(NEW YORK) — This report is a part of “Rethinking Gun Violence,” an ABC News series examining the level of gun violence in the U.S. — and what can be done about it.

Gun violence is an endemic problem in the United States — once again getting worse in some areas after many years of declines and persistent at high levels in others.

Despite being one of the leading causes of death, one thing that’s difficult to know is the scope of the problem, fueled in part by a more than a two-decade-long prohibition — recently changed — on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention using federal funds to “advocate or promote gun control.”

It wasn’t always this way — the CDC in 1983 adopted a public health approach to gun violence.

“At that point in time in 1983, there were two types of frequent injury deaths. One was motor vehicle crashes, and the other was gun violence,” Dr. Mark Rosenberg, CEO of the Task Force for Global Health and former member of CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, told ABC News.

During the 1990s, public and private programs conducted gun-related research — among them was the CDC’s Injury Prevention Program, where Rosenberg worked, and the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis.

But in 1996, Congress passed an amendment to the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Bill. The bill modification, commonly known as the Dickey Amendment, prohibited the use of federal funds to “advocate or promote gun control,” leading to the elimination of all CDC funding to conduct firearm-related research — having a lasting impact still limiting what we know today about gun violence.

Even though the funding spigot has recently been turned back on, researchers are still feeling the effects of the lack of data to study gun violence. Researchers say the gun violence problem is urgent and requires an outsized solution detached from politics.

Watch ABC News Live on Mondays at 3 p.m. to hear more about gun violence from experts during roundtable discussions. And check back next week, when we look into what some gun owners say could solve the gun violence issue.

“If we can understand the causes, we can change the effects and we can change the effects for the better, so science is a way to understand the causes and the effects and the way to link them,” Rosenberg told ABC News.

Here’s what to know about the data issue around gun violence and what advocates say can be done:

Impact of the Dickey Amendment

In the early 1990s, the CDC had a $2.6 million budget dedicated to gun violence research both for internal research and for external studies.

“We started looking at, what’s the problem,” Rosenberg told ABC News. The agency studied the number of people dying from gun violence, the weapons used and the causes behind it.

Dr. Garen Wintemute, head of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, says the program received two grants at the time to conduct much-needed research on firearms.

“All of these grants made use of unique data that are collected in California,” said Wintemute, who explained to ABC News that the organization was linking gun purchases with criminal records as part of its prevention research.

But everything changed when the Dickey Amendment was introduced by former Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Ark.

Four years before the Dickey Amendment was enacted, the CDC had published its first study on gun violence. The report looked at the correlation between safety and guns, finding that having a weapon in a household didn’t necessarily result in safer outcomes, Rosenberg said.

“These results weren’t pleasing to the NRA. And so they stepped up their attack on our research program,” Rosenberg told ABC News.

ABC News reached out to the National Rifle Association requesting comment on the allegations made by Dr. Rosenberg but has not heard back.

The Dickey Amendment reallocated the $2.6 million away from gun research to other health research on subjects like traumatic brain injury, according to Wintemute.

Researchers fought the effects of the amendment, which prohibited advocacy for gun control — but which had an impact beyond advocacy because experts said they viewed vague language in the amendment as a “threat.”

“This Dickey Amendment had a real chilling effect,” Rosenberg told ABC News. “It was enough to discourage individual researchers and, at the same time, Congress took away the money we were using for the research we were doing.”

The CDC sent ABC News a statement saying it was “subject to appropriations language that states that none of the funds made available to CDC may be used to ‘advocate or promote gun control.”

“The lack of dedicated and sustained research funding for firearm injury… limited our ability to conduct research to gain understanding of how best to prevent firearm-related injuries and deaths relative to other public health problems,” it said.

Shortage of funds

Wintemute’s program suffered from a shortage of federal funds after the amendment passed. Although it was able to continue doing some research through private funding, that work was limited. He originally had around 12 people on his team but says he was left with only four, including himself, limiting the program’s reach.

While The Department of Justice still allocated some funds to firearm research under the National Institute of Justice (the DOJ’s research arm), Wintemute said it was insufficient.

For example, in 2004, a total of $461,759 was granted by the agency to three different institutes for gun-related research — a far cry from the millions normally required for extensive study.

“We had to revert to simpler, more descriptive studies that made use of available data. There wasn’t money to go out and collect data writ large,” Wintemute said.

Other institutions conducting research were also affected.

“Because of the Dickey Amendment, we had dropped firearm injuries from our portfolio,” said Dr. Frederick Rivara, an epidemiologist and professor at the University of Washington, who was conducting research on injury prevention, including firearm-related injuries.

