Dr. Anthony Fauci took a break from trying to decide what behavior-modifying COVID tidbit to dole out to the public this week to weigh in on gun violence and the recent rash of shootings that have cropped up across the nation, calling it a “public health issue.”
During CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, host Dana Bash bizarrely pivoted from asking Fauci about the latest COVID updates to questioning him about “another epidemic in the U.S., and that is gun violence.”
“Is gun violence in the U.S. a public health emergency?” she asked the man who deals with….diseases.
“Myself as a public health person, I think you can’t run away from that,” Fauci said, seemingly having no problem swimming entirely out of his own lane.
“When you see people getting killed, I mean, in this last month, it’s just been horrifying what’s happened. How can you say that’s not a public health issue?” he continued.
Dr. Anthony Fauci on whether he considers gun violence a public health emergency: “When you see people getting killed, I mean, in this last month, it’s just been horrifying what’s happened. How can you say that’s not a public health issue?” #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/9lEhV3aZqL
— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) April 18, 2021
Fauci, whose “expertise” is in virology and contagious diseases, is hardly an expert on firearms, shooting violence or what laws could – or would utterly fail – to help curb it.
Bash's ridiculous question and Fauci's answer to it follow several mass shootings in recent weeks, including in Atlanta, Boulder, and Indianapolis - not to mention those in Democrat-controlled cities like Chicago, where such violence is too commonplace to make national headlines.
But despite having any solution to keeping evil people from doing evil things that are already illegal, Fauci still felt qualified to deem gun violence a "public health issue," despite the extremely low likelihood of most people ever getting shot to death in a country that already has more than 330 million guns in circulation.
Then again, he also couldn’t decide whether people should wear no masks, or one mask, or five masks. However, given the current state of the country and apparent unwillingness to let American adults decide what risks to take upon themselves, don’t be surprised if it becomes mandated that all persons age 2 and older wear Kevlar to protect themselves from bullets.
You know – for “public health.”