ALA Council passes resolution on gun violence affecting libraries, library workers, and library patrons

CHICAGO – At the 2017 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Atlanta, the ALA Council passed a resolution on gun violence affecting libraries, library workers, and library patrons.

The resolution originally came to Council via a Membership Meeting vote at the 2016 ALA Annual Conference in Orlando. Council subsequently directed the Committee on Legislation and the Intellectual Freedom Committee to establish a working group to continue work on the resolution. The resolution that was passed in Atlanta is a substitute for that 2016 resolution.

The substitute resolution calls upon the Directors of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to:

• publicly announce that their respective agencies will resume funding non-political, comprehensive research on causes and effects of gun violence in the United States; ensure that such research, and any uses to which such research is put by the NIH or CDC, does not violate the “Dickey Amendment” prohibition on the advocacy or promotion of gun control; and
• sponsor robust research for the dual purposes of “preventing firearm injuries” and identifying “ways to prevent firearm deaths…without encroaching on the rights of legitimate gun owners.”

The ALA further encourages libraries to collaborate with appropriate local agencies to provide training and education for library workers related to the presence of guns in the workplace, and encourages libraries to support community discussions around all aspects of guns in society.

The ALA Council had previously passed a resolution on gun violence at the 2015 Annual Conference.

Read the full text of the Midwinter 2017 resolution on gun violence affecting libraries, library workers, and library patrons.