The CDC and National Institute of Health claim that they weren’t able to fund gun research for decades because of the Dickey Amendment. At least, not until Congress specifically authorized a certain amount for such research.

Anti-gunners rejoiced because it meant that the drought they’d long lamented was over and now tax dollars could fund the “gun research” they said was so desperately needed.

There are just two problems with that narrative.

First, the CDC and NIH were never prohibited from funding unbiased research into things like violent crime. The Dickey Amendment simply prohibited gun control advocacy funded by American tax dollars.

Second, the Dickey Amendment hasn’t been repealed. It’s still the law.

And it seems that the Gun Owners of America are asking the Elon Musk-led DOGE to take a look at the NIH because they’re doing stuff they shouldn’t.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) says its mission is to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability through supporting and conducting scientific research.

But the Gun Owners of America (GOA) wants the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to investigate the federal agency, claiming severan NIH grants are in direct violation of the Dickey Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds to advocate or promote gun control.

In 1996, the Dickey Amendment was a provision in federal spending bills that prohibits federal funds from being used to “advocate or promote gun control.”

On X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, the GOA said that those grants, which total millions of dollars, include funding for studies and programs that “clearly push a gun control agenda.”

And let’s be real, some of these sure do sound like gun control advocacy disguised as research.

Hey @DOGE, these illegal @NIH grants need to be canceled ASAP⤵️

– $3.6M for “firearm retirement” for senior citizens
– $1.2M for “check-ins” on “guns at home”
– $2.1M to study “firearm possession” by Asian Americans
– $1.1M on “gun ownership and risk”
– $650K on “firearm…

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) March 13, 2025

This is especially troubling considering what we know about gun research as a whole. Even seemingly justified studies such as those looking at the efficacy of a regulation are routinely twisted to advance the anti-gun agenda. The entire field of gun “science” uses methodologies that would get researchers expelled from other fields, cherry-picks data with alarming regularity, and otherwise manipulates data in order to support its conclusion.

But some of these, as reported by GOA, look particularly egregious.

The Dickey Amendment never prohibited taxpayer-funded gun research, but the way researchers go about it tells me that maybe it should.

If DOGE turns its eye upon the NIH and it’s illegal grants, things could get rather sporty there. It’s not like it’s high up on anyone’s list of favorite government agencies after the whole COVID-19 fiasco, including how it tried to silence even the suggestion that a lab leak may have been the origin of the virus–an origin now held as at least plausible, but generally held to be the most likely origin–but this should be enough to justify cleaning house up and down the line.

Alright, maybe the cleaning crew should be left in place, but pretty much anyone else should be gutted.

They don’t want to obey the law. Let them learn the consequences of that.