United States – -(AmmoLand.com)- A Twitter exchange earlier this month between pollster Frank Luntz and Christina Pushaw, spokeswoman for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, should show just how far off Luntz is, particularly when it comes to some history about “public health.” Luntz was shocked that people would be skeptical about “public health.”
Well, Second Amendment supporters could have explained it to him, and not just from the recent push by the CDC with regards to “medical misinformation” that could be aimed at Second Amendment activism. In fact, the use of “public health” against the Second Amendment has a long and sordid history.
Back when Major Owens wanted to ban handguns in 1993, he titled his legislation the “Public Health and Safety Act.” Even these days, one effort to undermine firearms preemption laws, the “Local Public Health And Safety Protection Act of 2021,” uses “public health” as a justification to attack our rights.
Now, it doesn’t do us any good to deny that gunshot wounds don’t cost money to treat. Any responsible gun owner knows that guns can inflict serious injury or death if they are misused or handled negligently. See Alec Baldwin for the latter, or what happens in Chicago, Baltimore, and other cities for examples of the former.
Politicians have also used “public health” as an excuse to attack the Second Amendment. Terry McAuliffe used that claim when he ran for governor. Andrew Cuomo, whose anti-Second Amendment extremism knew no boundaries, also made that phony claim. It’s been parroted as well by many doctors, who abused the trust of Second Amendment supporters to lecture them about how exercising their Second Amendment rights was like spreading a disease on multiple occasions.
We’ve seen this as well during the pandemic. While firearms sales have seen record highs, we also saw our rights get trampled in the name of containing the pandemic. Some anti-Second Amendment politicians even tried to shut down FFLs in the name of containing COVID-19.
This is not to attack the notion that we shouldn’t promote health. The issue is not medical research. It’s the perversion of it for political ends that has become the problem, whether with regards to COVID-19 or the Second Amendment. Luntz is just one of many folks caught up in an Acela-corridor mentality that misses the point.
This is why Second Amendment supporters have a lot of work to do. They need to write their elected officials (this NRA-ILA tool will help) and politely urge them not to let “public health” be used against any of our freedoms. They also need to defeat anti-Second Amendment extremists via the ballot box at the federal, state, and local levels this November, and work to replace the Biden-Harris regime with a pro-Second Amendment ticket in 2024.
About Harold Hutchison
Writer Harold Hutchison has more than a dozen years of experience covering military affairs, international events, U.S. politics and Second Amendment issues. Harold was consulting senior editor at Soldier of Fortune magazine and is the author of the novel Strike Group Reagan. He has also written for the Daily Caller, National Review, Patriot Post, Strategypage.com, and other national websites.