Dr. Joe Biden, M.D., Ph.D., has read all of the papers and looked at the data and made a science-informed decision to order anyone who wants to keep working in a Medicare/Medicaid-funded health care business (i.e., everyone in American health care) to get vaccinated against the coronavirus version that existed in December 2019. Unless they want to transition to the disability lifestyle (“my long COVID is acting up”), employees at companies with at least 100 employees will also have to get vaccinated against this two-year-old virus under OSHA emergency rules.
Via this order, COVID-19 will be in full retreat. What’s next for this selfless hero of public health? How about bold action against gun ownership? “‘Something has to be done’: After decades of near-silence from the CDC, the agency’s director is speaking up about gun violence” (CNN, August 28, 2021):
For the first time in decades, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the nation’s top public health agency — is speaking out forcefully about gun violence in America, calling it a “serious public health threat.”
“Something has to be done about this,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in an exclusive interview with CNN. “Now is the time — it’s pedal to the metal time.”
This summer alone has seen a spree of gun injuries and deaths, and the weekends have been especially violent, with an average of 200 people killed and 472 injured by guns each weekend in the United States, not including suicides, according to an analysis done by the Gun Violence Archive for CNN. That’s nearly 3.4 people shot every hour every weekend.
In April, President Joe Biden said the country was facing “a gun violence public health epidemic,” but the CDC hasn’t said how it plans to address the epidemic until now.
(I trust and expect that the aforementioned weekend shooters were following all local mask mandates when on their sprees.)
If vaccines can be ordered by the President/Physician-in-Chief as a condition of employment, why not giving up gun ownership? If nobody with a job has a gun, then by definition there can’t be any workplace gun violence (examples: San Bernardino 2015 attack, in which 14 were killed and 22 injured; 2009 Fort Hood shooting, in which 13 were killed and 30 injured).
Just as President Biden’s order on vaccines won’t reach every American (since many of us wisely decided to choose disability or unwisely decided to work for a small company) and therefore won’t end the pandemic overnight, the above-proposed order from President Biden on gun violence won’t end all gun violence, but I hope that everyone can agree that it would be a positive step forward for our nation or, at least, that if President Biden has the authority to end anti-vax violence in the workplace then he has the authority to end gun violence in the workplace.
That’s is a far fetch threat against one of the best protected and best fought for constitutional right but it could happen if America became like California
RBwr: You didn’t identify any flaws in my logic!
I thought I did: although I agree that this vaccine malarkey is even more outrageous then attacks on 2nd Amendment freedom from vaccine has not been guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and has not be reason why US States exists as a Union and not Confederation and has not been discussed in the Federalist papers. And anti-vaxxers or pro – my body – my choice folks for some reason do not organize to protect themselves to be pinched at any decrepit geriatric health bureaucrat or Dem politician indigestion attack.
For gun ownership and use explicit protection in the Bill of Rights exists, for freedom of being vaccinated – no explicitly mentioning vaccines Constitutional protection exists, also it is a premise of all freedoms.
Roger,
I think you are finding out that law in general and the Constitution in particular is a social construct, or in Russian “Закон — что дышло: куда повернул, туда и вышло”. In this country, it’s not there yet — the progress is slow, with a tentative start sometime in 60’s, but luckily (for some) inexorable.
Ivan, and what lawyers will do in that case, on long term?
It would be time to move.
I know that more than 20 years ago at the Law School I worked for, a de-facto ban on gun ownership and possession was already in effect – even for off-duty police officers serving as adjunct professors and guests of other professors who invited them to campus to give presentations to law students regarding various aspects of policing and their intersections. One stood out in particular at the time because he brought his service gun to campus and tried to stow it in a student locker, was “caught” by another student from the National Lawyers Guild who strenuously protested that a Cop was allowed to bring a loaded firearm into the building and a big Dean-level kerfuffle ensued. He was asked politely not to bring the gun again and he initially protested and asked instead if he could simply bring it unloaded with him to the classroom because he appeared in uniform just after getting off of work. That was unacceptable and under some protest he was basically forced to relinquish the firearm to campus security when he entered the building.
So if they can do that to a Chicago cop, the great legal minds there can certainly find a penumbra under which the CDC can order every employer with more than 100 people (and probably less) to ban guns on their premises and pehaps ban gun ownership outright among their employees as a matter of public health. It’s “pedal to the metal.”
That’s in your state, 10 years ago in one of other states some CS college professors show up with 9mm compact Beretta printing under his sweater and he acted in accordance with the state laws and regulations
Aside: As part of my job I attended bimonthly Administrative Staff meetings along with members of the upper administrative staff of the school. At one meeting hilarity ensued and the mainspring came boinging out of the works when the Dean said: “I’d like to change the subject to an event I want to plan for the Spring. I trust that nobody in this room is a member of the National Rifle Association.” I attended the meetings the secretary so that I could take notes and so forth. Well, at that point I had a decision to make if I was being honest, so I said: “I am.”
You could have heard a pin drop. It was one of those “Judas!” moments.
@RBRW: I live in Massachusetts now, just so you know. The gun club I belong to is like the Chamber of Commerce where I live in terms of the people in it vis-a-vis important things that go on in town.
In my case none of grad students cared about their professor being armed. Maybe a couple of other grad student were carrying concealed.
@RBWR: Good for them.
I’m not familiar with the American constitution and the separation of powers in the USA, but wouldn’t such an order playing with the physical integrity of the individual require Congress approval? Can the Executive impose such orders? Isn’t it a law, and not an order, and therefore it must come from the Legislative branch?
And I hope your Congress is stronger than the National Assembly here in France. They pushed through the law at 5 AM, 205 representatives out of 577 voted (117 for, 86 against), and then it was nice along the party lines.
I am not a lawyer, but yes, it is constitutionally and even legally very dubious, but at this point the regime believes it can do whatever it wants.
They tried to overturn the concept of private property rights not using HUD (Housing & Urban Development) but the CDC. And now they run a “public health” intervention (which cannot be justified on public health or epidemiological grounds) by using OSHA to compel employers to attack their employees’ ability to earn a living.
Liberal journalist (and LGBT person) Glenn Greenwald noted that the current regime had planned to attack its political opponents as “domestic terrorists” as far back as November 2020.
The situation is pretty bad.
One analysis of the legality:
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/572149-bidens-wildly-unconstitutional-vaccine-mandate