(courtesy drgo.us)

Dr. Timothy Wheeler writes [republished with permission from drgo.us]:

Sparks flew yesterday in the California Senate Public Safety Committee. Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership (DRGO) testified at the the committee’s hearing on a slew of gun control bills, including SB 1006, seeking to establish a “Firearm Violence Research Center” — at California taxpayer’s expense. The bill follows a national trend . . .

You’ve seen the history of how national-level public health gun-grabbers leveraged the immense resources of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to finance and produce anti-gun rights junk science. You’ve seen how private institutions like Harvard and Johns Hopkins universities similarly tap into their vast endowments from anti-civil rights magnates like Michael Bloomberg.

But that’s not enough for the gun ban crowd. In California a move is afoot to establish a California Firearm Violence Research Center at the University of California. What a novel idea.

Oh wait! We already have one. It’s called the Violence Prevention Research Program, and it’s located at the University of California-Davis. Founded and fronted by famed anti-gun advocacy researcher Garen Wintemute, MD, MPH, the center has been churning out articles for decades linking guns to juvenile delinquency, excessive drinking and bad breath.

OK, maybe not bad breath, but Dr. Wintemute has written many, many articles from his base at the UC-Davis Violence Prevention Research Program, and not one of them has anything good to say about guns or the Americans who own them. Quite the opposite, in fact.

But Dr. Wintemute, along with his fellow hoplophobic health researchers, has complained bitterly and very publicly about the lack of tax money to pay for his work and his center’s operation since a certain congressional budget action back in 1996, well described on this blog.

We’re sure it’s just coincidence that Dr. Wintemute’s anti-gun factoid factory is located in the district of California state Senator Lois Wolk, the author of the Firearm Violence Research Center bill. And who would be cynical enough to suspect that the University of California Firearm Violence Research Center to be established by her bill might look a lot like the existing University of California-Davis Violence Prevention Research Program?

I began my testimony laying out the facts, but amazingly, Committee Chair Sen. Loni Hancock cut me off about halfway through my allowed two minutes – when I was just starting to expose Dr. Wintemute’s record. She actually muzzled the opposition. I guess if you’re getting flak, you must be over the target.

I passed the baton to Dr. Przebinda, sitting next to me at the witness table, and he was able to get the key part of our message across despite Hancock’s attempts to squelch his first amendment rights.

Most people suspect the worst of politicians, and her outrageous muzzling of the expert opposition to this bill today unfortunately confirms their worst fears. We will be following the results of this legislation if it becomes law.

We will post the video or audio of this disgraceful exhibition by Sen. Loni Hancock as soon as we get it, so keep checking this post.

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Full text of Dr. Wheeler’s formal testimony is here. Dr. Przebinda’s spoken testimony is available here). Here you can read DRGO’s formal letter of opposition submitted to the Committee.

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20 COMMENTS

  1. This is the reading and voting on the bill in the previous committee (Senate Education):

    calchannel.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=&clip_id=3461&meta_id=121092

    Yesterday, SB 1006 was heard after the lunch break, after the committee moved to a smaller room. The video or audio record of that session are not yet available on line.

  2. Taking that much flak at a hearing, time to call in the heavy artillery and the AC130’s for a little conversation. I still marvel that there is such a huge and growing segment of the population bent on control and power over every aspect of the citizens’ lives, with total subjugation the ultimate goal. Deny they will, but obvious it is. (With apologies to Yoda, fight we must)

    • It is astounding, isn’t it. I have acquaintances who have proudly told me that they support a tyrannical government…as long as the leader has their same views. I am a student of history, and I spent a lot of time reading about the Weimar Republic, the people of that time, and what led up to the Nazi’s taking control of Germany. What you see today with the Progressive movement is not that dissimilar to the National-Socialist movement of the 1920’s and early 30’s. This “modern” Progressive movement is not some innocent foray into an idealistic college debate on political theory. This is real, this is really happening right now, and since the 2nd amendment is the biggest target in their cross-hairs, everyone of us on this blog should pay attention. It goes without saying that this is why this election is more important than any other election since the day this country was conceived.

    • Most doctors, like anyone else, are decent people, but at the same time, they are under enormous pressure to conform to certain lines or risk losing their income, license, possibly everything.

  4. “You’ve seen the history of how national-level public health gun-grabbers leveraged the immense resources of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to finance and produce anti-gun rights junk science” That’s nothing compared to the story behind the pharmaceutical companies using the CDC to further their own ends.

  5. The Senate Public Safety Committee, and its opposite number in the Assembly, are chaired by vehement anti-gunners, both of whom have cut off debate on bills before them by the pro-gun crowd. For example, the Chairman in the Assembly Public Safety Committee, not wanting to hear testimony in favor of a bill that would end the ten day waiting period for persons who already own guns, have a COE or a CCW, going so far as to shut off the microphone of the assembly person who drafted the bill (and who also sat on the committee). The bill was based on a a federal district court decision (now on appeal) that found the 10 day wait–which was instituted not as a cooling off period but to allow the DOJ time to perform background checks–unconstitutional. Needless to say, the bill is dead. All the other bill pending in the assembly, specifically those that would ban “assault weapons” and ban the sale of ammunition to anyone under the age of 21, easily passed on party line votes, and move on to the Appropriations Committee, where they will likely pass, again on party line votes, and then to the floor, with the expected result. It is a dark session in California, with an all out assault on gun rights that will only be protected, if at all, by the Governor’s veto power.

    • And it will keep going no guns are allowed in California. The liberal coastal regions have a dominating number of representatives in the state government, ready to blanket their wants and desires on the smaller rural cities and peoples.

      End gerrymandering in California

      • The not authorize list is expanding everyday. And no elected representative is doing a dam thing about it.

    • Exempting “persons who already own guns” only validates the state’s gun registry. How else would they know you’ve already got one, and could thus wreak no additional mayhem with another (nine days earlier)?

  6. Just clicking through to some of those links, but am I correct that the Kellerman study that got the CDC into a world of trouble originally said that a gun was 43X more likely to kill a homeowner than an intruder? But then, after being called out on his methodology, he had to back down until he would only go so far as to say 2.7X?

    I get so sick of seeing that misquoted and overused study even today by the media.

    • The Kelleman paper was debunked and pointing that kind of “research” in the House Appropriations Committee hearings is one of the pieces of evidence that led Congress to bar the CDC from engaging in anti-gun activism.

  7. SB1006 / that reminds me, I’ve gotta warm up my S&W 1006, I’ve been neglecting it lately.

  9. Setting your friends up with sweetheart deals at taxpayer’s expense is the only reason most California Democrats get into government in the first place.

    They don’t call it “the land of fruits and nuts” for nothing.

  11. Liberal-Progressives believe that the First Amendment ONLY applies to themselves. It’s part of their double standard for all laws.

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