For the last two decades, crime — particularly, violent crime — has been on the decline in the United States, but one would never get that impression from the National Rifle Association’s talking points.
“We know, in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and home invaders and drug cartels and car-jackers and knock-out gamers and rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping mall killers, road-rage killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse the society that sustains us all,” said NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre during this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference.
This ability to cultivate fear among the voting base has convinced many in Washington that the relatively small lobby has the power to make or break elections, especially in gun-supporting states. While analytical evidence — such as the fact that 95 percent of the money the NRA spent in federal elections in 2012 went to losing candidates and NRA-supported gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli lost in 2013 in the NRA’s home state of Virginia — suggests that the NRA’s impact is more a matter of appearances than results, many in Congress still fear running against an NRA-backed candidate.
Take, for example, the case of Dr. Vivek Murthy, who President Barack Obama has nominated to fill the vacant office of surgeon general. While the surgeon general is the operational head of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and principal advisor to the secretary of Health and Human Services in regards to public health issues, because the office has no direct implication in non-military policy, it is commonly seen as the administration’s spokesperson for issues of public medical concern.
Despite this, due to the NRA’s public opposition to Murthy, 10 red-state Senate Democrats have come forward to oppose his nomination, postponing confirmation hearings. The NRA is against Murthy because while he was on staff for Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, he wrote that he favored mandatory gun safety training and an assault weapons ban — measures that also have the approval of most Americans.
“Still, 10 Senate Democrats are apparently prepared to vote against Murthy’s confirmation because of his personal views on firearms — a demonstration of just how much political power our legislators have ceded to the NRA,” wrote Jeffrey Drazen, Gregory Curfman and Stephen Morrissey for the New England Journal of Medicine. “The critical question is this: Should a special-interest organization like the NRA have veto power over the appointment of the nation’s top doctor? The very idea is unacceptable.”
The NRA has spent a great deal of money and influence to prevent the question of gun control as public policy from being addressed. There are currently bans prohibiting the use of federal funds to sponsor gun safety research.
Murthy has publicly stated that his focus as surgeon general would be obesity, not guns. However, due to the NRA’s ratcheting of fear and the organization’s campaign to convince the nation that guns are not the problem, a good doctor could be denied his honorific.
“Despite the continuing American tragedy of mass shootings — Newtown, Aurora, Fort Hood, Virginia Tech — the NRA has redoubled its efforts to prevent enactment of stricter firearm regulations,” the NEJM editors continued. “Lawmakers who run afoul of the NRA face political retribution. By obstructing the President’s nomination of Vivek Murthy as surgeon general, the NRA is taking its single-issue political blackmail to a new level.
“With the record of past surgeons general as their guide, senators should do what is right for the health of our country by confronting the NRA and voting their own conscience. Dr. Murthy is an accomplished physician, policymaker, leader, and entrepreneur. He deserves the President’s continued backing and should be confirmed.”