Opinion by Gary Mauser, Alan J. Chwick & Joanne Eisen
Washington, DC – Public health “experts” have been dealt a black eye by their mishandling of the COVID epidemic by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC and the US public health establishment deliberately misled the public, which led to counterproductive lockdown mandates. The CDC withheld valuable information regarding COVID and gave faulty mask advice. Increasingly, it looks like the lockdowns and masks were based on unscientific claims. Schools and businesses were closed unnecessarily, as well.
During the lockdowns in 2021-2022 some people got rich while most of us lost money, jobs, and some small businesses even went bankrupt. Government workers got paid to stay at home, while many other workers lost their jobs. Worse, our children lost a year of school or more.
We will never know how many died from the lack of sound medical information, especially regarding early intervention and treatment of COVID. Deaths were particularly high in long-term care homes in some states, like New York, due to disastrous political decisions.
The public health experts who routinely embarrass themselves with bad advice on COVID lockdowns are the so-called “experts” who arrogantly offer advice about civilian gun ownership.
The CDC and the public health establishment have opposed civilian gun ownership for decades. There has been a vast gulf between the claims about guns coming from the public health and medical communities and the findings of criminologists and economists.
The CDC simply assumes that guns are too dangerous for civilian ownership.
Would you bet your childrens’ lives on the accuracy of claims by public health activists about gun violence and the resulting policies, especially after the Covid debacle? We will never know how many people died from laws limiting gun ownership, as laws that create obstacles for victims to get a gun are rarely properly tracked.
Firearm laws in Canada are based on claims by public health advocates. The Canadian federal government has imposed overly restrictive gun laws because they rely upon a pseudo-science that exaggerates the dangers of firearm ownership. Unless something unexpected intervenes in the next year or so, the only guns that will remain in Canada will be bolt-action long guns and break-open shotguns. Legal handgun ownership will not exist. We doubt Canadians will accept such a draconian policy. Many guns will go underground, becoming part of the politically manufactured Black Market.
Here in the US, gun control advocates play that same game, publicizing pseudo-scientific medical claims about the dangers of guns in order to frighten the public about citizen gun owners. Surely, after the so-called ‘experts’ failed to deal with COVID, we can no longer trust public health experts when they pontificate about gun control. No one should trust such experts to create public policy that respects individual rights – or even be effective in reducing gun violence. If they can’t deal responsibly with COVID, how could they be trusted with gun policy?
Unfortunately, the Future often Proves the Past.
In the early 1980s, public health activists began to tell the story that guns were a “virus” capable of transmitting the disease called “violence.” This approach assumes that guns promote violence and led the public health experts to focus on gun violence and banning guns but to ignore other violence that didn’t involve guns. Instead of doing honest scientific research, these so-called “experts” promoted a body of fake research that “proved” their assumption that guns led to violence. This isn’t science, it is propaganda wrapped up in scientific ‘pseudo-science’ language.
Public health activists have deliberately fudged their data to demonize guns and gun owners. In 1995, the Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia published several articles that revealed disqualifying shortcomings of these pseudo-scientific articles. The medical establishment just couldn’t let the truth out, so the Journal fired the editor, Dr. Miguel Faria.
Since the 1980s, shoddy taxpayer-funded research articles have been published. One such study has proven to be a hearty weed in this garden. In 1986, the New England Journal of Medicine published a paper by Arthur Kellermann and Donald Reay “proving” that guns kept for protection were 43 times more likely to kill an acquaintance than a criminal intruder in one’s home.
Such a finding violates common sense. At least one-third of American homes have firearms. If gun owners were that dangerous, our cemeteries would be filled with the deceased children, spouses, and friends of gun owners. Society would be very aware of a serious problem without the need for lies.
In 1993,Dr. Kellermann, who was funded in 1991 by a CDC grant, had to soften the ’43 times’ number to ‘2.7 times.’ He concluded, “Rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.” Kellerman thought the 2.7 number would not sound quite so impossible.
These papers, and many others from the medical community, were criticized by researchers who statistically showed that Kellermann’s conclusions were wildly wrong. Kellermann used a technique that depended on matching subjects and controls, except that the subject and control groups did not match. The subject group lived a very high-risk, alcohol and drug-filled lifestyle, while the controls did not.
