Gun control advocate exposed

The UK magazine Nature reports:

With his crisp blue suit and wire-framed spectacles, Garen Wintemute hardly looked frightening as he stepped to the podium last month to address a conference on paediatric emergency medicine in San Francisco, California. But his presence there made the organizers nervous.

Wintemute, an emergency-department doctor, is better known as the director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California (UC), Davis. As such, he has published dozens of papers on the effects of guns in the United States, where widespread gun ownership and loose laws make it easy for criminals and potentially violent people to obtain firearms. Wintemute has pushed the bounds of research, going undercover into gun shows with a hidden camera to document how people often sidestep the law when purchasing weapons. He has also worked with California lawmakers on crafting gun policy and helped to drive a group of gun-making companies out of business.

In the accompanying interview, he says at 10:30:

Q: Do you worry that some of these groups such as the NRA perceive you as an advocate for gun control rather than a data-driven scientist?

Wintemute: I am aware of that perception, the perception is wrong.

Wrong? In both the article and the interview, he openly brags about how he has lobbied for various gun control laws. Of course he is a gun control advocate.

An emergency-room physician is not a scientist. I hope he is not doing experiments on patients in the emergency room. Apparently the NRA objects to federal tax money supporting his political lobbying.