“An ER Doctor’s Cure for America’s Gun Epidemic,” the Wired headline reads. “Cedric Dark is a gun-owning emergency physician, a father, and the cousin of a man who was shot to death. This is what he—and the science—say needs to change.”
“I’m a gun-owning emergency physician, a father, and the cousin of a man who was shot to death,” Dark explains. “If it wasn’t for the National Rifle Association declaring in 2018 that physicians, like me, should ‘stay in their lane’ and keep quiet about the toll of this plague, I wouldn’t have written about this subject. Yet gun violence consumes my life. I see victims of gun violence from family tragedies—children, adolescents, and adults—almost every day.”
His assessment of the problem seems off—if it’s a plague, it’s peculiar that this one seems so locally confined in specific areas. As economist and author John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center demonstrates, “Murder isn’t a nationwide problem. It’s a problem in a small set of urban areas, and even in those counties, murders are concentrated in small areas inside them… 2% of counties had 56% of the murders in 2020, 52% of US counties had zero murders.”
Clearly, it’s not the guns, as millions of peaceable gun owners who belong to advocacy groups like the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, the Second Amendment Foundation, and others, including state “gun rights” groups, prove every day. They represent the most heavily armed civilian population on the planet, yet have effectively nonexistent violent crime rates.
So Dark starts off with a misdiagnosis. And his prescription to, if not cure the “plague,” at least treat it, seems equally unqualified, in spite of his claim that it’s supported by Rand Corporation “evidence” (which curiously, adts it’s “weal” and characterizes the vast majority of its effectiveness ratings as “inconclusive,” and none as “conclusive):
Despite that, Dark wants:
- Background checks through federal firearms licensed dealers for every firearms purchase – Except the National Institute of Justice has concluded “Effectiveness depends on the ability to reduce straw purchasing, requiring gun registration…” (No worries, Dark wants that too, he just hasn’t admitted it here)
- Licenses and permits for individuals who want to buy guns – To exercise a right. That would fly in the face of the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision assessing gun laws based on history, text, and tradition.
- Raising the minimum age for all firearm purchases to 21 – No Constitutional reason justifies doing that, and plenty of Constitutional reasons justify telling him to back off.
- Strong child access prevention laws – Yeah, lock up your safety under penalty of law, rendering it useless for defending against a home invasion. An infringement addressed in the Heller decision, a requirement to keep guns “unloaded and either disassembled or secured by a trigger lock, gun safe, locked box, or other secure device” comes to mind, as do the Merced pitchfork murders.
- Brief waiting periods – Define “brief,” and if that can be imposed against a right, what’s to keep it from getting extended? Per Gun Owners of America “’The study ignores the fact that there are very real cases where waiting periods have actually facilitated homicide,’ Erich Pratt, executive … told CNN. He was referring to Carol Bowne, a New Jersey woman who was killed during the waiting to take home a gun she’d bought to protect her from the assailant.”
- Domestic violence restraining orders that require the relinquishing of existing firearms – Punishment without due process, or as the Queen of Hearts declared in Lewis Carroll’s purposefully absurdist classic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, “Sentence first — verdict afterwards.”
These infringements, as they always do, will only burden “law-abiding” people, mind you. Criminals will still get all the guns they want the old-fashioned way as they keep sending Dr. Dark more patients.
But Dark’s not done:
“But I also believe there are two additional laws that should be repealed… Policy Prescription #1: Reverse Stand-Your-Ground Laws … Policy Prescription #2: Concealed Carry Laws Should Adhere to the ‘May-Issue’ Standard.”
“My research looked at all states that have enacted Stand Your Ground between 1977 and 2012, either through legislation or through court decisions,” John Lott concludes. “I consistently found subsequent drops in murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault rates. On average, murder rates fell by about 1.5 percent annually during the first 10 years that the law was in effect.”
And “May issue” means “may not and probably won’t unless you’re connected.” The Dodge City/ “blood in the streets over fender benders” lie has been used to spook the herd ever since Handgun Control, Inc. first disparaged Florida as “The Gunshine State,” and has been repeated ad nauseam against the 29 states now enjoying permitless carry. The dire predictions don’t come true, despite implied lies that they enable “prohibited persons” to bear arms. The evidence is indisputable: Armed citizens save lives. And criminals will carry regardless.
As for Dr. Dark “staying in his lane,” no one is presuming to tell him how to treat patients coming into his trauma center. But that doesn’t mean he is qualified to practice outside his area of certification and to imply that it does is a logical fallacy known as “false authority,” the assumption “that the opinions of a recognized expert in one area should be heeded in another area.” Being a father and the cousin of someone shot to death don’t pad his resume, either.
What’s obvious from the political tone of his Twitter feed is he is hardly the unbiased presenter he’s posturing to be. If his faulty diagnosis and prescription for government ignoring the Constitution, assigning itself undelegated powerss, and enacting disarmament edicts against the citizenry are any indicators, a term that comes to mind is “gun quack.”
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
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