“It really discouraged any serious firearm research,” Rivara said.

This gap in gun research led to a shortage of people familiar with the subject and a lack of data still felt by today’s experts.

“It’ll be another five to 10 years before we have anything like an adequate number of experienced researchers on the case,” Wintemute said.

Research resumes

The need for research and data collection was finally re-addressed by the federal government after the Parkland mass shooting in 2018 that left 17 dead.

After the mass shooting, an omnibus bill was signed by President Donald Trump clarifying that restricting the use of federal funds to advocate or promote gun control doesn’t ban research.

In 2019, Congress began to again allocate funds for research and data collection on gun violence and injuries.

Although the Dickey Amendment remains in place, Dickey, its author who died in 2017, saw the consequences of it on gun-related research and changed his mind, according to Rosenberg — who later became Dickey’s friend.

“Jay Dickey eventually saw the disastrous consequences of gun violence…with mass shootings with rising numbers of gun homicides and gun suicides,” Rosenberg told ABC News. “He switched his position.”

In an op-ed co-authored with Rosenberg in 2012, Dickey says he “served as the NRA’s point person in Congress” to cut the gun violence research budget.

“We were on opposite sides of the heated battle 16 years ago, but we are in strong agreement now that scientific research should be conducted into preventing firearm injuries and that ways to prevent firearm deaths can be found without encroaching on the rights of legitimate gun owners,” reads a section of the piece published in The Washington Post.

More funds needed

Federal funds are now available to study gun violence, but organizations working on policy recommendations are still struggling to conduct it.

“There is more money for research now. But what is missing is datasets,” said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, referring to datasets at the federal level that could help in the research on firearms. “We destroy background check records at the federal level in 24 hours… how do you suppose to understand who’s purchasing firearms and what the implications are, if you can’t examine that data,” he added.

The nonprofit, affiliated with the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence located in Washington D.C., focuses on looking for evidence-based policy solutions and programs that can reduce gun-related violence.

“The data deficit has hurt us because we don’t understand all the solutions,” Horwitz told ABC News.

Despite the lack of research, experts say there is still a path forward for finding solutions to the high levels of gun violence plaguing the country.

“This is a solvable problem,” Rosenberg said. “We can find out what are the patterns, what’s the problem, we can find out the causes, we can find out what works to both reduce gun violence and protect gun rights.”

The key to finding possible solutions is focusing on science as opposed to politics, researchers say.

“Science is not advocacy, science is understanding things as they are,” Wintemute said.

While the landscape for gun-related research has improved, there is still a long way to go, Wintemute said.

For fiscal year 2022, Congress approved at least $25 million to fund gun violence research, according to the CDC. And although that represents an increase of $12.5 million compared with the last fiscal year, more resources are needed, according to Wintemude.

“Congress has not followed through,” he said.

He believes the budget for gun-related research has to match the extent of the problem and also help make up for the Dickey Amendment’s toll, including the gaps in data and expertise it created.

“To help get history out of the way and let us attack the problem with a program of research that’s adequate to the size of the problem itself we need to do away with the Dickey Amendment, even as amended,” he added.

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(NEW YORK) — Notorious serial killer Keith Jesperson, better known by the “Happy Face Killer” nickname he was given in the ’90s, has spent decades behind bars but his daughter believes he would kill again if released from prison today.

“I sometimes now wonder, if he was freed now, if he was released, would he kill again? And I believe he would,” Melissa Moore told “20/20” in a new interview. “I don’t believe my dad is sorry at all … what he is sorry about, though, is that he got caught.”

Jesperson, now 66, is serving five non-consecutive life sentences in Oregon’s state penitentiary.

A Canadian-born long-haul truck driver and divorced father of three, Jesperson claimed to have killed eight women in five states: Washington, California, Florida, Wyoming and Oregon.

Watch the full story on “20/20” TONIGHT at 9 p.m. ET on ABC

His killing spree spanned from 1990 until 1995, when he turned himself into authorities. At the time, he was being investigated for the murder of his last known victim, 41-year-old Julie Winningham, who some described as his girlfriend.

In a 2010 interview with ABC News, Jesperson equated committing murder to “shoplifting.” When ABC News’ Juju Chang challenged him on that framing, Jesperson doubled down, saying his killings were “everything like shoplifting.”

“It became a nonchalant type thing, because I got away with it,” he continued. “It is everything like shoplifting. You’re breaking the law but you’re getting away with it. And so, there’s a thrill of getting away with it.”

