The lame duck Congress has approved Dr. Vivek Murthy’s nomination to be Surgeon General of the United States. This despite the fact that Murthy co-founded the strictly partisan Doctors for Obama (now Doctors for America). And the fact that Dr. Murthy is as anti-gun as they come. After Newtown, he publicly supported a federal ban on “assault weapons” and actively campaigned for the doomed federal universal background check bill. Most importantly, he considers “gun violence” a “public health issue.” This is a problem because . . .
The new Surgeon General will be one of the anti-gun mainstream media’s go-to guys for gun control support. When an infant dies via a negligent discharge, when firearms-related suicides hit the headlines, when the idea of psychological testing for gun possession or concealed carry permits rears its ugly head, when a spree killer’s mental health takes center stage, Murthy will be ready, willing and able to provide the “medical” angle. Arguing for government intervention as a respected authority figure.
Not amongst The People of the Gun, obviously. But make no mistake: low information voters will be swayed by the “nation’s top doc” presenting his case for gun control. Equally, the civilian disarmament industrial complex will be emboldened by their guy’s ascension to the Surgeon General’s job. Aside from enabling a “we beat the NRA” meme, Murthy will use his bully pulpit to help secure federal funding for inherently biased “gun violence” research. Not to mention Murthy’s money-in-the-bank appearances at glittering anti-gun events.
Murthy’s rise to prominence highlights a glaring deficiency on the pro-gun side: the distinct lack of a media-friendly spokesperson. Murthy joins Mothers Demand Action for Gun Sense in America jefe Shannon Watts as the acceptable face of anti-firearms fascism. He’ll be pitted against the anti-statist pro-gun position occupied by . . . who? Ted Nugent? Well Ted is an NRA board member and the NRA is the anti-gun media’s bête noire. How about Tom Selleck? Anyone? Bueller?
The NRA’s a 500-pound pro-gun gorilla that’s only obvious by its near complete absence from the public square. The gun rights group’s longstanding policy of refusing to respond to attacks or publicly comment on firearms-related issues and events until things have “settled down” – and maybe not even then – is a huge, ongoing mistake. It’s left the friends of firearms freedom without a voice and leaves the pro-gun side vulnerable to attacks by fork-tongued firearms foes like MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
In the video here, Maddow, a gun owner, repeats a ridiculous assertion made in a lawsuit filed by families affected by the Sandy Hook spree killing: Bushmaster should have known that selling AR-15’s to the general public posed an “unreasonable and egregious risk” because of “the civilian population’s poor track record of safely securing weapons.” That’s exactly the kind of inane assertion that the NRA should be slapping down on her show. That and the bit of the lawsuit that names the NRA as a defendant, as Maddow reveals. Oh wait. It doesn’t.
Click here to read the filing, which vilifies Bushmaster for making the gun that Adam Lanza used to slaughter 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It’s full of the same bogus anti-AR arguments and unsupported claims (e.g., “more than half of American households with firearms do not store them securely”) used to defend the “assault rifle” ban enacted in Connecticut and elsewhere.
Here’s the bit that caught my eye: “There is no evidence that semi-automatic rifles are commonly used for, or necessary for, legitimate self-defense by law-abiding citizens.” So, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms commonly used for, or necessary for, legitimate self-defense by law-abiding citizens shall not be infringed.” Like that?
The Newtown families behind this doomed lawsuit timed their filing to coincide with the second anniversary of the Sandy Hook slaughter. Ironically, the lawsuit labelling AR-15s as surplus to civilian self-defense also coincided with the Taliban’s attack yesterday on a Pakistani school that left 132 children dead. The obvious correlation: both attacks involved unopposed murderers killing children. The frightening corollary: anyone who thinks “it couldn’t happen here” now knows it can. The key difference: scale.
Not only is such an attack on an American school possible, it’s inevitable. And when it happens, men with AR-15s will end it. There are those of us who believe that the men (and women) who do so should be armed people working in the school at the time of the attack. That arming — and yes, training — teachers will limit casualties. And while they should have handguns on their person, ideally, school officials should have quick access to an AR-15 rifle. For the same reasons that other Americans have quick access to an AR-15 rifle: to mount a robust and efficient defense of innocent life.
Not that Americans need to justify their right to keep and bear whatever arms they see fit to the government. In the same sense that they don’t have to receive government permission to smoke cigarettes, eat fatty foods or drink jumbo-sized sugary soft drinks. Whether we’re talking about the Surgeon General, a media maven or a Taliban jihadi, anyone who wants the power to prohibit the public from pursuing happiness in accordance with their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected rights is their enemy. Think I’m wrong? Sue me.