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Days after the deadly mass shooting in Orlando, Fla., the American Medical Association says it is adopting a policy calling gun violence in the U.S. "a public health crisis," and it says it will actively lobby Congress to overturn 20-year-old legislation blocking research on gun violence by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Even as America faces a crisis unrivaled in any other developed country, the Congress prohibits the CDC from conducting the very research that would help us understand the problems associated with gun violence and determine how to reduce the high rate of firearm-related deaths and injuries," AMA President Steven Stack said in a statement.




The AMA, the largest physicians group in the U.S., says it has supported gun control since the 1980s, and as recently as 2013, 

 the uncontrolled ownership and use of firearms "a serious threat to public health" because "the weapons are one of the main causes of intentional and unintentional injuries and deaths."

The history of the ban on federal research on gun violence goes back to 1996 when the National Rifle Association lobbied Congress to prevent any gun research that could be interpreted as endorsing gun control. But the author of that legislation, then-Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Ark., 

 NPR in October he regrets that his law has had a broader effect.


 the CDC to resume research "assessing the causes of gun violence ... subject to the availability of appropriations." A spokesman told the 

 last year that "our resources are very limited," and the agency had taken no action.
The AMA isn't the only major medical association to call for federally funded gun research. The American Academy of Pediatrics, in a recent 

, said the legislation has had "a chilling effect and resulted in a dearth of research on this critical topic."
In 2012, as 

, the AAP called for regulating the manufacture, sale, purchase, ownership and use of firearms to help prevent gun-related injuries to children and adolescents.  Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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The AMA says it will continue to lobby Congress to overturn the 20-year prohibition of gun violence research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Gun violence 'a public health crisis,' American Medical Association says

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