By Arthur Z. Przebinda, MD (excerpted with permission from an editorial published at drgo.us)

A little over a year ago, the California legislature enacted a bundle of anti-gun legislation nicknamed “Gunmeggedon.” Nestled amongst the farrago of anti-firearms freedom laws: SB 1006. A bill that set aside $5m to create a “Firearm Violence Research Center.”

Suspecting that the Golden State legislature were set on creating an anti-gun agitptop machine, the pro-Second Amendment camp convinced friendly legislators to alter the language. The new language directed the Firearm Violence Research Center to investigate the positive and socially beneficial aspects of guns, as well as its negative effects.

The law’s original supporters pulled the bill.

Working with California Senate President pro tem Kevin de Leon, legislators did an end run. The funds were allocated as a budgetary line item, without any mandate to examine the pro-gun rights position.

Worse, they designated Garen Wintemute’s UC-Davis Violence Prevention Research Program as the location of the Firearm Violence Research Center.

The decision was celebrated by a fluff piece at sacbee.com, profiling the man who ripped money from the pockets of California gun-owning tax payers to further his agenda.

Like so many mainstream media reports on “gun violence” research, Editorial Page Editor Dan Moraine begins by propagating the lie that the Centers for Disease Control has been banned from research into firearms-related injury and death.

It hasn’t. In 1996, Congress directed that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” In other words, science yes. Anti-gun bias, no.

The article paints Garen Wintemute as the people’s champion of the people. However, Wintemute is entrenched power. He is the recipient of millions of dollars from ordinary Californians. He has now gained an unchallengeable grip on the propaganda machine used to justify the disarmament of decent people.

No financial information can be found on the Violence Prevention Research Program website. There’s no website for the new Firearm Violence Research Center. Will Dr. Wintermute receive a salary? Has his team changed or grown? Who is vetting his research?

Given his history, Dr. Wintemute’s work should be subject to intense scrutiny, One of his studies is based entirely on collecting internet news reports of bullets falling from the sky, or “real-time surveillance using Google and Yahoo! news alert services, searching on stray bullet, and the news archives of GunPolicy.org”, as he put it, to make up his data set regarding celebratory gun fire.

Among Wintemute’s ostensibly academic trophies: an exposé of area gun shows in which he selectively quoted various sellers to create an unflattering picture of the entire gun community. The second is his “Ring of Fire” campaign — leading to the California legislature’s ban on low-cost handguns and put their Southern California producers out of business.

However, in that crusade, he eradicated a category of firearms needed in legitimate defensive situations, because low-income minorities are likely only to be able to be able to afford inexpensive guns. His advocacy disarmed these people because eliminating economical firearms prices them out of the ability to defend themselves.

With the arrival of California’s taxpayer-funded Firearm Violence Research Center, look for more of the same from Dr. Wintermute: highly-biased studies “proving” that civilian disarmament saves lives. It doesn’t. Guns save life. One way or another, Californians will continue pay to learn that lesson.

——

Arthur Z Przebinda, MD is an imaging specialist in Southern California. He advocates for the Second Amendment in his state and nationally and since 2017 serves as DRGO’s Project Director. 

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28 COMMENTS

    • Nobody should die like that.

      Personally, I hope Dr. Wintemute passes away quietly and peacefully, at a ripe old age, surrounded by attentive nurses and aides. I hope the last thing he hears are words of solace from loved ones. I hope he is not in physical pain.

      But I hope the second-to-last thing he hears are some of his nurses and aides talking about their last trip to the range, and how their new concealed-carry piece performed, because Dr. Wintemute, between now and then, saw his entire life’s work crumble, fragment and dissipate in glorious slow motion as he raged impotent against it, because the country he tried to render helpless returned to the path of personal freedom and responsibility.

  2. “Gun violence research organizations” are just pass thru donation shells for redistributions to POS (D)NC.

    Follow the $$$.

    AND A HIGH MIDDLE FINGER TO CA.

  4. I saw that pic and one word popped into my twisted mind:

    From the ‘Urban Dictionary’ –

    Smarmy –

    “A certain attitude often accompanied by a squinty look and a superior
    smile that makes you instantly hate a person. Similar to snobby.”

    Eh, pretty much covers it…

  5. Good job funding Minitruth, CA taxpayers. People say we should support CA gun owners, but meh, just funding the legal and political battles pumps money and drama into that state which end of the day will always be a peoples’ republic. I’d rather see it let go.

    • Sid

      “Working with California Senate President pro tem Kevin de Leon, legislators did an end run. The funds were allocated as a budgetary line item, without any mandate to examine the pro-gun rights position.”

      They did this behind closed doors. There was nothing we could have done to prevent it.

      • I know there was nothing you could do. As long as you live there and pay taxes you’re tools. Your call, but I’m not impressed.

        • Sid, that pretty much applies to every American, everywhere, not just gun owners in California. We are all robbed endlessly to finance our chains.

        • MamaLiberty – yeah, if a Barataria Pirate were here today they could call me a tool, but individual liberty is winning on some fronts, including firearms most places.

        • Ironic you should mention us being robbed to finance our chains Mama Liberty. The Statue of Liberty depicts her as walking free from chains, but the Communists put a commie poem in her basement as a symbolic means of puting them back on.

          Better dead than red (communist).

        • Those are all platitudes and over simplified ideas. If we took Sid’s and others’ logic to its terminal conclusion, we would have to blame Sid for Barack Obama since he lives in America, works, and pays taxes. Don’t blame me for the way things are here. It would be that way whether I was here or not. From the inside looking out, what I see is California insanity spreading radially out from here. Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Colorado. These used to be unquestionably free states until California nut jobs sunk their claws in. They want you to leave. If your voice is gone, they won’t have any opposition. Stay, fight, have kids, spread YOUR ideology in their back yard.

        • You shouldn’t blame me Richard, you should thank me. Gun rights won during the Obama years. Typical CA, trying to spread the guilt.

      • Ya, the rest of us are just waiting for the civil war where we come get our real estate back.

        You don’t want to, then, request any sorting of the Vinny from the Venison, ’cause that’ll be asking too much right then.

        If’n then, get to high ground though, ’cause NASA’s gonna take the pictures, and people are going to think CA developed a sink-hole.

        Just sayin’

  6. … the lie that the Centers for Disease Control has been banned from research into firearms-related injury and death.

    It hasn’t. In 1996, Congress directed that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” In other words, science yes. Anti-gun bias, no.

    Huh, I see a HUGE Freudian slip among gun-grabbers. In their minds all research HAS to be for gun control. Ergo, a ban on research for gun control means a ban on all research. What this shows is that gun-grabbers have ZERO interest in the truth. Rather, their only interest is promoting their agenda, facts be damned!

  8. So, they gave $5MM in tax money to a political activist in order to support his political activities?

    • No. they gave him $5 million to fund research that will give the “factual” support for the next round of restrictions on gun rights in the state.

  9. And the WAR on FREEDOM and LIBERTY continues. Control of the legal law abiding serfs/cash cows must and will march on. F__K I hate this state and the brain stem only voter block that put tyrants in office to rule over us.

  12. Yeah, this shet is just another day in California, maybe one day we can get the Supremes to vote on a case that forces Libbys to read the second clause of the 2nd Amendment, “shall not be infringed” and enshrine that into parallel law that circumvents libby law makers political ambitions?

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