Amid a Pandemic, Biden’s CDC Director Goes After the Second Amendment – America’s 1st Freedom

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore courtesy Flickr

As reports of COVID-19 cases increase, and various politicians demand more lockdowns and mandates, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced plans to cure an epidemic of crime?

Speaking with CNN last week, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said, Something has to be done about [illegal shootings]. Now is the timeits pedal to the metal time.

We havent spent the time, energy and frankly the resources to understand this problem because its been so divided, she said, as CNN pointed to biased numbers from the Gun Violence Archive.

Armed with a renewed focusand millions in federal funding to study so-called gun violencetheyre already pumping cash into what they say are violence-prevention projects.

CNN also recycled the myth that the NRA convinced Congress to cut all of the CDCs funding for gun research. In actuality, the CDC was only barred from spending money to advocate or promote gun control. (Of course, if you say you cant study criminal shootings without advocating for gun control, arent you implicitly validating gun owners concerns of an underlying political agenda?)

Im not here about gun control, Walensky said. Im here about preventing gun violence and gun death. In other words, she wants people to compromise away their right to keep and bear arms by empowering her agency to write public policy.

Premise-as-the-conclusion, agenda-driven research is often funded with the express purpose of fueling anti-Second Amendment articles from the mainstream media that they then hope will impact public opinion. In sum, its all political theatre.

Prior to recent rises in crime related to civil unrest and economic shutdowns, violent crime was basically in adecades-longdecline, as shown by the FBIsUniform Crime Reportsand the Department of JusticesCrime Victimization Survey. (The former measures formal reports, the latter surveys victims to account for incomplete records.)

The CDC was actually caught burying data on defensive gun use in the past. Also, officials, such as U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, have all used this type of rhetoric to push gun control in the past.

Walensky has also faced bipartisan criticism in recent months for the CDCs lack of transparency, changing goalposts, and contradictory messaging on COVID-19 policyall of which has been used as excuses by some politicians to impact gun sales. Walensky recently said shes struggling to communicate with the public on the issue. Maybe thats why separate polls show public trust in the CDC has declined since the start of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, gun owners are particularly justified in thinking that the head of a government agency created to control and prevent disease should be focused on combatting COVID-19 during this ongoing pandemic, not looking for excuses to infringe upon a constitutional right.

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Amid a Pandemic, Biden's CDC Director Goes After the Second Amendment - America's 1st Freedom