Concerns about violent crimes committed by people using firearms have grown over recent years. The spate of gun crimes, along with high-profile mass shootings, have motivated the anti-gunner lobby to push for more restrictions on firearms.

As the nation grapples with this problem, anti-gunner lawmakers are trying to advance their agenda by funding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to concoct studies that push for more gun control legislation.

Groups like Gun Owners of America (GOA) and other critics argue that Congress should not be using these agencies, which are intended to focus on public health, to create anti-gunner propaganda. In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, GOA explained that lawmakers supporting gun control “have been spending millions of tax dollars to have the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health to produce biased, anti-gun studies to promote and advocate for gun control.”

For years, anti-gunners in Congress have been spending millions of tax dollars to have the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health to produce biased, anti-gun studies to promote and advocate for gun control.😡

These calls for gun control include gun… https://t.co/uJ1OAbd6PL

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) March 17, 2024

On its website, GOA goes into further details about the the matter, highlighting how Congress has subverted the Dickey Amendment which is intended to prevent the use of federal funds to advance political agendas.

The “Dickey Amendment”—which has been included in every government funding bill since 1994—is supposed to prevent the weaponization of research at CDC and NIH to create biased, politically motivated research for politicians and bureaucrats to use to promote and advocate for gun control. It simply says that “none of the funds made available in this title may be used, in whole or in part, to advocate or promote gun control.” Today, the CDC interprets the Dickey Amendment language “to mean that CDC’s funds may not be spent on political action or other activities designed to affect the passage of specific Federal, State, or local legislation intended to restrict or control the purchase or use of firearms.”[i] Yet, the federal government has been ignoring Congress for some time now.

Your tax dollars are being WEAPONIZED by CDC and NIH against the Second Amendment. ⤵

💵 $1,100,000 to study the “relationship between lawful gun ownership and risk”

💵 $490,000 to study “a state with Constitutional Carry versus a stater with strict gun control”

💵 $333,000 to… https://t.co/1eOmfaQKNf

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) March 15, 2024

Rep. Mary Miller-Meeks (R-IA) introduced an amendment specifying that these two agencies cannot be leveraged to advocate for gun control.

None of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct or support any firearm injury and mortality prevention research.

The problem with how the anti-gunners are using the CDC and NIH is that they are seeking to use a government agency to skew the narrative on gun violence while calling for stricter gun laws intended to make it harder for people to keep and bear arms. This appears to be the intention. NPR noted that while gun control is a problem, “sparse federal money goes to studying or preventing it” because of the Dickey Amendment.

Yes, gun violence in America is a serious matter affecting thousands of people. However, if we’re going to go by the data, we should use all of the data, not just that which supports the anti-gunner agenda.

Several studies have already shown that lawful gun owners are far more likely to use their firearms to defend themselves and their loved ones than they are to commit a crime.

Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has acknowledged. In 2021, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the issue concluded that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States every year.

What is interesting about the CDC report showing high rates of defensive gun use, which was conducted in the 1990s, was later removed at the behest of the anti-gunner lobby. It is not difficult to determine why this happened, is it?

The bottom line is that conversations about gun violence rarely focus on the root issues that lead to these crimes. They're always used by the left to advocate for the state to further limit our Second Amendment rights. For them, the objective is not to curb violence but to disarm as many Americans as possible. Unfortunately, it tends to distract from dialogues that might actually produce solutions.