Gun violence has plunged while gun ownership has soared, according to
Breitbart News, citing data from the early 1990s to the mid-teens.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released statistics showing that from 1993-2014, gun-related violence has steadily declined. The firearm homicide rate in 1993 of 6.6 per 100,000 dropped by more than half by 2014, to 3.43 per 100,000.
Meanwhile, gun ownership in America has steadily risen, to the point that there are more civilian-owned firearms than there are people in the U.S.,
The Washington Post has reported. The number of privately owned guns ballooned from 192 million in 1994 to 357 million in 2013.
Mark Rosenberg, former head of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, claims that there's much about gun violence that the Atlanta-based agency doesn't know, according to the
Los Angeles Times.
"The result is that the CDC basically does nothing in gun violence research," Rosenberg said. "If research on cancer were stopped for a single day, there would be a huge protest. But this research has been stopped for 20 years."
Rosenberg attributes the cessation to pressure from the National Rifle Association.
The lobbying organization for gun owners was upset with a 1993 CDC-funded study showing a link between firearm ownership and risk of homicide and successfully pressed for passage of the Dickey Amendment, which bars the agency from funding anything that advocates or promotes gun control.
"Removing the money from the budget and enacting the Dickey Amendment were the first and second shots across the bow by the NRA," Rosenberg said. "The third shot is the idea that if you do this research, you'll be hassled."
In the wake of the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, President Barack Obama issued an executive order directing the CDC to "conduct or sponsor research into the causes of gun violence and the ways to prevent it," according to the Times.
The agency refused until Congress granted an appropriation to fund the research, which had been repeatedly denied.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.