In the wake of yet another spate of mass shootings, America is confronted with many questions. Among them: Will waiting periods on gun purchases help curb gun violence or reduce the number of gun-related deaths and injuries? What about gun buybacks? Or age restrictions? Public health experts know that far more people die of gunshot wounds than of cholera or diphtheria or polio — but they know far less about how to prevent gun violence than they do those other causes of death. Because when it comes to guns, research is still maddeningly limited.

For the first time in two decades, members of Congress have taken a concrete step toward changing that. In June, the House passed a bill earmarking federal money for research into gun violence and safety. If the bill clears the Senate, and the president signs it into law, the proposed allotment — $50 million split evenly between the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — would help scientists answer some crucial questions about the nation’s enduring gun violence problem and how best to solve it.

It’s no mystery why such research has lagged. In 1996 Congress eliminated most federal funding for gun safety research and passed a provision known as the Dickey Amendment that prohibited the use of federal money for anything that could be construed as gun control advocacy. Those measures — which followed concerted lobbying by the National Rifle Association — had such a chilling effect on research into gun safety that even the amendment’s author, Jay Dickey, an Arkansas Republican who died in 2017, came to regret it: Federal agencies were discouraged from even gathering data that might suggest the need for stricter gun laws. And researchers were scared away from a field that was desperate for intelligent inquiry, but mired in politics and starved of federal support.

Since the amendment was enacted, more than 600,000 people have been shot in the United States and tens of thousands have died.

It remains to be seen whether the House provision will go the way of most gun-related legislation: felled by the first Republican-controlled entity it encounters — in this case, the Senate. But the recent shootings in El Paso; Dayton, Ohio; and Gilroy, Calif., with at least 34 deaths and dozens of injuries between them, have once again put pressure on lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to do something.

There is much that we do already know about guns. Experts tend to agree, for example, that prohibiting violent criminals from buying guns and expanding background checks would go a long way toward curbing gun violence. It’s also clear that states in which guns are more tightly regulated have fewer gun-related deaths than those with laxer gun laws; guns tend to make a home less safe, not more so; and more robust gun regulation can curb the suicide rate. (The vast majority of gun-related deaths in the United States are from suicide.)

But it would be helpful if policymakers and the public had more data on which policies and procedures reduce gun-related deaths, which factors contribute most heavily to gun violence and what motivates people to buy guns in the first place. Also needed: reliable, comprehensive data on the number of guns in circulation and the people who own them.

In recent years, private foundations and state legislatures have tried to fill the gap left by congressional neglect, devoting millions of dollars to research on gun violence and gun safety. These efforts have succeeded in building the infrastructure and developing the human resources needed to sustain a major research effort. But only a large-scale, federally funded initiative can tackle the scope of questions that need answers and produce the kind of evidence required to inform effective policy.

Congress now has a real chance to create just such a program. Senators would do well to support the House appropriation — or, even better, expand on it. If they did, scientists and policymakers might finally be able to treat gun safety like the public health problem that it so clearly is.

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