Loading this candidate’s profile from the FEC filings and campaign records.
Where They Stand is a nonpartisan guide to everyone running for Congress: their money, their own words and how incumbents voted. Find your ballot →
Candidates › FL-11 race › 2025–2026
Ralph Groves
L Libertarian nominee for U.S. House, FL-11
Has not served in Congress
- On the ballot
- On the general election ballotNov 3, 2026 · Florida US House 11
- Where to vote
- Find your polling place (opens in a new tab) · More ways to vote
- Top priorities
- POSITION PAPERS
- PRESCRIPTION PSYCH DRUGS AND THEIR SIDE-EFFECTS
- These Harvard law professors stated
- Money
- $0 raised, $0 spent, $0 cash on hand. Where it comes from
3 priorities from grovesforcongress.com, in the order they are listed there. Every heading and the text under it is copied exactly, as one passage for each page it is from, and links to that place on the page; hover a source to see which passage it opens.
Gun Ownership in the Context of America’s Social Problems
INTRODUCTION
The increase of mass shootings in the USA during 2019 compared to 2018 has prompted Americans to examine causes for “gun violence” – as it is popularly called, including by presidential candidates. In addition, such violence prompts calls for more restrictions on gun ownership, such as the January 2020 measures in Virginia and a rally in Richmond against restrictions. In turn, a manifestation of a severe cultural divide on this issue is found in West Virginia’s invitation to some Virginian counties to secede from Virginia to join West Virginia. Discernment of facts and analyses based on facts concerning the issue of guns can help policymakers make decisions based on objective data rather than emotions, as the Heritage Foundationadvises. This monograph attempts to explain gun issues in the context of the USA’s social problems.
This monograph makes the following points for policymakers to consider:
America’s social problems – caused by fractured communities as well as the decline of family cohesion and morals – are the underlying causes of “gun violence”, not widespread gun ownership.
The overall “gun violence” statistic is misleading, as only a small percentage of deaths caused by firearms are murders. Most are suicides. The USA’s suicide rate, despite the availability of guns, is lower than the rate in some other countries (such as Japan).
Prescription medications and “gun-free zones” are contributory factors to mass shootings.
Expanded background checks will not keep guns out of the hands of criminals and gang members; in any case, such checks will be inexact as not all records about people are available to adjudicators. Meanwhile, criminals and gang members will continue to obtain guns by theft and in black markets – thereby circumventing background checks.
There is no correlation between armed civilians and crime, as the examples of Israel and Switzerland show.
Most armed civilians, including concealed-carry permit holders, are law-abiding citizens who exercise their natural right to self-defense. They deter crimes – including crimes against humanity; they assist police and could prevent mass shootings if “gun-free zones” were abolished.
The U.S. Constitution’s 2nd Amendment codifies a pre-existing, natural right of self-defense, as upheld by the Supreme Court; a hypothetical repeal of the 2nd Amendment would be impossible to achieve.
Gun confiscation cannot be accomplished, as it will provoke civil disobedience and perhaps armed revolt; the police will refuse to carry out gun confiscation.
AMERICA’S SOCIAL PROBLEMS:
America’s social problems in recent decades started from declining family cohesion and fracturing of communities. A commentator, Jonah Goldberg, mentioned these factors in his commentary in the Orlando Sentinel, 8 August 2019, “Neither left nor right has proper remedy for America’s illness”. Jackie Gingrich Cushman (Senator Newt Gingrich’s daughter), author of Our Broken America, perceived the loss of the American soul and pointed out another aspect of our disunity (deteriorated sense of community): political polarization, which is making it difficult for our Federal Government to address our nation’s salient issues. Concomitantly, the decline of religious ethics and the loss of society’s moral center – historically provided by religion – have aggravated the situation, a point amplified by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee in his column entitled “Our values are collapsing – How can we be shocked by the decline of civility, spread of hate?” Further, the lack of a moral center and the tragic decline of respect for life – most saliently evident in the judicial overreach that enabled widespread permissive abortion – cheapened the value of life and made society vulnerable to mass murder. More broadly, Alveda King, niece of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., believes the abrogation of the fundamental right to life negates our nation’s creed, which commences with the right to life; she calls for the creation of a culture of life (source: King Rules, by Alveda King).
