CDC Director Rochelle Walensky invited gun enthusiasts to talks during a recent interview on CNN, her first interview on what CNN called "America's epidemic of gun violence."
"Let's agree we don't want people to die," said Walensky after finding common ground with gun owners. "Let's just agree there. What can we do to stop people from dying?"
Robert Young of Doctors for Responsible Gun Owners (DRGO) tells American Family News this is nothing new.
"We've been through this before," says Young. "This is how our organization started in the mid-1990s, when the CDC director, Mark Rosenberg, and a bunch of other powerful leaders and medical organizations said terrible things about guns and gun ownerships and how they needed to get them treated like cigarettes -- as disgusting, dirty, and dangerous."
Mark Oliva of The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) says no one from the CDC has reached out to his organization.
"We've had a long, robust campaign to prevent the criminal misuse and negligent misuse of firearms," he shares. "We've worked with states and the federal government to change laws to make sure that adjudicated mental health records, records that have been brought before a judge who says, 'You cannot be trusted with a firearm,' that those records are submitted to the FBI."
Oliva adds that NSSF helped get the Fix NICS Act through Congress, the successful Trump-era legislation promised to strengthen the background check system.
"We also have programs including our Project Childsafe program, where we've been handing out 40 million-plus gun locks throughout all 50 states," says Oliva.
He goes on to call this CDC move "nothing more than a continued push by the Biden administration to try to find ways to enact the gun control agenda."
Walensky told CNN that is not her intent.
"I'm not here about gun control," the CDC director said. "I'm here about preventing gun violence and gun death."
"What the Biden administration is trying to address is a criminal problem and is not a health problem," responds Oliva.
"The proof will be how she acts," adds DRGO's Dr. Young. "If she doesn't reach out to these organizations per se and sits there moaning over the fact that nobody took her up on her invitation, then we'll know it's mostly words, just words."
