Health is a lot more than the absence of illness. And promoting health is a lot more than dealing with medical care. We have to be much more holistic in our approach. And gun violence prevention’s part of it.
The effect of guns is not measured by the 41,000 deaths. That’s easy to measure, but what are the downstream effects of this, in many of these communities and to the public at large? When you’re running a healthcare organization, we see it each and every day. Millions of people end up in the hospital as a result of gun violence. We treat people who come to us with gun injuries. We treat the people that come to us with trauma. We treat mental health issues. We treat domestic violence victims.
Over 80% of Americans, believe that something should be done about gun safety, including gun owners. I think people are afraid to talk about it because people automatically jump to the issue of, oh you want to ban guns. I’m not against guns. I’m against the unnecessary ill effect of guns that do terrible harm to people.
We need rational discussions and a call to action on this issue. Now the lessons here, that if we continue to be persistent about the health effects of gun violence, the trauma, the effect on kids, the effect on communities, the effect on all the people, the physical effects, the social effects, the environmental effects, and we continue messaging that over and over and over again, you will make a difference. It will happen. It is time for healthcare leaders [to] treat gun violence as a public health issue.
Prevention is important. When people come in to our emergency rooms, what we typically do, and have been doing for years and years and years, we assess the risk factors to their health. So we ask questions about alcoholism. We ask questions about domestic violence. We ask questions about drug abuse. It’s all part of the risk assessment of determining what might be of danger, health wise, to that individual or that family.
So we should be asking questions about gun violence. Have you heard gunshots in your neighborhood? Has anybody ever put a gun to your head? Is there a gun at home? Are they secure? So you’ll ask a whole series of questions like that. And then you will find out that many of these people, especially kids, young teens may be in danger of gun violence, as well as provide services to those people who are affected as a result of gun violence.
— Michael Dowling in How to reduce gun violence without taking people’s guns
I didn’t see a couple questions I would ask; Do you play violence filled video games X number of hours a day. Do you watch the usual hours of gang bangers prevalent on American TV now. Are you inundated with news of violent thugs running rampant through the streets killing each other. Just sayin!
Or…. do you realize that you are going to be treated by a resident that has been on rotation for 50 to 70 hours and run the risk of being added to the 440,000 malpractice deaths annually?? Do you hereby authorize us to proceed ?
I do not trust sneaky doctors coming through the backdoor with pasty mouth excuses to perform surgery on The Second Amendment.
Let’s turn the table…Should a doctor screw up in the same hospital doctor dowling practices in then let’s come and get dowling’s license to practice. How do you like that kind of thinking doctor dowling? It’s exactly the kind of thinking you are proposing. Criminals do something so let’s all be “reasonable” and gut The Second Amendment. Well doctor The Second Amendment is off your operating table.
When it comes to self defense doctor busy-body needs to stfu. At the crucial point when the need for self defense becomes reality it is strictly between the victim and the perp. The means survival for the victim is first and foremost. And that means Any sick pasty mouth Gun Control Agenda that stands in the way of victim survival goes in the crapper.
No one sitting on their pompous behind with a gutless agenda that involves Gun Control is going to ever be there to help the aforementioned victim. There are worlds apart between talking Gun Control and taking a bullet out of a victim’s gut and being at the scene to be shot, beaten or stabbed alongside the victim.
In other words doctor you need to do your job very well in order to avoid a lawsuit and losing your license to practice and simply be there for those who are victims of criminal acts. Acts primarily caused by the demoCrap between the ears of criminals and not what object is in their hands.
Pb_fan59…..very good scenario!
A Dr in the BEST of practices (you want a Dr that is still “practicing”?) MIGHT wear a surgical mask (N5<). In other words is wearing NO PPE to protect YOU from his unsanitary habits.
More so if they are wearing a tie.
