There was a LOT of vindication going around last week for those opposed to the Biden cabal and the ongoing deceptions it has perpetrated (in collusion with the legacy media) against the American public. Yet easily overlooked in the bigger stories of this ongoing loss of credibility was the vindication of a stance NRA took way back in 2013, during the second Obama/Biden administration. It took over 10 years for the full, unmistakable evidence to emerge, but it happened just as we warned: U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has unambiguously outed himself as an anti-gun hack with his “unprecedented” advocacy of gun control.
Maybe this seems like a small data-point in the sea of anti-gun actions taken by executive officials in the Obama/Biden and Biden/Harris administrations, a roster which has included the ATF, CDC, DHS, DOD, DOI, FBI, and VA, to name only a few. Yet it’s easy to forget there was a time when professionalism, competence, and an unbiased concern for the general welfare were at least the operating presumptions, if not always the reality, of the public’s attitude toward high government officials.
Vivek Murthy wasn’t the first to challenge these presumptions, but his was an especially clear case of how an official might pervert an office that had no obvious relationship to gun control to pursue that end. People might expect the ATF, for example, to be used as a political football to expand or contract Second Amendment protections, depending on who occupies the White House. That’s because the ATF is specifically tasked with interpreting and enforcing federal gun control laws.
But the mission of the U.S. surgeon general, as summarized on the official website of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is as follows:
The U.S. Surgeon General is the Nation’s Doctor, providing Americans with the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness and injury. The Surgeon General oversees the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Commissioned Corps, an elite group of over 6,000 uniformed officers who are public health professionals. The USPHS mission is to protect, promote, and advance the health of our nation.
Certainly, there are a host of legitimate risks to Americans’ health, as underscored by the recent viral pandemic, which by the U.S. government’s own estimate claimed over a million lives in this country. Whatever anyone thinks of how HHS and the surgeon general’s office performed during that crisis, there is no doubt that is exactly the kind of episode that is supposed to justify their existence.
But Murthy was emblematic of a subtle but important shift in how government operates. Politics has always played its role, even in supposedly non-political administrative bodies. But with appointments like Vivek Murthy, politics became not just an unavoidable byproduct but the very point of the enterprise.
As we explained in 2014, Vivek Murthy isn’t just a doctor who happens to have his own opinions on gun control. He is a dedicated gun control activist who would subordinate the legitimate functions and credibility of his office to put gun control ahead of medicine. That is exactly what he did last week by publishing and then promoting in a series of media appearances a 40-page “U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory” entitled, “Firearm Violence: A Public Health Crisis in America.”
We delve into the substances and misinformation of that propaganda document elsewhere in this week’s Alert. For the purposes of this discussion, however, the point is that the advisory has nothing to do with treating gunshot wounds, dealing with potential lead exposure from handling firearms or ammunition, hearing loss from exposure to muzzle reports, or any other medical issue pertaining to guns. Instead, it is a simply a taxpayer-funded tract that promotes the same tired slate of oppressive gun control laws that Murthy’s fellow firearm prohibitionists have wanted for decades. It also seeks to provide cover for the disastrous crime-control failures of Murthy’s Democrat party by insisting that firearm assaults and homicides are akin to a disease or contagion rather than crimes committed by predators (most with lengthy records) who too often act with impunity.
NRA-ILA exposed Murthy’s record of gun control activism at the time of his original nomination. In a published letter to the U.S. Senate, we explained how he used his advocacy group “Doctors for America” to promote criminal penalties for non-violent conduct like possession of popular semiautomatic firearms. We also showed how he wanted doctors to become vocal advocates for these sorts of laws, to produce “research” and “studies” to justify them, and to use their relationships and authority with patients to discourage firearm ownership.
Murthy himself understood and acknowledged that these activities, which he had pursued as a private citizen, were inappropriate for “the Nation’s doctor.” “I do not intend to use the surgeon general’s office as a bully pulpit for gun control,” he solemnly and unambiguously told a Senate panel during his first confirmation proceedings (see video at 50:54).
That makes Surgeon General Murthy’s current official gun control activism not just nakedly political but also the manifestation of a broken promise he made to the Senate that appointed him and to the American people. Broken promises are bad enough in the arena of politics, where they have come to be expected. They are even more despicable when clothed in the mantle of science and the public interest. There is plenty that Murthy could productively do to help Americans – whose health lags far behind other industrialized nations – live longer, healthier lives. Instead, he risks alienating the trust and goodwill of millions of gun-owning Americans to play politics with his government title, exactly as we warned he would.
NRA was heavily criticized by Obama/Biden’s media collaborators, who claimed we had no business opining on a surgeon general nominee. MSNBC in particular lead the charge, huffing in one article:
It is plainly absurd that the NRA would have a say in the selection of our next surgeon general. Murthy has been quite clear that if confirmed, he would focus primarily on the national obesity epidemic. But radical pro-gun sentiment has lost any basis in analysis and rationality.
In another, the outlet even ludicrously suggested that NRA’s opposition to Murthy’s appointment threatened to prevent the government from adequately responding to Ebola and other viral threats.
Now, the administration’s sycophants in the press are singing a different tune, with an anti-gun Esquire writing gloating: “The NRA was Right to Be Afraid of Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.”
Indeed, we were right. Vivek Murthy lied his way onto the government payroll and then went back on his word to attack the Second Amendment. That’s an especially good lesson to keep in mind during an election year, as Joe Biden – the man who reappointed Murthy as surgeon general – insists he is “committed to strengthening our democracy and protecting our freedoms.”