Halting the use of taxpayer dollars to promote gun control won’t end our deficit spending (or even put much of a dent in it), but it would at least put a stop to government-supported junk science weaponized against our Second Amendment rights.
NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action recently uncovered a couple of examples of the anti-gun nonsense that’s been published thanks to the Biden administration and Congress’s largesse, which has given $25 million each year over the past few years to the CDC and the National Institutes of Health for “gun violence” research.
One study was entitled “Firearm Violence and Dental Health: A Neighborhood Analysis in 100 U.S. Cities, 2014-2022”, and sought to find a connection between oral health and firearm exposure. The study’s unsurprising finding was that neighborhoods with high rates of “gun violence” often have disparities in dental care and oral health. That makes perfect sense given that most of these communities are economically disadvantaged. I’m sure many of them are lacking in all kinds of services, from mental health to dog groomers. But was it really necessary to spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to discover the blindingly obvious?
The Trace pointed out that this work of scientific genius was the product of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers University. The outlet also whined that the center, “is at risk of steep budget cuts as funding for gun violence prevention has come under threat at both the state and federal levels.”
However, that doesn’t tell the whole story.
The acknowledgment section of the study noted that the authors, “received funding for the current study from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (R03DE034009).”
The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research is a subsidiary of the National Institutes of Health, which itself falls under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The alphanumeric code is an NIH project number. According to the NIH’s website, the project’s total funding cost was $201,041.
According to a separate publication, this grant also funded another dentistry meets firearms policy article.
An item titled “Integrating firearm secure storage counseling into dental practice: Opportunities for dental practice-based research” was published in the May edition of Journal of the American Dental Association. According to the acknowledgments section of this piece, the “study” was funded by the NIH under the same project number. The two authors of this item also appeared on the American Journal of Preventive Medicine study.
Despite, being referred to as a “study” by the authors, the Journal of the American Dental Association item is more of an advocacy tract. Citing former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s “public health” campaign against firearms, the item called for dentists to unnecessarily inquire about their patients’ gun ownership and lecture them about firearm storage practices.
The piece noted, “Providers may initiate discussions during routine visits by means of asking patients about the presence of firearms in the household and how they are stored.”
Now, I have a good relationship with my dentist, who happens to be an Army veteran. We usually chit chat about shooting or his latest gun purchase when I’m getting my teeth cleaned, but if he started quizzing me about my gun storage habits I’d be quickly looking for another practitioner to address my oral hygiene going forward.
As NRA-ILA notes, NIH has rejected at least 2,500 applications for research funding this year; more than double the number of grant applications that were withdrawn in both 2024 and 2023. Hopefully those denials include similarly ridiculous research efforts and anti-gun activism disguised as investigative studies. Second Amendment advocates warned back in 2019 that giving these agencies money to conduct research into “gun violence” was just going to lead to government-funded promotion of gun control, and these “studies” are clear evidence that we were right. It’s time to zero out similar funding going forward. If anti-gun billionaires like Michael Bloomberg want to pay for these junk studies fine, but taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for a single penny of this anti-2A propaganda.
Read the full article here
