I am not a gun owner.
I have never been to a gun range,
unless you count the time I fired a few rounds into a paper target at a Boy Scout camp,
many decades ago.
But I wrote some things about rifles,
near the end of this diary,
so that you can see that I am not totally ignorant about guns.
I do not support just any and all gun control laws that come along,
willy-nilly.
And I think many of us,
on our side,
need to learn more about pistols and rifles,
so we can make informed decisions about which gun laws to support.
Now,
lets’ get into the ongoing fight on twitter,
the fight between the NRA and America’s doctors.
I am firmly on the side of the doctors.
First, some links to the back and forth,
the war of words:
www.businessinsider.com/…
The National Rifle Association, the most powerful gun lobby in the country, is under fire from doctors for a Tweet that many are calling insensitive and ill-reasoned.
On Wednesday, just hours before a gunman stormed into a bar in California and killed 12 people, the NRA went after the American College of Physicians on Twitter for writing about policies that could reduce the number of deaths and injuries from firearms.
What did the NRA tweet?
Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control. Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves.
Many doctors tweeted back:
As a Trauma Surgeon and survivor of #GunViolence I cannot believe the audacity of the @NRA to make such a divisive statement.
We take care of these patients everyday. Where are you when I’m having to tell all those families their loved one has died?
To read more of the doctor tweets,
go to this link,
and read about blood and guts and brain matter oozing:
www.businessinsider.com/…
The NRA made me so angry….
Too angry.
Doctors are in the business of the health and well-being of the public,
and guns are a factor.
Years ago,
I was truly depressed,
(never too close to suicide, I think)
between 2004 and 2011,
since my first wife, Pam, was gradually dying,
from 2004 until she died in 2008,
and I was depressed, and posting here in The Grieving Room,
my grief support group,
from 2008 until sometime in 2011 or 2012.
I got remarried in late 2011, and I am more stable now.
But I was overjoyed when I read online,
less than a year ago,
I think it was here at Daily Kos,
that doctors would take action to reduce suicides.
You see, at least two thirds of all gun deaths in America,
are suicides.
So, I was overjoyed when,
The last time I went to my primary care physician,
she gave me a questionnaire about depression.
They give it to all patients nowadays,
to attempt to intervene, and prevent suicide.
I told her to keep up the good work, and reduce the body count from guns in America.
So, once again, in case you missed it,
I truly support the doctors in this conflict.
But after I calmed down from my furious anger at the NRA,
I decided to dig deeper:
www.nraila.org/…
Here is one thing the NRA accused the doctors of doing (or not doing):
None of the ACP’s policy recommendations focus on law enforcement or the importance of identifying, prosecuting, and incarcerating criminals. As Philip J. Cook notes in his commentary, “It is unfortunate that the public health community has not recognized the importance of policing gun violence as a key aspect of prevention.”
Let’s go to the doctors’ actual policy recommendations:
annals.org/…
Extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws allow family members or law enforcement officers to petition a judge to issue an order to prevent a person who may be at imminent risk to themselves or others from purchasing firearms and to confiscate firearms they already possess. Generally, the judge can make an expedited initial ruling after submission of the petition, which takes effect immediately, without the subject of the petition being present. A hearing would then be held within weeks, if not days, with the subject present. If the judge upholds the order, it can be extended; the confiscated firearms and revocation of firearm purchasing rights can be withheld from the subject of the order for a few weeks to up to a year. To date, 5 states have enacted ERPO or ERPO-style laws, and 24 states are considering them. The ACP supports the enactment of these laws because they enable family members and law enforcement agencies to intervene when there are warning signs that a person is experiencing a temporary crisis that poses an imminent risk to themselves or others while providing due process protections.
As I understand this correctly,
the doctors are proposing that one or more family members,
along with an officer of the law,
could go to their local court house,
appear before a judge,
and ask for an extreme risk protection order.
If the judge grants the order,
the officers of the law can actually take away the guns from the citizen
who is judged to be at risk for harming himself or others.
