KK: Marco, any response regarding firearm regulation?
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ACEP Now: Vol 35 – No 07 – July 2016MC: What is the actual number of mass murders since Newtown [Sandy Hook]? Andrew, I admire you immensely because of your passion. But with increased numbers of people who are able to carry a gun, either concealed or openly, the crime rates in those states have plummeted. There’s a correlation, yes, but is there cause and effect? We don’t know because in a lot of those states, crime rates are coming down.
KK: Marco, do you think that more guns or fewer guns will improve safety regarding firearms?
MC: There are a lot of gun studies in the medical literature that are biased and methodologically flawed. Andrew’s correct: The NIH doesn’t fund many gun control studies, but there are a lot of studies in the economics and criminal justice literature based on data readily available from the CDC and other sources that show that more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens are not associated with more crime. The data clearly show that crime is reduced in states that have enacted right-to-carry laws.
KK: Andrew, are more or fewer guns better?
AF: I can’t imagine how more guns could make us safer. We already have about as many guns in this country as we have citizens. There are more guns in this country per capita than in any other country. I just don’t think that we can shoot our way out of this problem.
The data out there and the studies that have been done have some methodological flaws, I agree, and that includes a recent study that showed that in states that have tighter firearm regulations there’s less firearm violence. They didn’t prove causation, but there was a correlation. Another study noted that someone who has a firearm and is an assault victim is four to five times more likely to be shot and killed. So, in general, the more you increase firearms in a community, the more firearm violence you’re going to have.
KK: If you or your family was threatened and you had access to a firearm, would you use it?
AF: I don’t own a gun, Kevin. I do keep a 2-iron underneath my bed because I figure I might get some use out of that club that way. For the average person, though, when you bring a gun into the home, it does increase your risk of someone dying by homicide two to three times. The risk of suicide in that household goes up five times.
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4 Responses to “Gun Control Issue Fosters Pro–Con Advocacy Debate in Emergency Medicine”
July 24, 2016
PaulThis is a shame that ACEP is even trying to have a debate on this issue. As emergency physicians who treat victims of gun violence, it’s pretty clear our position should be that we should be doing everything we can to ensure fewer gun deaths. The ecological data from other countries and from studies in the United States is clear, in spite of what Dr. Coppola is suggesting – where there are fewer firearms, there are fewer firearm deaths. If ACEP wants to consider his position that we should we should become an even more armed society, it only has to remember we are already by far and away the most armed first-world country in the world and have more gun violence and gun deaths than any other such country. Coincidence? I think not.
July 24, 2016
Otis Mark Hastings MD FACEPMurders are being committed using knives, axes, trucks, and bombs as well as guns. THE ONLY THING MORE REGULATIONS WILL DO IS LIMIT LAW-ABIDING ACCESS. GUN VIOLENCE IS WORSE IN CHICAGO IN SPITE of strict gun laws. We need to treat mental illness and have a data base that allows physicians to enter patients who should not pass a background check. We need to vet immigrants to be certain we are not welcoming terrorists.
July 25, 2016
Timothy Wheeler, MDThanks to ACEP Now for acknowledging that there are two sides to this issue. But let me correct an error that has been endlessly perpetuated by those who wish to even further restrict firearm civil rights.
Congress did not prohibit firearm research at the CDC. I know. I was one of three medical doctors who testified before the House Appropriations Committee in March 1996. We showed the committee hard evidence of the CDC leadership’s overt gun control advocacy. It was that anti-civil rights advocacy that Congress quite reasonably prohibited, not firearm research.
The events of that era are documented in my three-part historical series “The History of Public Health Gun Control” at DRGO’s website, drgo.us.
Timothy Wheeler, MD
Director
Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership
A Project of the Second Amendment Foundation
August 21, 2016
Mark BuettnerOnce again the leaders of ACEP have embarked on a course of action that disenfranchises a significant population of physician members. This is a political course of action advocating for anti-civil rights. From the start ACEP has aligned itself with the political left by adopting the terms “Gun Violence” and “Firearm Violence”. This political path is deceptive and irresponsible. It is deceptive to use the terms “Gun Violence” and “Firearm Violence”. By design these terms attribute a greatly undesirable “action” or “state of being”, i.e. “violence”, to an inanimate object, the gun. It extracts the necessary element of “proximate cause” for the action of violence and attributes it to the inanimate gun. This helps the left to advocate for controlling “violent guns” without a discussion on the proximate cause for the violence. How often does President Obama address the proximate cause of black on black violence in his home town of Chicago? The security of maintaining political correctness for politicians is more important than the security for citizens knowing the proximate cause of violence when elements of toxic culture are involved. ACEP will serve as an agent of the left in this issue. In doing so they will poorly represent their physician members and poorly advocate for their Emergency Department patient populations.