Dr. Timothy Wheeler, speaking at the 2016 Gun Rights Policy Conference.
[Editor’s note: This is the last of four presentations DRGO leadership gave at this weekend’s 31st annual Gun Rights Policy Conference hosted by the Second Amendment Foundation in Tampa. See the video, beginning at 9:36:35.]
I want to thank Alan Gottlieb and Julianne Versnel and their staff for once again putting on the best networking conference ever for firearm civil rights. And, especially for sponsoring Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, DRGO, as one of its projects.
And since we are in Florida, it is proper that we should honor the person behind passage of Florida’s Firearm Owners’ Privacy Act, the famous Docs vs Glocks law.
She’s a former NRA President and she’s executive director of the Unified Sportsmen of Florida. Marion Hammer is not with us today, but she should be here to receive the honor that is due to her for conceiving the Firearm Owners’ Privacy Act and seeing it through. As I’ve said in past conferences, DRGO has been deeply involved in this issue starting from before it was enacted until this year, when we submitted our most recent amicus brief in federal court to defend the law.
And by the way, let me thank Joseph Greenlee standing way in the back there, the attorney who wrote our most recent amicus brief in the Wollschlaeger case defending the Docs vs Glocks law in the federal 11th District Circuit Court.
Because of Marion Hammer, the medical establishment, not just in Florida but all across America, have been put on notice that they cannot abuse a patient’s trust in their doctor to push a political agenda of gun control in the exam room.
So . . . (which way is Tallahassee?) . . . thank you Marion Hammer.
I couldn’t leave this podium without thanking my team here. These are the four medical doctors who will be running DRGO after the first of the year:
Arthur Przebinda—Project Director (at home watching GRPC via live streaming)
Robert Young—Executive Editor
John Edeen—Membership Director
Sean Brodale—Outreach Director
These four guys, over the last few years, threw me a life preserver and saved Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership. We have them to thank for a robust and growing national organization that works every day to defend our civil right to own firearms from public health elites at places like Harvard and Johns Hopkins, and other centers for public health gun control.
In the future we plan to:
1) Continue to refine our blog, which gives you fresh content twice weekly from medical experts who also have expertise in firearm policy, ethics, and much more.
2) Develop a referral service to refer you to physicians and other health care providers. Now these health care providers won’t be like that gun-grabbing pediatrician up in Ocala who kicked that young lady and her baby out of his practice for questioning him. No, these doctors on our list are gun rights friendly. You might even wind up a visit by comparing notes on reloads or on favorite hunting rifles. Practitioners interested in being on our patient referral list can email us at info@drgo.us. Thanks to Dr. Arthur Przebinda for conceiving this great idea.
3) Establish ongoing monitoring of Dr. Garen Wintemute’s Violence Prevention Research Center at the University of California-Davis. Wintemute just grabbed $5 million of our tax money out there to finance his anti-gun factoid factory. We’re not going to let him get away with it.
Finally, never forget that powerful, elite so-called leaders in our medical schools, research hospitals, and government bureaucracy are dedicated to eliminating gun ownership, period. We must never let down our guard, we must never believe them, and we must never give them an inch. At Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership our job is to challenge them, derail them, and finally discredit them. We’ve been doing just that for over 20 years, but now I feel we’re just getting started.
Thank you.
—Timothy Wheeler, MD is director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a project of the Second Amendment Foundation.