Some of us remember our days as kids, when the adults in our lives would tell us before bedtime, “Brush your teeth, and say your prayers.”
It wasn’t a threat, however, but an injunction to end the day on a healthy and uplifting note.
Now, however, “science” is informing us that this old-fashioned directive may, in fact, have had relevance to the issue of “gun violence.”
Anti-gun propaganda organ The Trace recently published a story under the headline, “Gun Violence Linked to Surprising Side-Effect: Poor Dental Health.”
This is particularly intriguing, because anybody who has seen an old cowboy movie knows that moments before “gun violence” breaks out, one of the combatants is often prone to tell the other, “Smile when you say that.”
Could it be that poor oral hygiene is indeed considered a provocation in these situations? Could that explain why those types of confrontations often ended badly on the frontier, where dental care was scarce and usually dispensed with whiskey and large pliers?
The Trace article does lend some support to that hypothesis, continuing, “In communities with the highest rates of gun violence, residents are less likely to receive dental care.”
It also notes (perhaps unnecessarily): “The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in April, is the first of its kind to examine the connection between oral health and firearm exposure.”
What else could possibly explain this connection?
Fortunately, the researchers had an answer for that: “a pervasive sense of fear, chronic stress, and social and economic disruption brought on by firearm violence could potentially contribute to adverse health behaviors,” including “poor oral health.”
In other words, certain folks might be so demoralized by the presence of guns in society that they can’t bring themselves to brush or floss. (We would only ask how this conclusion squares with the infamously poor dental health of Great Britain, where private ownership of firearms has largely been eliminated. Perhaps they should study a possible link with Ninja Swords.)
The Trace also reports that this work of scientific genius was the product of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers University.
We had noted, during the Biden-Harris regime, that the administration was directing anti-gun states to follow its lead with the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and establish similar efforts with the taxpayer dollars of their states.
Sadly for projects like this, The Trace article laments that the New Jersey center is now “is at risk of steep budget cuts as funding for gun violence prevention has come under threat at both the state and federal levels.”
And you have to wonder why, when those researchers are busy connecting dots like these, as crime involved individuals on the streets who are already legally prohibited from possessing guns are nonetheless killing each other over things like social media disses.
Wouldn’t it be better, if you were worried about the well-being of these communities, to focus – as McGruff the Crime Dog said – on taking a bite out of crime?
Not according to the scientists in New Jersey, who have a different prescription. They suggest: “integrating oral care into gun violence prevention organizations could be essential in mitigating the risks of both gun violence and lack of dental care.”
Normally, NRA-ILA does not take a position on dentistry related issues.
But, if gun control organizations wanted to divert more of their resources to improving oral healthcare in distressed communities (and less to taking away everybody else’s guns), we would certainly consider that a positive development.
Either way, as this hard-hitting expose shows, taxpayers at any level of government should not have to shoulder the cost for this sort of dubious scientific exploration into “gun violence.”
This time, we can thank The Trace and the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center for reminding us (and hopefully DOGE and DOJ’s Second Amendment Task Force) of that point yet again.
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