Republican Lawmakers Ask RFK, Jr. to Stamp Out Any Last Gun Control Efforts at HHS

I’m not going to lie, I was never a fan of RFK, Jr. for any role in the government. I’ve never been a big fan of him, though I did like that he was a middle finger in the fact of the Democratic establishment. It might have been interesting to see how he’d have done in a truly open primary for the Democratic nomination.

But he got stiffed, ended up siding with Trump, and is now the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Which seems strange to me.

While RFK, Jr. has a history of backing gun control to some degree–which, really, isn’t overly surprising considering his family history–Republican lawmakers want him to seek and destroy any anti-gun remnants in his department.

A group of House Republicans is asking Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to crack down on any remaining gun control efforts within his department, which they argue is in “direct violation of federal law.”

“We write to you today to urge you to protect the Second Amendment from attacks by a partisan and weaponized Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and National Institutes of Health (NIH)—which became a dangerous threat to gun ownership under the Biden Administration,” the letter led by Rep. Diana Harshbarger, R-Tenn., read.

Harshbarger’s letter also demanded that Kennedy reverse a Biden-era policy declaring gun violence a “public health emergency.”

“Treating firearm-related violent crime as a public health issue may start with a study about gun control but ends with tyranny,” it said.

Congress banned federal funding from being used to advocate for gun control in a 1996 spending bill, a measure called the Dickey Amendment. A 2018 spending bill softened that language somewhat, allowing for the CDC to research the causes of gun violence.

But the letter, which was signed by 15 House GOP lawmakers total, argued that the Biden administration went beyond what was allowable.

The letter is correct.

The truth of the matter is that time and time again, various government entities, while operating with taxpayer money, have taken a position that involved openly advocating for gun control. Biden’s surgeon general was just one of the many examples that we saw, and one that was more blatant and public.

Now, the question is whether RFK will listen.

As I said, Kennedy has expressed at least some sentiments toward gun control. It’s not as pronounced as one might expect from someone hailing from the Democratic royal family of Kennedy, but they’ve still been there.

Yet he’s also expressed skepticism involving vaccines, and not just the COVID vaccine, and yet he’s actually told people to get the measles vaccine after kids have died from the disease. It seems like he’s willing to accept new inputs and work with President Trump.

It’s very possible that he will look deep into HHS and make sure no one is engaging in the same kind of shenanigans we’ve seen in other parts of the executive branch, where they try to play games to hide the slant by renaming something or simply pretending it’s not there. 

I sincerely hope he does, because I’m sick of my tax dollars going toward helping someone else curtail my rights.