Response to Pro-Vivek Editorial

The Washington Post published an anti-gun editorial praising Vivek and attacking the NRA. I know, I’m shocked. Here’s my repose:

They say: “Every year guns are used to kill thousands of people, and not always the bad guys. For decades, doctors and other public health experts have argued that preventing gun deaths, particularly from accidents and suicides, should be a priority — like curtailing car fatalities or tobacco use.”
Source: http://www.registercitizen.com/opinion/20140324/editorial-the-nra-is-wrong-and-congress-needs-a-backbone

Fact: “You are 64 times more likely to be killed by your doctor than by someone else wielding a gun. That’s because 19,766 of the total 31,940 gun deaths in the USA (in the year 2011) were suicides. So the actual number of deaths from other people shooting you is only 12,174.
Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/038889_doctors_guns_statistics.html#ixzz2wumJn7f5

“For their sense, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and others on the pro-gun side have pilloried them, ruining careers and stopping needed research with the help of a cowed Congress. Their latest victim is Vivek Hallegere Murthy, President Obama’s pick to be surgeon general, whose nomination is languishing in the Senate after the NRA and various conservative commentators attacked him. The NRA is wrong, and senators who know better should find some backbone.”

What careers have we ruined? Show me one professional gun hater that died in poverty. If anything, being anti-gun is a resume-builder, you start hating guns and the liberal media will love you. Sure, maybe you won’t get to keep your job as editor of a gun magazine if you’re anti-gun, which makes sense. How many white supremacists write for Ebony? How many carnivores work for PETA? How many conservatives write for The Washington Post? As for the research, the research goes on but it’s funded with PRIVATE money, the way it should be.

“Murthy is a Yale-trained physician, an instructor at Boston’s prestigious Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a health technology entrepreneur. As Obama’s nominee for surgeon general, it’s also no shock that he supports a variety of the president’s policies, including on gun control. Among his sins, the NRA explained in a letter to Senate leaders, is past support for meek gun regulations such as licensing and waiting periods. He also once dared to claim that “guns are a health care issue,” a fact that any doctor with experience in the emergency room knows well. Murthy, the NRA fumed, would remove the ban on physicians asking patients whether they keep guns in the home and lift restrictions on gun death research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).”

If Murthy was pro-gun and pro-life, would The Washington Post be defending him? Would they care about his credentials? Guns are NOT a health care issue any more than hammers, bicycles, hiking equipment, etc. Licensing is also not a meek regulation; in New York City the application fee to buy a handgun is $450. In Connecticut the laws are so crazy that cops admit not understanding them. Waiting periods are just as bad, they can result in people being murdered while waiting to get their gun.  As for the ER, just because a butcher can cut meat doesn’t make him a veterinarian.

Now I come from a family full of doctors, I respect them, I feel their pain about lawyers, regulations, red tape, how they can get called at all hours, how people try to get free medical advice from them, but I also know doctors can be wrong. They are not gods, they are not the Rulers of Our Health, and a good doctor will even encourage you to get a second opinion if you’re not sure.

Besides that, what business does a doctor have asking me if I have a gun or not? What else does he want? A video of my sex life? It’s none of your business, doctor. Unless you’re a gunsmith or a gun enthusiast, we’re not going to discuss guns, thank you very much. As for the CDC, there’s a huge difference between fighting real killers like Ebola, Tuberculosis, etc., and doing biased anti-gun research.

“All of those ideas sound pretty modest to us. Even if they weren’t, they don’t provide any pretext to oppose Murthy’s confirmation, since he would not be in a position to set firearms policy as surgeon general. The fact that he’s right just makes the insult worse.”

Wrong again, Vivek will be the one attacking guns from the pulpit of government, doing the “research” Democrats need to justify their gun bans.

“Then again, this would not be the first time, or even the first time recently, that the pro-gun side has upheld a dangerous, maximalist ideology against the better judgment of experts — and simple reasoning.

The ban on CDC gun research is a case in point. At the NRA’s urging, Congress in the 1990s hollowed out funding for studies on gun injuries and deaths; the result has been continuing uncertainty about many basic questions regarding how gun violence happens — even on how many firearms there are in the country, or on the most effective ways to prevent gun accidents in the home. Obama only just ended the madness, pushing the CDC last year to start researching again.”

Gun accidents are extremely rare compared to others, far more kids drown in swimming pools yet there’s no federal research about preventing accidental drowning. As for how many firearms are in the country, why do you need to know? There’s already plenty of information about how many background checks are performed, how many guns are manufactured and sold, so don’t tell me you want our doctors violating our privacy and reporting sensitive information to Uncle Obama. By the way, what exactly did the CDC research do for us? What are their findings? How many lives have they saved? This is BS research, political researched designed to attack the 2nd Amendment and I will never support it.

“Or there is the recent contretemps over “smart guns,” designed only to fire when their owners are handling them. Gun activists went after a store in California that put them up for sale, because a New Jersey law requires guns sold in its borders to carry owner recognition technology once it becomes viable. This bizarre effort to brand smart firearms as some anti-gun conspiracy, rather than accepting them as new tools for responsible gun owners to prevent tragedies, is of a piece with Murthy’s recent treatment: pure reaction, rather than sense, is the motivating factor.”

It’s called Free Speech, whether it’s gun haters with “Skip Starbucks Saturday” or 2nd Amendment defenders reminding gun stores what their customers like, it’s all constitutionally protected. If smart gun companies had worked with the gun community, nobody would be suspecting them. Join the NRA, go to the gun show, do interviews with respectable gun magazines. But that’s not what they did, instead they sought government subsidies, they trashed other guns, they did interviews with the liberal media, and now they’re wondering why they’re so hated. Even the cops hate smart guns; they certainly lobbied to be exempted for them. So unless you’re selling me Judge Dredd’s gun, which doesn’t require a wussy wrist watch and recognizes you even if you’re wearing gloves, I’m not interested.

New Jersey’s law is anti-Second Amendment. How would liberals feel if printed books where replaced with smart books (eBooks) to save the trees? What if Freedom of Religion was limited to State-approved religions like it is in China? Or if artists had to get licenses to paint and write?

Don’t take me wrong, I love eBooks, I love my Kindle App, but I don’t want the government telling me that paper books are no longer legal. In a free society, it’s the individual who decides, not government.  This is why I oppose not just Vivek for Surgeon General, but the position of Surgeon General itself.

Americans don’t need a Head Doctor to rule their lives, half the time these people don’t know what they’re doing. Look at all the times the government’s nutrition pyramid has been changed, or how something with pesticides can get the “certified organic” label, or how they used to support trans fats but now they oppose them.

How would you feel if you had Cancer and you couldn’t get an experimental drug because the FDA thinks it’s unsafe. Really? You’re dying on Cancer, and they’re worried about your safety? See? It’s not just the Surgeon General we have to get rid of, it’s also the FDA.