Surgeon General Fronts for Biden/Harris
Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said, “Firearms are the leading cause of death for children and adolescents.” Both President Biden and Vice President Harris continue to claim that gunshots are the leading cause of death of “children.” Murthy christened the situation as a “public health crisis,” opening the door to use a crisis to impose even more gun control through executive actions.
Are you a bit skeptical of claims by Biden and Harris’ experts? You should be. Remember Fauci and Covid?
In Murthy’s 39-page report, the entire deterrent emphasis is on the gun-control laws already pushed by Biden/Harris: assault-weapons ban; mandatory gunlock laws; and background checks on the private transfer of guns. Not once are the effects of soft-on-crime-prosecutors, defund the police, arrest and conviction rates, bail reform and emptying prisons mentioned by Murthy. Biden / Harris’ experts won’t consider both costs and benefits of firearms. Murthy’s approach will be as counterproductive as many of the experts’ Covid recommendations.
As John Lott puts it, it’s nonsense that “these problems wouldn’t exist if guns weren’t there.” According to Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), “After every gun ban, murder rates have gone up. One would think that just once, out of simple randomness, murder rates would have gone down or remained the same after a ban. But whenever crime data are available from both before and after a ban, we can see that murder rates have risen (often by huge amounts).”
Remember those issues mentioned above that Murthy did not mention? The United Kingdom banned handguns in 1997 and over the next eight years its homicide rate rose by 50 percent. When the police were increased by 14%, the rate returned to earlier levels. But Democrats would defund the police in America, anyway.
Over 90% of violent crimes do not involve guns. Per the CPRC, the following percent of Violent Crimes do NOT Involve guns:
Homicides peaked in 2020 and have come down but the murder rate was still 7 percent higher in 2023 than in 2019. Murthy and Biden blame this increase on the lack of gun control while ignoring the aforementioned defund the police budget cuts, DA’s refusing to prosecute violent criminals, bail reform, and release of prison inmates during the Covid pandemic.
And let’s look a little deeper at Murthy’s (and Biden/Harris’) deceptive definition of children and adolescents.
The age of majority (no longer an adolescent) in 48 states is 18 and yet Murthy’s claim counts 18- and 19-year-olds as adolescents.
For those adolescents and children under 18:
In 2020 there were 2,443 deaths from vehicles and 2,218 from firearms.
In 2021, there were 2,668 vehicle and 2,519 firearm deaths.
In in 2022, the two numbers are virtually tied at 2,528 for vehicles and 2,538 for firearms.
When excluding justifiable homicides that are committed in self-defense by civilians and police, the number of firearm deaths for under 18s falls by more than several hundred.
As people get older, suicides become more prevalent. Even using numbers for those under the age of 20, in 2020, removing suicides would reduce the number of firearm deaths from 4,253 to 2,960 (CDC numbers) or from 3,405 to 2,112 (FBI).
People don’t decide, “I’ve got a gun I think I’ll commit suicide.” They decide to commit suicide and then look for the means. There are many other effective ways to commit suicide besides guns.
And when Biden, Harris and Murthy mention children, they want you to picture young children and not teenagers belonging to gangs. Gang related shootings are significant causes of the deaths of older children.
The surgeon general wants to promote gun control through public health. He should first get his facts and logic right.
