Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's gun violence advisory kicked over the anthill. Kind of.

Nothing about that is surprising, really. From the moment it was released, we knew exactly what was going. Anti-gunners were going to use the advisory to justify their actions, all while pretending that Murthy is anything but part of the Biden administration who was selected for the job in part because of his anti-gun views.

And it's funny that his advisory coincidentally calls for some of the exact same provisions the Biden administration has been trying to cram down people's throats since the 2020 campaign.

Yet nothing new was presented. Absolutely no policy recommendations besides the tired old things that have been pushed for decades, including an assault weapon ban which we already had and didn't work.

NRA president Bob Barr has a weekly column. He's had it for years, well before he took the job with the NRA. In his column, he takes apart Murthy's advisory.

Unlike his predecessors, who employed the bully pulpit of their office to crusade against arguably public health-related issues such as smoking and AIDS, Murthy’s June 25th “Surgeon General’s Advisory” has nothing to do with any reasoned or common sense definition of health. It does, however, have everything to do with politics; in this case, the one policy issue liberals invariably turn to as a way to rally their base — gun control. 

...

Much of the mainstream media was breathless in drawing attention to the Surgeon General’s call to action against the scourge of violence committed by individuals misusing firearms. CNN, for example, lauded Murthy at length for joining the gun control hallelujah chorus. MyChesCo called it a “Landmark Step.”

The partisan, political perspective unsurprisingly reflected in CNN’s article praising Murthy’s gun-control missive was obvious in the video placed atop the opinion piece – a photograph not of the Surgeon General but a video of President Biden. 

There has been little public discourse spawned by the firearms violence advisory since its unveiling in June, for the simple reason it offers nothing new. Rather, it repeats the same talking points gun control advocates have urged for years — too many guns in America and the need for more laws restricting their availability and possession. 

Despite the document’s veneer of approaching the “generational” public health crisis of gun violence, it is nothing more than the same, tired recitation of control measures pressed by the gun control movement for decades — including banning “assault weapons,” instituting “universal background checks” and mandating firearms lock boxes. Nothing, incidentally, about stronger and more effective enforcement of laws on the books against the criminal misuse of firearms.

Funny that, ain't it?

Especially in light of the "for the children" argument surrounding all of these proposals that just went up in smoke.

Barr is correct about the lack of discussion. We've covered Murthy's announcement and some of the responses to it, but we haven't really gone after it because, as Barr said, there's nothing new in there. Nothing at all.

Which is probably the most telling part of it.

Murthy and his media allies are trying to spin this as something momentous, but it's a rehash. 

In the process, Murthy is redefining the role of the surgeon general. That might sound like a complement, but it's not.

Whereas his predecessors tackled actual public health issues and did so from a medical perspective, Murthy is simply providing political ammunition to those who would see our right to keep and bear arms erased forever.

What the Biden administration and Murthy haven't accounted for, though, is that once the genie is out of the bottle, you can't put it back in. Future surgeon generals will figure there's no reason for them to be above the fray and will start issuing advisories over all kinds of things that give ammunition to their side of things. It'll start a back and forth that does nothing but devalues the office of the surgeon general.

And now that ship has set sail.