That 440.000 medical error death is documented by Consumer’s Reports. In fact they state that if ALL medical deaths were correctly reported on death certificates the ACTUAL number would be in the realm of 800,000. Clearly doctors are more dangerous/deadly than firearms. And so is water; the number of people I see killed by water on the news is quite high.
surely no one is going to mention the 250 000 people killed by health care workers thru neglect, mistakes or cross contamination (100 000) every year (on average). This is no including those injured by left behind needles, sponges, wrong appendage cut off, wrong medication…ect… The AMA covers up for rouge doctors, so they are complaisant. all are guilty of murder
There is no conclusive proof that violence in video games translates to real world violence. It is just a cop out by the mental health industry and politicians.
doesn’t mean they are lazy or wasting time either? the words “adult children” comes to mind….. but that is an oxymoron, so I must be a 65 year old bigot
Lol that violent video game nonsense that has been spouted by our enemies since Columbine is just that, nonsense. You played GTA so you’re gonna go out and steal a car and shoot people /clutches pearls.
If they want to start talking about gun violence, they should look at the wonderful urban culture that has been fostered and festered in places like Chicago and any other urban democommie ran shit hole. Oh wait they aren’t conservative so they’re not a target.
Granted I live in a town that could be aptly described as “country ghetto” or one of my employees called it “oakcliff in the country” in a very conservative voting County that has ALL the same big city problems.
blah blah blan and pot isn’t a gateway drug blah blah rationalize your stupid.
80% of gun owners DO understand that their guns have a safety. If not a physical safety then at the very least one between their ears.
It’s the ones that don’t know that (or that even care).
The proof lies in the graph of accidental deaths by gunshot over recent decades (indeed, since 1900).
The raw total had plummeted to less than 500/year while the population – both of guns and gun-owners – has increased steadily. Thus, the rate/100,000 has dropped even more precipitously.
If peaceable gun-owners were the problem with gunshot mortality or morbidity we would have the data to show that.
Not only is the REPORTED accidental shooting rate tiny and plummeting, just as you said, but the number of ACTUAL accidents is likely infinitesimal.
How many (most?) are “white-lie” reports to soothe feelings after suicides?
How many are “accidents” (whether real, or reported to lessen charges) incident to criminal or defensive use (“I just meant to threaten him, but it ‘went off’ [because I had my nervous, shaking finger on the trigger].”)?
How many are idiots stunting or showing off, who would easily have found another way to chlorinate the gene pool had the gun not been available?
The accidental injury rate is ten times that number, and unfortunately, many of the victims are children having access to firearms. Those injuries are not necessarily minor just because they were survived. Had a case up here where Grandpa was sleeping in his easy chair, got up to answer the door to let his grandchildren–and a great grandchild, into the house, accidentally leaving his Glock laying by his chair. By the way, Grandpa was a retired FFL. Great grandson found the gun and blew half his brains out, a la Gifford. He survived, but the consequence of the injury were a msssive lifelong disability.
Guns? No, people do terrible harm to people. When they start taking that seriously, I’ll start listening. And, I believe he pulled that 80% figure out of the same place his head’s buried.
The nation is terribly behind on prison construction. There needs to be a minimum capacity of 5% of the population that cannot be rehabilitated. Then there is aggressive prosecution and mandatory sentencing for violence with no plea deals to fill those prisons.
true. and the implementation of abattoirs to slaughter the deserving and feed the rest.
I dug a bit deeper into their website:
https://jhupress.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/1421411113_updf.pdf
Seems they want to ban any transfer of an “assault weapon”, and in addition they want to confiscate all magazines over 10 rounds.
So technically, they don’t want to take your AR-15 (at this time). Instead, you merely are forbidden from ever selling it, or even giving it to anyone else, and you need to turn in almost all of your magazines.
I’m not against [free speech]. I’m against the unnecessary ill effect of [free speech] that do terrible harm to people.
Funny how that works. Let’s try it again:
I’m not against [freedom]. I’m against the unnecessary ill effect of [freedom] that do terrible harm to people.
These people would trade their own & their children’s freedom for slavery in return for a false promise of safety. May their chains rest lightly upon them, and may posterity forget they were our countrymen.
They’re not against guns…they’re just against our freedom to have them.
How about education? How to use firearms, the safety issues with firearms, treating your fellow man with respect. Not allowing outside influences hamper your thinking. Do you listen to cop killer gansta rap?, endlessly play violent video games? Were you taught to live in a society that respected other peoples’ religious beliefs? Are you influenced by the nightly news? Do you have any idea that most, if not all, of these firearm killings would have been done with another weapon or tool anyway? How many people’s lives were saved because they had a firearm for self protection. Put THAT into your equation, Oh Learned One!