The decline of families, communities, religion, and respect for life coupled with aspects of counter-culture (use of mind-altering drugs, negation of traditional ethics, etc.) – all of which started in the 1960s – created the maelstrom we are suffering today. In many instances, small town industrial communities became fractured when their main industries were closed and relocated, sometimes abroad, for the sake of “efficiency” – meaning maximizing profits at the expense of workers’ livelihoods. (Most people identify with geographic communities. For some people, substitutes for geographic communities could include “overarching communities”, such as shared camaraderie among fellow employees in a company or among fellow service members in the military. In addition, people can retain a sense of community among fellow parishioners in their church, temple, or mosque.)
Another aspect of the decline of social cohesion is the pervasive growth of loneliness. Researchers of medicine and psychiatry at UCLA and the University of Chicago have discerned that people suffer negative repercussions if social connections are lost. Repercussions of loneliness include changes in behavioral patterns: irritability, suspiciousness, and negative emotions, which contribute to antisocial behavior. (Source: American Association of Retired Persons journal, December 2019/January 2020 issue.)
Without social cohesion, “homeless minds” were created in our society and such afflicted people became lacking in human interactions and empathy, thereby making them insensitive to the effects of violence they may perpetrate. (The term “homeless minds” is from the title of a book by Peter Berger.)
source ↗ (opens the page at this passage) · grovesforcongress.com/position-papers
The factors described above have augured a cascading series of resultant anxieties, thereby prompting a demand for psych drugs (e.g. Ritalin, Prozac, etc.). Policymakers should address side-effects of prescription drugs in discussions about crime, including mass shootings, and their causes. The Philadelphia Trumpet journal reported on the correlation of psych drug usage and crimes. Other journals have addressed repercussions of psych drugs, but often with differing conclusions concerning their correlations to crimes.
Ritalin addresses Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Narcolepsy (a chronic sleep disorder), but it can cause psychosis – an inability to know what is real and what is not. Prozac is an antidepressant, but its side effects can include Serotonin Syndrome, which can cause agitation. Besides these two well-known drugs, millions of people are on other drugs and various antidepressants. People with a pervasive sense of loneliness – due to lack of family life, alienation from communities, absent religious ethics – can display anti-social behavior and lack of empathy, especially when aggravated by side-effects of psych drugs. Psychosis and other side-effects of prescribed psych drugs have contributed to mass shootings. Holding “Big Pharma” partly responsible for mass shootings could find a precedent in this court judgment: In August 2019, Oklahoma Judge Thad Balkman declared Johnson & Johnson and Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies liable for stoking the Opioid Crisis, and ordered they pay $572 million in restitution, indicating Big Pharma can cause widespread harm to society.
source ↗ (opens the page at this passage) · grovesforcongress.com/position-papers
"Despite these decades of attempts at post-hoc rationalization, there has never been a defensible connection between the putative right to abortion and the Constitution itself." These professors concluded that the Court should overturn Roe because three factors [of stare decisis -- adherence to precendent] support overturning the precendent: 1. Roe is egregiously wrong; 2. it has caused negative juris-prudential consequences, and 3. it resulted in real-world consequences. In a phrase: Roe must go!
In conclusion, the constitutionality of abortion is based on interpretative overreach. Those of us who believe in the rule of law prefer close adherence to the text of the Constitution.
This year (2022), it is likely the Supreme Court will uphold states' restrictions on abortion and, thereby, overturn Roe, as Norma McCorvey herself called for. We Libertarians, including those of us in Florida, will then be faced with a new legal and social context on the issue of abortion.
source ↗ (opens the page at this passage) · grovesforcongress.com/position-papers