Congress blocks study of gun violence

When President Barack Obama announced his latest round of executive actions on Tuesday he said more research could help reduce gun violence. So why didn’t he order the country’s most prominent health and safety agency to start doing it?

The answer is because Obama’s been there and tried that before. He attempted executive orders in the wake of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in 2012, including a direction to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to resume research into gun violence.

But it hasn’t, and it doesn’t look like it will start up again until Congress agrees to fund a program, and that appears to be a long shot.

The so-called ban on gun violence research at the CDC, America’s premier national public health institute, remains firmly in place.

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