Considering the massive changes that Donald Trump is bringing to D.C. and the wrecking ball applied to much of the government bureaucracy in his first few months in office, the president’s actions on undoing the Biden administration’s whole-of-government attacks on gun owners and the firearms industry have been relatively modest, but there’s a sign that may be starting to change.
Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s declaration of gun violence as a “public health crisis” has been wiped rom the website of the Department of Health and Human Services; a move the White House said is a direct result of the president’s executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to ferret out policies and practices throughout the federal government that are at odds with our Second Amendment rights. ”
“Illegal violence of any sort is a crime issue, and as he again made clear during his recent speech at the Department of Justice, President Trump is committed to Making America Safe Again by empowering law enforcement to uphold law and order,” a White House official said in a statement to POLITICO about the change.
… “By removing this important public health advisory with lifesaving resources, President Trump has chosen to prioritize gun industry profits over protecting kids and families,” said Giffords Executive Director Emma Brown in a press release about the move. “Guns have been the number one killer of American children and adolescents since 2020, and non-partisan health care experts have understood gun violence as a public health crisis for years.”
Despite Brown’s rhetoric, it is not the case that guns have been the leading cause of death for children and adolescents since 2020. As the Washington Post noted in a 2024 report, in order to make that claim the gun control lobby and politicians like Kamala Harris have to exclude deaths of children under the age of 1, use a narrower definition of vehicle deaths that excludes pedestrian fatalities and deaths suffered in stationary vehicles, and adding 18 and 19-year-olds to the list of gun-related deaths of children. When Brown speaks of “children and adolescents”, she’s also including young adults in her statement.
Indeed, including 18- and 19-year-olds adds a new category of firearm fatalities — death by “legal intervention,” which generally means a shooting by law enforcement. Annually that accounts for about 12 to 25 deaths in the data for firearm deaths in the 18-19 age group.
… By including 18- and 19-year-olds, excluding infants under age 1 and comparing firearm deaths with only vehicle crashes, Johns Hopkins reports that in 2021, there were 4,733 firearm deaths of “children and teens” compared with 4,048 deaths from motor vehicle crashes.
But by counting only children 17 and under, including infants under the age of 1, and comparing with all motor vehicle deaths, the CDC data shows that in 2021, there were 2,590 firearm deaths of children, compared with 2,687 motor vehicle deaths.
Each of these deaths is a tragedy, no matter the cause, but the Biden administration politicized deaths involving firearms to advance their anti-gun agenda. It’s not like Murthy ever declared a public health emergency over traffic fatalities, even though as the Post noted, by including all children and excluding young adults a very different picture is painted.
Brown’s contention that Murthy’s declaration was axed in order to pad the pockets of the firearms industry is also wildly off-base. I doubt there’ll be any objections from gun makers and sellers to the move, but what the industry really wants (and needs) is the formal rollback of the ATF rules promulgated under Biden’s watch that expanded who is “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms, redefined unfinished frames and receivers as complete firearms, declared most brace-equipped pistols were actually short-barreled rifles, and shut down FFLs over minor clerical errors as part of a “zero tolerance” approach to gun dealers.
Those rollbacks are likely still to come, but as of now those rules are technically still on the books, even if many of those provisions have been fully or partially halted by court-issued injunctions. Removing Murthy’s declaration is a relatively modest act by the Trump administration; welcome, to be sure, but hardly the end of the Biden-era attacks on gun owners, gun makers, and gun sellers we’re waiting for.
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