OPINION:
The president of the American Medical Association, David Barbe, said in recent remarks that it’s high time professionals within the Centers for Disease and Prevention started treating gun violence as if it were a public health crisis — a rather eye-opening statement that not only puts guns in the category of a curable disease, like chicken pox, or measles, maybe, but one that also sets the stage for feds to come up with the cure.
A cure for gun ownership.
Nice. Doctors who “fix” the Second Amendment — what could possibly go wrong with that, right?
At the organization’s annual meeting in Chicago, Barbe called for members to actively petition for resolutions to “address this devastating crisis of our time” and for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to kick off some epidemiological research on gun-related violence — “the only leading cause of death where such research is not being conducted,” he complained.
Well yes, that’s because the CDC’s banned from “such research.”
By the terms of the 1996 Dickey Amendment, the CDC cannot conduct research related to gun violence because of the potential for leftist-leaning medical pros within the agency to push anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment, pro-gun control science — or, so-called science, as the case may be.
But Barbe told AMA members to forget all that — that Parkland and Las Vegas and other places of firearms-tied “carnage” have made obvious the “public health crisis” of guns and if Congress wasn’t going to act, well then, by gosh, the medical field must.
“Have we backed away from our support of universal vaccinations or gains made through the Affordable Care Act because they are controversial? No, we let the science lead us,” Barbe said.
And so it should be with gun violence, he went on.
“The fact that his problem continues to worsen has spurred a new sense of urgency,” Barbe said.
But let the gun owner beware.
Allowing the CDC an open door to analyze the medical causes of gun violence is like setting Al Gore in charge of climate science. The end results will be all about regulation, control and the confiscation of personal, individual rights.
Don’t be surprised if part of the CDC’s recommendations for the soon-to-be-identified Gun Ownership Malady bring forced mental evaluations for anyone who believes in the right to bear arms.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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