.

Things changed recently and taxpayer funds are now being used for gun research, which amounts to gun control propaganda, as we well know.

But that could change, and over at Yale, some of their so-called experts are kind of freaking out over the possibility.

In 2019, federal centers like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health started funding gun violence research after more than a 20-year hiatus. However, this research is once again under threat.

This year, the budget bill for the 2025 fiscal year seeks to eliminate funding for “any research relating to gunshot injury or mortality prevention that treats crimes committed with a firearm as a public health epidemic.” The News talked to Yale researchers about the proposal and the impact it would have on such research.  

“It’s so easy for this kind of stuff to get hidden in the 400-page document of budget proposals put out by the community, and no one knows about it,” Daniele Poole, director of research at the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, told the News. “We’re finally in a position in gun violence prevention research that can save a lot of lives. A lack of federal funds for research can stagnate our efforts to do so.” 

…

Degutis believes some congressional Republicans want to eliminate the funding because of a belief that solutions to gun violence will impact the Constitutional right to bear arms. Additionally, some Republicans don’t view gun violence and the health impacts of the violence as a legitimate public health issue.

And this guy calls himself an expert?

Republicans want to eliminate the funding because it’s BS for the American taxpayer to fund advocacy for something many of them disagree with. The so-called experts can claim it’s not, but we’ve seen otherwise. Science hasn’t been very scientific of late, being guided far more by politics than the search for truth. What research has been produced has a long and storied history of bad design and cherry-picked data meant to push the gun control agenda.

Further, the issue of whether or not so-called gun violence is a public health issue is an interesting thing, because if it was just about stopping the cycle of violence through healthcare interventions, I wouldn’t have an issue with it. More than that, I’d applaud it. It’s exactly the kind of thing that we need more of.

But it’s not. Every single person I’ve seen push the “public health issue” line has included gun control as part of that effort.

Now, why should I and other American taxpayers fund this? Why should we fund “research” that starts with a preconceived notion and rather than try to falsify it seeks instead to manipulate data to do the exact opposite? Isn’t there a better use of that money?

Honestly, I defended the Dickey Amendment for years, arguing that it didn’t explicitly do any of the things it was accused of doing.

These days, I’m actively advocating for the cessation of federal funding for gun research, not out of fear that the answers will lead to finding out my worldview is wrong but because I know they’re going to lie, cheat, and steal to make it look like the answer makes my view of guns wrong.