It has been two weeks since U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a public health advisory on what he declares to be the latest “public health crisis” in America.
An “Advisory” issued by the Surgeon General is supposed to be employed when, in the learned opinion of that official, the American people must be made aware that they face an urgent public health issue, in other words, an “emergency.”
Unlike his predecessors, who employed the bully pulpit of their office to crusade against arguably public health-related issues such as smoking and AIDS, Murthy’s June 25th “Surgeon General’s Advisory” has nothing to do with any reasoned or common sense definition of health. It does, however, have everything to do with politics; in this case, the one policy issue liberals invariably turn to as a way to rally their base — gun control.
Murthy dutifully declares “firearm violence” the latest and most urgent “public health crisis” facing our country; not heart failure, not cancer, not obesity, but guns. In doing this, he cheapens the role and responsibility of the nation’s preeminent public health official.
Much of the mainstream media was breathless in drawing attention to the Surgeon General’s call to action against the scourge of violence committed by individuals misusing firearms. CNN, for example, lauded Murthy at length for joining the gun control hallelujah chorus. MyChesCo called it a “Landmark Step.”
The partisan, political perspective unsurprisingly reflected in CNN’s article praising Murthy’s gun-control missive was obvious in the video placed atop the opinion piece – a photograph not of the Surgeon General but a video of President Biden.
There has been little public discourse spawned by the firearms violence advisory since its unveiling in June, for the simple reason it offers nothing new. Rather, it repeats the same talking points gun control advocates have urged for years — too many guns in America and the need for more laws restricting their availability and possession.
Despite the document’s veneer of approaching the “generational” public health crisis of gun violence, it is nothing more than the same, tired recitation of control measures pressed by the gun control movement for decades — including banning “assault weapons,” instituting “universal background checks” and mandating firearms lock boxes. Nothing, incidentally, about stronger and more effective enforcement of laws on the books against the criminal misuse of firearms.
The report employs a sleight-of-hand used by political advocates on all sides of any issue — using statistics to bolster their argument. At one point early in his discourse, Murthy declares that some 60 percent of adults “worry ‘sometimes’” about “firearm violence.” Wow – learning that a majority of people at some point in their lives “worry” about firearm violence really moves the public health debate forward. Perhaps equally insightful is Murthy’s unveiling to us that “[a]ttempting suicide by firearm is almost always an irreversible act.”
Suicide and “mass shootings” (to which Murthy also devotes significant attention) certainly are matters deserving of our attention and of taking steps to reduce, but placing such tragic events under the jurisdiction of the Surgeon General as the basis on which to advocate a political gun-control agenda adds nothing of positive note.
Perhaps hidden somewhere in the bureaucratic gobbledygook found throughout the Surgeon General’s Advisory, including his call for something he refers to as “behavioral threat assessment and management (BATM) teams,” one might discover meaningful solutions to firearm-related crimes (of which there in fact are far too many in contemporary American society). But my careful read of the 39-page report revealed none.
Not surprisingly, Murthy concludes his advisory by likening the war against firearm violence in this third decade of the 21st Century to those launched by his predecessors decades earlier against cigarettes and in support of safer automobiles; in other words, treat firearms as just another “consumer product” that can be restricted by regulations and laws.
Unsaid, of course, in making such a comparison, is the fact that nowhere in the Constitution are there to be found explicit prohibitions on government restricting cigarette smoking or forcing automobiles to be made safer. There is, of course, such a limitation against government infringing the right to “keep and bear arms,” which may account for the Surgeon General’s advisory failure to mention the Second Amendment in his report, even as a footnote.
Bob Barr currently serves as President of the National Rifle Association. He represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.