Kellermann had singled out people who exist at the edges of society. Kellermann did not study normal gun owners, just criminals who had guns, but he exaggerated his findings.
Because of this confusion, Kellerman helped change American gun politics by injecting unwarranted fear into the gun debate. Too many journalists just read the conclusion of a “scientific” paper, and skip over the rest as too complex for them.
Despite these serious methodological problems, Kellermann’s results are still widely accepted in the public health field.
Public-health advocates appear willing to run with any published study, regardless of how weak its methods, just so long as the findings are congenial to their assumption that guns are dangerous.
Then, in 1996, after Congress requested Kellermann’s original data, which he failed to release, Congress cut funding to the CDC for advocacy research. No funding was cut for medical research, just advocacy research.
In 2018, Dr. Faria, former editor of the Medical Journal of Georgia, noticed that there was a renewed call for funding more CDC research. He wrote, “Public health researchers want more taxpayer money to tell us that guns are a disease that must be eradicated.” And they got their funding! In December 2019, Congress reached an agreement to again fund advocacy research at the CDC and National Institutes of Health (NIH). Your tax dollars have already been funding fake research on guns since 2020.
Will the research be as biased as it was three decades ago? Ted Alcorn, research director for Everytown for Gun Safety, crowed, “It’s without a doubt the most meaningful step that federal lawmakers have taken to addressing gun violence as a public health emergency.” Initial results should be available within months.
In June of 2022, The Lancet, a prestigious British Medical Journal, published an editorial, GUN VIOLENCE IN THE USA: Children’s Right to Health. They boldly stated, “We share the view of those who argue that gun violence should be framed as a public health issue rather than a debate over the US Constitution’s Second Amendment.”
The Lancet revealed a truth, that public health activists have no respect for the US Bill of Rights or the US Constitution. We can continue to expect biased gun control politics to flourish in public health magazines. Advocacy is not wrong in itself but must be based on solid analysis. Public health advocacy relies upon assumptions that have been debunked by economists and criminologists.
The continuing war on civilian guns will continue to be based on the fake science of the medical establishment.
The arrogance of public health activists should be obvious.
The American public is losing its trust in the experts. Public health experts got COVID completely wrong; how could they get gun control right? Unfortunately, their arrogance knows no bounds. To counter their propaganda, we must become advocates of truth. We must be very vocal!
The new flood of money to the CDC for advocacy research presents problems for patriotic Americans. We need to stand up against the next bunch of antigun lies that undermine the Second Amendment and its benefits to our children and to us. The best vaccination is a strong dose of truth. Gun owners can no longer sit back and hope that the lies will stop. Public health activists will continue to lie. We must come off our couches and speak up, armed with the truth.
The future is up to you. Do we go down the Canadian path, or do we fight for the promises of the Founding Fathers? Will this generation challenge the liars in labcoats, or will Gen Z be as lazy and weak as some social commentators believe?
Will you give your children the chance in their future to fight for their Freedom? Or will American freedom die with us? In this time of political crisis in our nation, that answer depends strictly on this generation.
About The Authors
Gary Mauser is a professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. Check out his blog at JusticeForGunowners.ca for more information.
Alan J Chwick has been involved with firearms much of his life and is the Retired Managing Coach of the Freeport NY Junior Marksmanship Club. He has escaped New York State to South Carolina and is an SC FFL Dealer & Gunsmith (Everything22andMore.com). AJChwick@iNCNF.org | Twitter/TruthSocial: @E22andMore
Joanne D Eisen, DDS (Ret.), practiced dentistry on Long Island, NY. She has collaborated and written on firearm politics for the past 40+ years. She, too, escaped New York State, but to Virginia. JoanneDEisen@cs.com
FURTHER READING/INFORMATION
- The Failure of Gun Control (Again), by Gary Mauser
- Hubris in the North: The Canadian Firearms Registry by Gary A. Mauser
- Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda by Don Kates.
- Never Forget the COVID Fascists, by Trevor Thomas
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