When the Biden-Harris administration made clear they intended to use a “whole-of-government” approach to suppress Second Amendment rights, few could have predicted their efforts would extend all the way to the dentist’s office.
Earlier this month, NRA-ILA reported on a study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine titled, “Firearm Violence and Dental Health: A Neighborhood Analysis in 100 U.S. Cities, 2014-2022.”
As an item on the research from Michael Bloomberg-funded anti-gun propaganda outlet The Trace explained, “The study… is the first of its kind to examine the connection between oral health and firearm exposure.” According to the study’s conclusion, “Neighborhoods experiencing higher levels of firearm violence face disparities in dental care and oral health, highlighting firearm violence as a social determinant of oral health.”
That’s right folks, apparently guns cause cavities.
The Trace pointed out that this work of scientific genius was the product of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers University. The outlet also whined that the center, “is at risk of steep budget cuts as funding for gun violence prevention has come under threat at both the state and federal levels.”
However, that doesn’t tell the whole story.
The acknowledgment section of the study noted that the authors, “received funding for the current study from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (R03DE034009).”
The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research is a subsidiary of the National Institutes of Health, which itself falls under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The alphanumeric code is an NIH project number. According to the NIH’s website, the project’s total funding cost was $201,041.
According to a separate publication, this grant also funded another dentistry meets firearms policy article.
An item titled “Integrating firearm secure storage counseling into dental practice: Opportunities for dental practice-based research” was published in the May edition of Journal of the American Dental Association. According to the acknowledgments section of this piece, the “study” was funded by the NIH under the same project number. The two authors of this item also appeared on the American Journal of Preventive Medicine study.
Despite, being referred to as a “study” by the authors, the Journal of the American Dental Association item is more of an advocacy tract. Citing former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s “public health” campaign against firearms, the item called for dentists to unnecessarily inquire about their patients’ gun ownership and lecture them about firearm storage practices.
The piece noted, “Providers may initiate discussions during routine visits by means of asking patients about the presence of firearms in the household and how they are stored.”
The item acknowledged, “dental care professionals may lack training or confidence in discussing firearm safety, given its limited inclusion in dental school or continuing education curricula.” However, to alleviate this, the authors encouraged “professional dental societies” to provide “[t]raining on firearm secure storage counseling.”
The report concluded,
the time is ripe for dental care professionals to prioritize firearm secure storage research and practice. As a profession, dentistry has the potential to be at the forefront of an expanded, interdisciplinary approach to firearm harm reduction that can contribute to public health efforts aimed at reducing firearm-related injuries and deaths.
This type of embarrassing, self-important blather would be easy to find hilarious if it weren’t taxpayer funded and didn’t implicate a Constitutional right.
Gun rights supporters may not be surprised by dubious gun “research” affiliated with a public university in New Jersey, but Lone Star State residents might find it informative that the two authors listed on both documents hold themselves out as professors in the University of Texas System. Moreover, the awardee of the federal project funding is listed at the NIH website as the University of Texas Health Science Center.
Reforming America’s embattled public health bureaucracy has been a priority for the Trump administration. Further, there is evidence that this administration is exercising more judgment in administering NIH grants.
In May, the journal Nature reported that “[t]he US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has drastically increased the number of grant applications it has rejected without funding.” The item explained, “So far this year, at least 2,500 applications for research funding have been withdrawn — a term the agency uses to denote refusal for administrative reasons. This is more than double the number of applications that were withdrawn in the same period in each of the past two years”
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