S.G. Murthy’s ‘Health Emergency’ On Guns Is Scaremongering
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has been involved in political and public health debates, including his previous efforts to tackle misinformation during the Covid pandemic as part of the Biden administration’s policies. Recently, Murthy has shifted focus to gun violence, which he labels a “public health crisis.” He aims to reframe gun ownership discussions away from politics, positioning them purely within public health discourse, although critics argue this violates constitutional rights related to firearm ownership.
Murthy’s approach conflates suicides and homicides under gun-related issues and includes defensive gun uses as national health problems. This broad categorization is contentious, with critiques highlighting misleading statistics, such as considering 18- and 19-year-olds, and sometimes up to 25-year-olds, as children, inflating firearm mortality rates among youths. Official data, however, suggests other causes such as vehicular accidents are more prevalent killers of children across some age groups.
Murthy’s reports and statements, including alarming statistics about gun violence exposure and its psychological effects on the populace, have sparked debate. Critics question the validity of the data and the interpretation, arguing that some polling results used in his arguments may include exaggerated or unrepresentative figures. This ongoing controversy underscores deep divisions in how gun violence and public health intersect and are addressed in policy and public opinion.
A few years back, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy used his position to assist the Biden administration’s censorship efforts during the Covid pandemic, contending that the government had a responsibility to root out “misinformation.”
Now, Murthy wants to do the same thing to the Second Amendment, declaring gun violence a “public health crisis.” The surgeon general wants to take gun ownership “out of the realm of politics and put it into the realm of public health.” Fortunately, the Constitution already has purview over the individual’s right to own a firearm.
But setting aside the fact that Murthy’s goal is unconstitutional, the premise of his report is also highly misleading. For starters, like most anti-gun activists, Murthy dishonestly conflates suicides (a mental health issue) with homicides (a criminality issue) to make sweeping contentions about firearms. Murthy even throws in incidents where guns are used in self-defense as a “harm” plaguing the nation’s health.
But that’s just the beginning.
What is especially devastating is how this has affected our kids. Firearm violence is now the leading cause of death among children and adolescents—more than car accidents or drug overdoses. 3/10
— Dr. Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General (@Surgeon_General) June 25, 2024
Virtually every media outlet and left-wing politician in the country repeats this fake statistic, which is also the foundation of Murthy’s report.
The problem is that every “study” used to bolster his claim counts 18- and 19-year-olds as adolescents — including criminals — and sometimes up to 25-year-olds. Americans under 18 can’t purchase guns legally. Once an 18- or 19-year-old gets his hands on a firearm illegally, he faces adult criminal charges. And when you take 18- and 19-year-old adults out of these studies, the number of gun-related deaths among kids plunges. According to the CDC, the leading killers of children between the ages of 1 and 14 are vehicular accidents, suffocation, and drowning. Twice as many kids under 12 died in cars than from guns.
It is worth remembering that relatively few children die of natural causes. And if these studies began at birth, rather than at one year old, genetic abnormalities and accidents would be the leading killer of children. Surely a one-year-old is as much a child as a 19-year-old who has illegally procured a firearm.
A staggering 54% of adults report that they or a family member have experienced a firearm-related incident (been personally threatened with or injured by a firearm, lost a family member, witnessed a shooting, or shot a firearm in self-defense). 2/10
— Dr. Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General (@Surgeon_General) June 25, 2024
This contention is ludicrous. And putting some self-reported polling data into slick graphs doesn’t magically make it any more scientific.
As of 2020, there were 258 million adults in the United States. So, unless these adults are talking about witnessing gun violence on television it’s implausible that 139 million people have personally experienced gun violence or know close family members who have. Then again, the Kaiser study used by Murthy puts no limitations on family — so they might as well be talking about a second cousin’s wife’s stepson.
When I took a deeper dive into the Kaiser poll (of 1,271 people), I also noticed that 38 percent of those respondents contend that they have personally been involved in or witnessed an incident with a gun. That translates into tens of millions of Americans walking around right now who have witnessed a gun being drawn in anger or shooting one in self-defense. Seems highly unlikely.
Exposure to firearm violence can contribute to elevated stress levels and mental health challenges and threaten the sense of well-being for entire communities. Nearly 6 in 10 adults worry about a loved one being the victim of firearm violence. 4/10
— Dr. Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General (@Surgeon_General) June 25, 2024
Six in ten, huh? If someone asked me if I was worried about a loved one being the victim of firearm violence, I would also say yes. Shootings happen. And every instance of gun criminality is a tragedy. So I’m surprised it’s not 10 in 10. When it comes to loved ones, we tend to entertain worries about everything. Some rational, some not.
But there’s a huge difference between a pollster asking a person if he is worried about gun violence and asking him what he worries about most. Because a long-term Gallup poll finds that identity theft, car theft, burglary (when not at home), and hate crimes all appear as concerns related to personal safety fear before “being murdered” — which predates the invention of the firearm (though I’m not sure if Murthy knows that).
This is probably because the chances of a law-abiding person in the United States being shot are still rather small. The polls used by Murthy — which include one from leftist smear operation Southern Poverty Law Center, just to give you an idea — are all constructed to mislead Americans. Experts making a good-faith effort to solve problems — a mental health crisis or a crisis of criminality — aren’t relying on bogus “studies.”
Murthy gives away the game when he ends his thread by contending that our “failure to address” gun violence “is a moral crisis.” (I thought it was a health crisis?) Of course, the way he wants to address it, no doubt, aligns with the Democrats’ long-standing policy goals of restricting Second Amendment rights. Which is the whole reason for this bogus PR campaign.
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.
" Conservative News Daily does not always share or support the views and opinions expressed here; they are just those of the writer."