He was dubbed the “Happy Face Killer” for the smiley face drawings he included on a letter he sent to a Portland, Oregon, newspaper, in which he bragged about his crimes.

“It’s just a moment in time when situations present themselves, and you become what you are,” Jesperson told ABC News in a previous interview. “I’m sorry it happened, [I] wish it never happened … it’s done, it’s over with.”

After Jesperson came forward in March 1995, he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder charges for his first known victim, 23-year-old Taunja Bennett, and Winningham. Both women’s bodies were found on opposite sides of the Columbia River from each other.

“What really stood out to me about my father is that once he killed Taunja Bennett, it’s like he got a taste for blood and power and control that he’s probably never had in his life and that excited him. So much so that he seemed to start killing very rapidly again after Taunja,” Moore said.

Jesperson was linked to murdering six other women, some of which remain unknown to this day: an unidentified woman who Jesperson said was named “Claudia” in August 1992 near Blythe, California; Cynthia Lynn Rose in September 1992 in Turlock, California; Lori Ann Pentland in November 1992 in Salem, Oregon; an unidentified woman who Jesperson said was named “Carla” in June 1993 in Santa Nella, California; an unidentified woman who Jesperson said was named “Suzanne” in September 1994 in Crestview, Florida; and Angela Subrize in January 1995 in Laramie County, Wyoming.

Moore believes her father has no remorse. Even now, she said, if her father could go back in time to change anything, it would be to have never turned himself in so he could keep killing.

“I believe he would be killing more women” if he were a free man, she said.

Growing up, Moore said the father she knew as a young child wasn’t violent. He was a man who carried her on his shoulders and made her feel “on top of the world,” she said, someone who made up bedtime stories about a princess and tucked her in at night.

One of the last things he bought her, Moore said, was a karaoke and music recording system for her 10th birthday. Shortly after that, her parents got divorced and that’s when she said her father changed.

Dr. Robert Schug, a forensic psychologist, has spoken to Jesperson multiple times. He said that Jesperson’s violent outbursts may have stemmed from his divorce.

“Keith mentions this period of his marriage when things really went south, so all of this really starts creating a very turbulent emotional period for the entire family,” Schug said. “But, particularly for Keith.”

Moore said she thought her father unleashed his anger over the divorce into his killing of Bennett.

“Then after that release and that excitement and the thought that he got away with it, plus two other people getting the blame, he was free to kill again, and he did very quickly,” she said.

A jury first convicted a Portland, Oregon, woman named Laverne Pavlinac for Bennett’s murder in 1990, largely based on her detailed confession to police in which she falsely claimed she helped her boyfriend John Sosnovske rape and kill the young woman.

Sosnovske later pleaded no contest to the murder charge.

In reality, neither had anything to do with the crime. Jesperson told investigators one of the reasons he wanted to come forward was he wanted credit for Bennett’s murder and to get Pavlinac and Sosnovske out of prison. The two were released in 1995.

It had been more than 15 years since Moore spoke to her father until she said he called her this past Father’s Day. With all the time that had passed, she decided to accept the call.

“It was interesting to hear his voice again, and just that old, familiar voice. It’s aged … He sounds more like my grandfather,” Moore said. “As we signed off, he said, ‘Goodbye, my daughter,’ and it definitely asserted that he wanted to control that I would have a relationship with him.”

Now a parent herself, Moore said her children are curious about their grandfather. They had visited him in prison when they were young, but they have no memory of the meeting. In letters to ABC News, Jesperson expressed how much he would like to reunite with his family.

“For years, I have reached out to my children to be a part of their lives,” Jesperson wrote in one of these letters. “They’re in my thoughts daily and I love them and am proud of them.”

Still, Moore said she doesn’t want her children to have a relationship with her father.

“I don’t want my dad to get into the psyche of my children and hurt them in any way because he is manipulative. He is a psychopath. He has the potential, still, to hurt, even if not with physical violence or murder, but with his words,” she said.

Moore’s 21-year-old daughter Aspen Moore, who said she learned the truth about her grandfather when she was about 10 years old, agrees that she doesn’t want to meet him.

“I think that he has excuses for his actions,” she said. “I don’t feel that his actions can be just brushed off.”

Melissa Moore maintains she doesn’t want to have a relationship with her father and said there was nothing he could offer her to bring her “any kind of closure.”

“There isn’t going to be closure,” she said. “But I’m okay with that. I’m content with my life, and I don’t need him to say sorry. I don’t need him to ask for forgiveness, and I frankly wouldn’t believe in his request for forgiveness.”

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