“Gun Violence” as a Public Health Issue: a Physician’s Response

[Subdeacon Joe]

http://www.jpands.org/vol18no3/orient.pdf

 

 

ABSTRACT
Organized medicine is joining with the Obama
Administration to demand restoration of funding to the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for research on “gun
violence” and to work for legislation that includes universal
background checks, on the rationale of improving public safety.
Firearm-related fatalities, which combine gun suicides and
gun homicides, are shown to correlate with the “legislative
strength score,” defined by gun control advocates. This
association holds only for gun suicide, not for homicide, and
depends on selection of jurisdictions. Reliance on flawed public
opinion surveys, misstatements about the current background
check system, and use of emotional, inflammatory rhetoric
belie the claim that the case for gun control is supported by
“evidence-based medicine.