Guns & Public Health

Firearms are not a public health issue.

The late 1980s saw the beginnings of a coordinated political movement among public health agencies and medical organizations to advocate for gun control. Leaders of prominent medical organizations like the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and even the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control loudly proclaimed firearms to be a public health menace to be severely restricted or even banned.

This public health gun prohibition movement attempted to “reframe the debate”, to use a popular phrase of the time, so that its agenda would not be seen as a frontal assault on the constitutional right of gun ownership. Their intent was to portray it as a valiant effort to stamp out the “disease” of “gun violence”. Concurrently, these academic and institutional leaders suppressed the already-large body of criminology science that shows gun ownership by responsible people to be a public health benefit, through the prevention of violent crime.

DRGO’s efforts over the years have successfully exposed the political motives of those who try to disguise their anti-gun rights agenda as concern for our health. And we shall continue to do so.