Most illiminating question would be “whats your zip code?”
“When people come in to our emergency rooms, what we typically do, and have been doing for years and years and years, we assess the risk factors to their health. So we ask questions about alcoholism. We ask questions about domestic violence. We ask questions about drug abuse.”
And yet I’ve NEVER been asked any of those questions in an ER. I was only asked how I got hurt and generic questions to determine my cognitive state after a head injury.
People are afraid to talk about it.
In just about every way other than calling for bans.
Pretty sure the good doctor here is also afraid.
I don’t want to take yer guns BUT…you ain’t getting them! Where do get that 80% statistic anywho?? Uranus?
The public heath profession’s contribution to reduction in gunshot mortality and morbidity is pathetic.
I heard – in a symposium – a trauma surgen characterizing bullets as a “virus”. How he got through medical school with such poor reasoning skills is beyond me.
There are (or so I assume) differences between bacteria and viruses. Understanding such differences are essential to dealing with their respective impacts on public health.
Likewise, there are differences between suicide and violence against others. Lumping gunshot suicides with homicide and aggravated assault makes no more sense than lumping death by lead bullet to lead poisoning in water.
There are really two problems here:
1. – the real goal is gun-control, not public heath
2. – the lack of logical and scientific reasoning by health professionals.
Perhaps health professionals really do have the logical and scientific reasoning skills necessary to achieve their degrees and licenses. They really do approach infallibility. Were this true we would see it in the statistics on malpractice and accidental/inadvertent errors in medical practice. In any case, if we so presumed their reasoning abilities then we should question why they would compromise their professional integrity for the political goal of gun-control.
Perhaps medical professionals are – much to our dismay – mortal and vulnerable to errors in reasoning and scientific method. Should this be the case, why should we be willing to support their political plan to disarm those in whom the sovereignty of our nation is vested; i.e., in the People? History has shown where this leads. It was apparent to the founders. It was documented over the 20th Century by RJ Rummel.
The issue at hand is not one of public health; it is a question of the survival of our political institution of liberty. Medical professionals have no more expertise in this arena than, say, Che Guevara.
I would have asked that surgeon how many times had he seen bullets reproduce in a host and then on their own transmit to other hosts.
Substitute medical misadventures and mistakes for guns and I’m all onboard.
After all, medical “misadventures” are the third leading killer of people. Unlike criminal homicides and attempted homicides.
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other”
-From John Adams to Massachusetts Militia, 11 October 1798
This is it. Right here. Without morality freedom is corrupted by degeneracy. You cannot have true freedom without it. It is the slippery slope of degeneracy the nation is sliding down that is the problem. If people do not have the discipline to rule themselves, the government must step in to prevent chaos.
Dear Medical Community:
There is a huge opportunity for the medical field for address gun deaths. 2/3 of the deaths are from suicide, so fixing that has the biggest impact. The answer isn’t to ban guns so they can’t commit suicide — the suicidal people will just choose an alternate method. Address the mental health issues and there’ll only be 12k gun deaths. This also would reduce the headline making mass shootings since most are done by mentally I’ll or suicidal people who want to take out as many people as possible.
There are only a couple hundred gun accident related deaths, and I contend many are suicides that are purposely miscategorized to maintain dignity and insurance benefits for the survivors. Accidents are prevented by education, which isn’t really a medical issue, but feel free to go over Eddie Eagle and the basic rules of gun handling during medical appointments — maybe have NRA safety and class pamphlets available.
The last 11-12k are all crime related — either bad guys shooting someone, or good guys defending against bad guys. I don’t see how the medical community is going to help there. Perhaps they can use their copious free time to volunteer at failing schools in high crime areas so that children will have opportunities. They can provide vocational medical training so adults who have been failed by the education system have jobs.
Get back to use once you’ve completed that.
This is AMA sleight-of-hand at it’s very best — or worst. “Medical mistakes” kill 250,000 people annually. So while the doctors are distracting us with talk about “gun violence,” they’re the ones who are killing us.
Clever.
