Boundary Violations
The anti-gun movement has historically tried to support their cause with wild claims using questionable data. Recently, I have seen reports being recycled on the internet indicating that some medical practitioners are still requesting information about firearm ownership from prospective patients. The request was supposably based on the assumption that firearms are somehow a health issue. The following comment, made back in 1999, by Timothy Wheeler MD speaks to this issue:
"If doctors were truly motivated by concern for gun safety, this would not be such a contentious issue. I find that many doctors know nothing of the history of the AAP, the AMA, and numerous other medical organizations in advancing an aggressive gun control agenda. These organizations have long tried to get doctors to invade their patients’ privacy not to prevent injury, but to promote a political agenda against gun owners. That is wrong. In the 1990s, for example, the AAP teamed up with Handgun Control, Inc. (now known as the Brady Campaign) to craft their firearm policy. That policy, essentially unchanged for nearly 20 years, urges doctors to probe parents about guns in their homes and even to get rid of them. This goes far beyond any legitimate doctor’s role. [I]t is an ethical boundary violation to use your position as a doctor to advance a political agenda. Doctors who do so should be punished." —Timothy Wheeler, MD
The New England Journal of Medicine has published a report on the leading causes of death in the U.S. from 1900 to 2010. While firearms are no doubt being used as a means of murder and suicide in the United States, they are not being used in an number that warrants specific mention in the NEJM article. This would lead me to reason that guns are not the public health issue that some people would like for us to believe.
Could the insignificant number of accidents involving firearms have anything to do with the firearms safety programs that are available through the National Rifle Association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, and others? There is a healthy relationship for you.
-fl