For quite a while, some have been advocating a “public health” approach on guns. Now, this isn’t as stupid as it looks, in part because there are some aspects of violent crime that can be approached effectively that way. Namely, addressing the desire for revenge in the wake of someone being shot. Failure to do so can lead to a cascade of violent crime, all stemming from that one incident.

But the problem is that too many of those advocating for a public health approach aren’t content to look at it from that angle. They want to go well beyond what can be done for people and want to attack the guns themselves.

The truth is, as an op-ed at the Washington Examiner notes, politicians have shown they can’t be trusted when it comes to the Second Amendment and public health.

The Senate Judiciary Committee recently held a hearing titled “The Gun Violence Epidemic: A Public Health Crisis.” Unsurprisingly, the focus of the Democratic-led hearing was how to further restrict the ability of law-abiding residents to protect themselves and their loved ones. This included discussion of constitutionally problematic “red flag” laws, widespread bans on so-called “assault weapons,” mandatory gun storage rules, and universal gun registration — all in the name of protecting “public health.”

We’ve seen this before. Politicians often use the excuse of “public health” to strip away rights protected under the Constitution. We witnessed this during the COVID-19 pandemic when governors and state authorities implemented arbitrary restrictions that prevented children from going to school and forced small businesses to close their doors.

A more recent example regarding the Second Amendment unfolded earlier this year in New Mexico. In September, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) issued a sweeping “emergency public health order” that banned the concealed carry of firearms in public places in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Bernalillo County. She said the order would stem the rise in violent crime that the community was experiencing despite the fact that these crimes were almost always being committed by criminals with illegally possessed guns. At one point, Lujan Grisham even acknowledged that criminals were unlikely to adhere to the order, but she proceeded to restrict the rights of law-abiding gun owners anyway and used the guise of “public health” to justify it.

In other words, they’ve shown that the only approach they’re interested in taking is one that infringes on our rights as citizens.

Grisham, in particular, gave the game away with her blatantly unconstitutional “emergency public health order” that, as noted above, she knew criminals wouldn’t follow. She didn’t even try to hedge when asked about that, either. She simply replied with, “No.”

Yet she did it anyway.

What we all need to remember is that this isn’t about public health. The health approach isn’t about health, but a façade being put up to make it so people will feel wrong for questioning the anti-gun narrative. It’s a mask meant to hide the reality from people who don’t want to look too deeply.

The truth of the matter is politicians can’t be trusted. They can’t be trusted on most things, but especially not on anything where they try to take away or restrict our rights under the guise of it being for our own good.