More from the NRA:
The ACP claims that a “growing but limited body of evidence…suggests the concealed-carry laws may create a greater risk of firearms injuries and deaths than any protective value they may provide.” Most of the research on this topic is poorly done and clearly designed to produce a predetermined result. As with other policy areas in this position paper, the authors should have consulted the RAND literature review. RAND found that shall-issue concealed carry laws have uncertain effects on total homicides, firearms homicides, robberies, assaults, and rapes. The evidence is inconclusive, but the American College of Physicians has no qualms about accepting works that violate many of RAND’s most important criteria.
More from the doctors:
The correlation between stringent gun laws and reduction in firearm violence can be seen in the contrast between the high levels of gun violence in California during the early 1990s and the relatively low rate of gun violence after the adoption of state laws and city and county ordinances aimed at reducing gun deaths. In the early 1990s, California's gun violence rate was 15% higher than the national average (17.48 vs. 15 per 100 000 persons). The rate of gun violence in California has since decreased substantially: The number of Californians killed by gunfire decreased by 56% between 1993 and 2010, to 7.7 per 100 000 persons, compared with the national average of 10.1 per 100 000 persons (6, 7). The abundance of firearms in the United States is a public health hazard, and sensible regulations must be put in place to ensure that persons who should not possess firearms are unable to access them.
Feel free to read,
carefully, if you wish,
all three articles,
the Business Insider article,
with the battle of the tweets:
www.businessinsider.com/…
The NRA article, in which the NRA picked this fight:
www.nraila.org/…
And the position paper by the doctors:
annals.org/…
And here is one more link,
a link to a study quoted by the doctors:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/…
This study showed me that, even though more than two thirds of suicides in America are done with pistols,
the suicide rate in other countries,
where very few suicides are done with guns,
the suicide rate is pretty much the same.
So, my pet topic,
suicide prevention,
is not necessarily affected by gun laws,
if you look at the big picture:
Firearm-related suicide rates were 8.0 times higher in the United States, but the overall suicide rates were average.
By the way,
one last point from that study:
82% of all people killed by firearms were from the United States.
I just checked,
and there are 7 billion, 336 million humans outside the USA,
with 326 million in the USA.
But 82% of all those killed by guns are in the USA.
Guns don’t kill people.
People who have lots of guns handy, kill people with those guns.
By the way,
to summarize my likes and dislikes:
I like all the rules and regulations that apply to people:
a license should be required,
with testing to see if you can use it safely,
as with cars.
Registration,
insurance.
And if you get caught breaking the rules,
just as your car may be impounded,
your gun may be impounded.
I support just about any restrictions on folks carrying and using guns at will.
On the topic of large capacity magazines:
Even though I am in favor of banning large capacity magazines,
don’t expect that to make a big difference in the body count.
Some folks can reload very fast.
But, very important:
I do not like the common proposal,
the assault weapons ban.
Because,
I still have not figured out what this phrase actually means:
“Ban assault weapons.”
Because I have not figured out what this term means:
“Assault weapons.”
I think if we, the Democrats,
fixate on that policy idea:
“Ban assault weapons.”
we will be wasting our time.
According to my research,
a semi-automatic rifle is
a semi-automatic rifle is
a semi-automatic rifle is
a semi-automatic rifle.
The label “assault” applied to any civilian weapon,
according to my research,
is a truly meaningless label.
Some semi-automatic rifles look like old fashioned hunting rifles.
Some of them look like black, all metal, jagged edge, weapons.
Turning again to the laws about people, not guns:
Look again,
at the extreme risk protection order, above:
Extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws allow family members or law enforcement officers to petition a judge to issue an order to prevent a person who may be at imminent risk to themselves or others from purchasing firearms and to confiscate firearms they already possess.
Yes, confiscate.
And, one more time,
I truly support the doctors, not the NRA, in this battle of ideas.
Thanks for reading.