AMA Launches Attack on Guns

Dr. John Bennett suspects "lopsided research" will be used

"I believe that this is a battle that we cannot not take on," said Dr. Richard Corlin, a gastroenterologist from Santa Monica, Calif.

"People have told me that this is a dangerous path to follow. That I am crazy to do it. That I am putting our organization in jeopardy. They say we'll lose members," Corlin said in his inauguration speech at the 100th meeting of the AMA's House of Delegates.

Corlin's platform is a ``smoke screen,'' and AMA is tampering with gun control, said National Rifle Association research coordinator Paul Blackman. Guns have divided AMA, which deems itself a leader on public health issues such as tobacco and is pro-abortion but has been less willing to take a stand on other controversies, such as the death penalty and medical use of marijuana. Though violence is easy to deplore, expanding the category to include gun safety has some doctors wondering whether AMA will be seen as opposing the Second Amendment's right to bear arms, Associated Press noted. Dr. Robert Woolley, a Minnesota physician who belongs to AMA and NRA, said he probably would not renew his AMA membership next year. ``Nobody disputes that people dying and being injured from gunshot wounds is a terrible problem,'' Woolley told AP. ``The dilemma is that groups such as the AMA ... are making very simplistic assumptions that the solution is more gun control.''

SIDEBAR: Here are some facts for the American Medical Association to ponder as it embarks on a major anti-gun crusade, assembled by Worldnet Daily reader Alan Trombetta of Vancouver, Washington: * Number of physicians in the US: 700,000. Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year: 120,000. Accidental deaths per physician: 0.171 (U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services.) * Number of gun owners in the US: 80,000,000. Number of accidental gun deaths per year (all age groups): 1,500. Accidental Deaths per gun owner: 0.0000188. Statistically, Trombetta observes, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.

AMA membership has fallen for years. It lost more than 3,000 members last year and more than $4 million in membership dues.

Corlin said the AMA would attack gun violence the way organized medicine has attacked other health concerns: by accumulating research and data and scientific evidence.

"What we don't know about violence and guns is literally killing us," he said. "And yet, very little is spent on researching gun-related injuries and deaths."

Part of the reason, Corlin said, is that under pressure by the gun lobby, $2.6 million in federal funding for research into gun violence was stripped from the budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the 1990s.

Dr. John Bennett, a member of the gun rights group Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws, suspects that the AMA will seek ``lopsided research.''

``If they similarly put the same kind of effort into tracking crimes that are prevented by guns, I think that's fine,'' said Bennett, an AMA member from Sequim, Wash. Not doing so would be ``like looking at a medicine to see if it's got any side effects and not considering'' its benefits, AP reported.

Corlin called for increased spending to allow agencies to collect data on gunshot deaths and gunshot injuries and other aspects of the "epidemic" that he says claims more than 30,000 lives a year. He made no mention of the benefits of firearms and how many lives are saved by guns.

Corlin said researchers did not have the data to tell how children get guns, if trigger locks work, what the warning signs of violence in schools and at the workplace are and other critical questions because of lack of research funding. "Gunfire kills 10 children a day in America," Corlin alleged.

"If this was a virus or a defective car seat or an undercooked hamburger that was killing out children, there would be a massive uproar within a week. Instead our capacity to feel a sense of national shame has been diminished by the pervasiveness and numbing effect of all this violence." said Corlin, whose secretary was killed when a stray bullet ripped through her head as she left a relative's home.

"As physicians we are accustomed to doing what is right for our patients - and not worrying about our comfort, ease or popularity. Our goal is to cure an epidemic. If removing the scourge of gun violence isn't bettering the public health - what is?"

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

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