The Biggest Public Health Threat is Government
By David Codrea, July 18th 2014
JPFO writer contributor, © 2014.
For "progressives," every day is Opposite Day.
That's an observation I've yet to see refuted by the "Ignorance is Strength" crowd, and increasingly, the same can be said for the federal government. Seemingly bent on pulling out all stops to deny our "Liberty" and "pursuit of Happiness," recent headlines show bureaucrats doing their best to obliterate the "Life" part of our unalienable rights, too.
"The same federal scientist who recently found forgotten samples of smallpox at a federal lab also uncovered over 300 additional vials, many bearing the names of highly contagious viruses and bacteria," the Associated Press is reporting.
Overseeing that potential catastrophe, which we find has been ignored and forgotten for over half a century, were the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, both funded and tasked to protect health and lives.
Meanwhile, the same level of professionalism and dedication has been demonstrated over at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"Four days after the [CDC] concluded its investigation into June's accidental anthrax exposure, more details are being released about the government health agency's mishandling of potentially dangerous pathogens," CNN reported. Say, aren't these the same guys who are going to save us from the "public health menace" of guns?
That seems to be a recurring cause célèbre pushed by the gun-grabbers, who accuse NRA of waging a "war on gun science" by blocking funding for CDC "studies" on "gun violence."
That, of course, like so many "factoids" the antis would like us to believe are true, is actually a mischaracterization promoted to advance government-funded hit pieces on guns masked as science.
"Congress investigated and in 1997 forbade the use of CDC funds 'to advocate or promote gun control," Timothy Wheeler, M.D. clarified, writing about an Obama executive action directing the agency to ignore Congress and resume "research." That's a very different way of stating what really happened and why.
"There was a very good reason for the gun violence research funding ban," Larry Bell of Forbes observed. "Virtually all of the scores of CDC-funded firearms studies conducted since 1985 had reached conclusions favoring stricter gun control. This should have come as no surprise, given that ever since 1979, the official goal of the CDC's parent agency, the U.S. Public Health Service, had been '…to reduce the number of handguns in private ownership', starting with a 25% reduction by the turn of the century."
Dr. Mark Rosenberg
"We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes. Now it [sic] is dirty, deadly, and banned," Dr. Mark Rosenberg, former Director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Control and Prevention, told The Washington Post in 1994, proving the agenda was to eviscerate the Second Amendment and providing, for many, the final straw against paying the help to undermine our rights.
If government really wishes to fund studies on leading causes of death that have an indisputable tie-in to the gun issue, researchers ought to start with JPFO's "Death by Gun Control," and its accompanying Genocide Chart, along with the acclaimed documentary, "Innocents Betrayed."
"In the 20th Century, governments murdered four times as many civilians as were killed in all the international and domestic wars combined [and] murdered millions more people than were killed by common criminals," JPFO demonstrates. "How could governments kill so many people?" the research overview asks and then answers. "The governments had the power -- and the people, the victims, were unable to resist. The victims were unarmed."
What's worth noting is the same government administrators endangering the public with real uncontrolled pathogens are doing their utmost to weaken the population's resistance to agents of deadly infection in the body politic. Perhaps if researchers are truly committed to establishing a working public health model, they ought to first frame the desire for power over others as a contagious and potentially epidemic disease, and look at politicians and their administrative and enforcement functionaries as pathogens. Then perhaps, if a cure can't be found, at least an immunizing treatment can be identified to keep the more virulent strains in check.
Or did the Founders already diagnose and prescribe something?
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David Codrea is a field editor at GUNS Magazine, penning their monthly "Rights Watch" column. He provides regular reporting and commentary at Gun Rights Examiner and blogs at The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance. David Codrea's Archive page.
