Our Top Doctor Thinks
Gun Ownership Is A Disease

One of the more pernicious beliefs within contemporary American politics is there are certain words or phrases that, if uttered by the right person at the right time, can bypass the usual constitutional processes and deliver absolute victory to the speaker. In June, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy offered up a stellar example of this conviction when he issued a 40-page report that he framed with the claim that "gun violence is a public-health crisis in our country and requires a public-health solution."

Superficially, Murthy's "One Weird Trick" characterization might sound interesting—or even persuasive. But when one digs in a little further, one can see that it is not only inapt, but is downright sinister. "Gun violence"—which, in practice, involves criminals abusing firearms—simply cannot not be a "public-health issue" in the way that, say, the spread of HIV was in the 1980s. Rather, it is a complex criminal matter that requires a robust response from our legislatures, police and courts, as well as from the general public. To pathologize that issue, as Murthy is trying to do, not only makes that robust response impossible to achieve, but also guarantees that the focus will be placed on the wrong villain: the law-abiding citizens who are not the problem, instead of the criminal class that is.

As a means of doing politics, Murthy's approach is even worse. As we learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, when political figures start talking in this manner, they invariably end up insisting dogmatically that that their personal opinions are the equivalent of "science" or "medicine" or "logic," and that anyone who disagrees with them is thus attacking modernity, per se. .....