So, with apologies to Friedrich Nietzsche I say: physician, fvck thyself.
In civilized countries like Germany you would not believe the mandatory training you must go through just to get a fishing license as well as a firearm. The result is that people are well trained in knowing the laws of the country, well trained in safe boating and other fishing hazards and well trained in the handling of deadly weapons. In Capitalvania, were life is considered cheap, the Far Right ignore commons sense laws with a simple wave of the hand screaming it takes away my rights to act like a moron or act in an indolent, shiftless and lazy manner so that I can put peoples lives in danger which often results in fatalities.
In other posts recently the morons came out of the woodwork claiming they were opposed to training for concealed carry licenses. You cannot get any dumber than that. When people are not taught when you can legally shoot someone or not taught how to safely handle and carry a firearm the inevitable result is often a senseless, and often illegal loss of life that could have been prevented.
When you do not have safe storage laws the result is as usual an annual death rate of 1,300 children, many of which would never have happened. Again the Far Right of Capitalvania, (where life is considered cheap), will scream that they will not be inconvenienced with safe storage laws and they do not give a damn that someone else lost a child.
Pssst. SA-Mann dacian. You are the far right. Didn’t any of your SA-Truppfuhrer’s pass that memo to you?
Unitentional firearm deaths average around 500 per year in all ages groups. You are either willfully ignorant or a lier.
Make it both. I can smell the aura of smugness on the other side of the world. It will take a pry bar and a winch to undo Dacian’s extreme cranial rectal inversion.
If the Liberal Leftist would ever acknowledge the Second Amendment actually means what it says, then we could move on to get sensible training requirements, just like driver’s licenses. But as long as they dream of stealing all our guns, we won’t trust them with one more inch. So Democrats, it’s ALL YOUR FAULT!
Holistic approach? Hmm. There is a problem with the “health” industry. We see doctors asking invasive questions about guns in the home. It’s none of their business whether there are guns in the home. More importantly, we see over and over again, people under MENTAL health professional’s care are NOT REPORTED to any authorities. Go through the list of infamous mass shooters, and count those who were on, or were recently on, prescriptions written by mental health “experts”. If I understand anything about background checks, each and every one of those individuals should have been “red flagged”. But, the shrinks don’t report them to anyone. HIPAAA, yada yada yada.
No, of course I don’t want any person’s personal data released to the public at large. No matter how screwed up a person’s mind might be, it’s none of my business, or yours, or really, the government’s business. But health professionals who don’t report dangerous individuals to anyone, any where, are somehow derelict in their duties.
Any health professional who fails to report child abuse, especially sexual abuse, will be in a world of doo-doo if he fails to report that abuse to authorities. WTF is the deal with dangerous mental states? There really ought to be some authority, with a database, that takes reports of people on mind-altering prescription drugs, who SHOULD NOT possess weapons.
Sure, there will be some who fall through the cracks because no system is perfect. But someone, somewhere, should be tracking the crazies.
“holistic
[hōˈlistik]
ADJECTIVE
characterized by the belief that the parts of something are interconnected and can be explained only by reference to the whole.”
——————–
It won’t work, doomed to failure. They want to do something about the violence and all the impacts of it but they insist it all comes from the inanimate object, not the person being violent.
To claim a “Holistic Approach” while ignoring the fact that only living creatures can commit violent acts, is to be dishonest from the beginning.
You cannot begin to solve the problem if you base your entire effort, “Holistic” or otherwise, on an absurd and idiotic premise.
“Millions of people end up in the hospital as a result of gun violence. ” In what country, over what period of time? They must be throwing in all the millions killed by the armies and proponents of communism in the eastern bloc, China and Asia in general. Also throwing in all those murdered by the Islamists.
Millions?? In the US? BS.
“Over 80% of Americans, believe that something should be done about gun safety, including gun owners.” No, they actually believe something should be done about criminals and gangbangers with guns- you know- those people who aren’t even legally “able” posess a firearm, let alone use it. That number is likely closer to 100% of Americans. And, of course, “gun safety” has nothing to do with criminal activity and Dowling knows it- these thugs are wantonly disobeying long-existing laws and gaining from it financially and, in the case of BLM, politically; primarily because the woke leftists who control the major population centers are allowing them ply their hatred and crime sprees.
