Gun-control advocates have long tried to leverage tax dollars to support their anti-freedom agenda. Starting in the 1980s, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began using federal funds to support “research” that was actually predetermined anti-gun propaganda. In 1996, Congress sought to end this racket by adding an NRA-supported amendment to budget bills stating,“none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”
Violence perpetrated with firearms has traditionally, and most effectively, been treated as a criminal-justice matter. Of course, this approach requires acknowledging individual responsibility, along with punishing and incapacitating those who commit violent crimes.
But the “public-health” frame is more advantageous for anti-gun activists. Responsibility is transferred to the inanimate object. Firearms are treated like germs transmitting a communicable disease—pathogens to be eradicated.
As bad as the CDC’s efforts were, the Biden-Harris administration managed to plumb new depths of “public-health” absurdity. Illustrating just how ridiculous, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently bankrolled research trying to connect violence perpetrated with guns to bad teeth. Also funded was a tract seeking to recruit dentists as professional gun-control spokespersons.
The federal government, in other words, used taxpayer money to fund anti-gun dentistry.
The American Journal of Preventive Medicine published the article “Firearm Violence and Dental Health: A Neighborhood Analysis in 100 U.S. Cities, 2014–2022” in its June edition.
Gun-control propaganda outlet The Trace explained: “The study … is the first of its kind to examine the connection between oral health and firearm exposure.” According to the study’s conclusion, “Neighborhoods experiencing higher levels of firearm violence face disparities in dental care and oral health, highlighting firearm violence as a social determinant of oral health.”
So, the takeaway is that guns cause cavities and gingivitis? The Trace pointed out that this work of scientific genius was the product of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers University. It also added that the center “is at risk of steep budget cuts as funding for gun violence prevention has come under threat at both the state and federal levels.”
Meanwhile, the acknowledgment section of the journal article noted that the authors, “received funding for the current study from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (R03DE034009).”
The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research is a subsidiary of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which, in turn, is a component of HHS. The alphanumeric code is an NIH project number. According to the NIH’s website, the project’s total funding was $201,041.
This grant also funded an item titled “Integrating firearm secure storage counseling into dental practice: Opportunities for dental practice-based research” that was published in the May edition of the Journal of the American Dental Association. Citing former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s “public-health” campaign against firearms, the item called for dentists to inquire about their patients’ gun ownership and lecture them about firearm-storage practices.
The piece urged, “Providers may initiate discussions during routine visits by means of asking patients about the presence of firearms in the household and how they are stored.”
The authors acknowledged, “dental care professionals may lack training or confidence in discussing firearm safety, given its limited inclusion in dental school or continuing education curricula.” However, to alleviate this, they encouraged “professional dental societies” to provide “[t]raining on firearm secure storage counseling.”
The report concluded:
[T]he time is ripe for dental care professionals to prioritize firearm secure storage research and practice. As a profession, dentistry has the potential to be at the forefront of an expanded, interdisciplinary approach to firearm harm reduction that can contribute to public health efforts aimed at reducing firearm-related injuries and deaths.
Now for the good news.
Reforming America’s embattled public health bureaucracy has been a priority for President Trump. Early actions on this front have been encouraging.
In May, the journal Nature reported: ”The US National Institutes of Health … has drastically increased the number of grant applications it has rejected without funding.” The article continued, “So far this year, at least 2,500 applications for research funding have been withdrawn—a term the agency uses to denote refusal for administrative reasons. This is more than double the number of applications that were withdrawn in the same period in each of the past two years.”
Sounds like a good start.
Our recommendation: Put more teeth into law enforcement and end public funding of campaigns to convince unrelated professionals their jobs include gun control.