Gun Safety? Stupid argument!
“We treat people who come to us with gun injuries.” Perhaps the only true statement in the “article”. Doctors need to do what they’ve been trained to do and stay away from commenting on what they do not. Of course, I believe more people in the US die each year from medical malpractice and outright medical mistakes than from all firearms incidents, intentional or accidental.
“Physician, heal thyself”.
https://youtu.be/wX3hRj6XoUM
https://youtu.be/0OHH49vtl2g
(there’s still time)
Improve med outcomes? Require min of N95 mask for all med personnel within 10ft of a patient ALWAYS (and everyone in a waiting room).
“Holistic” is the noise empty-headed liberals make when they wish to sound competent.
I liked his comment about the effect guns have on kids. Take my son for instance. He was nine when I introduced him to trap shooting. At 11 he became one of the “trap kids” at the club, loading the machines, scoring, etc. He grew up respecting guns, knowing how to be safe, how to enjoy them, and he had the respect of adults around him who watched him work and grow. Today he is very active in shooting, clays, skeet, active drills, targets, long range, etc.
The effect guns had on my kids was a very positive effect! Probably not what the author wanted to here, though.
Skip to the bottom where starts in about getting info from young kids. Translation they will train your own children to rat you out the dream of all good communists/fascists.
Oh bullsht. If everyone had medical insurance the doctors would be cheering for gunm shot victims.
Still operating on the theory that “guns play a role.”
How about a more honest paradigm shift, that removes guns from the conversation as a participating factor? Until such thinking is used as established criteria, the “study” will be of little value.
Wake me up when an honest and unbiased study is proffered. Until the, we’ll just see more Liberal Progressive BS that masks the issue of personal responsibility for one’s actions.
The problem with their statement of treating “gun violence” holistically is they are concentrating on a symptom instead of the disease. The disease is collapse of a moral culture. The removal of GOD from the Public Square, schools, politics, and the family. Treating one symptom is the same as cough syrups and decongestants. You are doing nothing to stop the spread of the FLU! Return to GOD’s Laws. Support and protect the nuclear family. Reinforce Religious Freedoms. Concentrate on Law and Order. Support the Police. It ain’t the gun. They’re just tools, neither good or bad. The user is responsible for the actions!
As a part of a holistic approach to gun violence, it seems that requiring a gun safety course where the certifying person issues a certificate to be shown along with the current requirement of driver’s license during purchase would not be intrusive. It would not have “big brother’s” control but increase safety and not prevent one from being able to buy a gun.
When and if society ever opts to actually punish armed criminals, then and not until then can it commence intelligent conversations about “gun control”,applied to the arms of the law abiding. I’m not holding my breath waiting though.
What a crock! The problem isn’t guns and never has been. The problem is people, and the fact that we don’t hold anybody responsible for their actions anymore. Back in the 1880s everybody west of the Appalachians went armed most of the time, except for a few religious types like Quakers. If you screwed up and somebody got shot, justice was generally swift and sure. If you committed a capital offense, you got hung for it. The point is that everybody knew that a gun was a tool, and that if it was misused, people got hurt, and they held the person who did it responsible. Another thing is that, as Heinlein said, an armed society is a polite society. We could use a hell of lot more politeness these days.
My guns are important PPE that have saved my life many times. Any doctor who doesn’t understand that part of the equation needs to learn some things before venturing into the “guns as a factor in holistic health care discussion”. Doctors should start by getting acquainted with other doctors and organizations of doctors who own guns and support 2nd amendment rights.
For the most recent year United States statistics available, 2017, in round numbers there were approximately 40,000 gun deaths in the United States, of which 24,000 were suicides. Of the remaing 16,000, approximately 1500 were self defense, police shootings and/or unexplained, leaving round figure 14,500 murders. Out of a US population of 330,000,000, that is the equivalent of .00005% of the population. The argument that gun control will prevent suicide doesn’t hold water. Suicide is not spontaneous, it is planned.
blah blah blan and pot isn’t a gateway drug blah blah rationalize your story.
Millions?? In the US? BS.
it’s very funny 🙂