Health Beat by Maggie Mahar
Last week the American Medical Association made headlines when it called gun violence a “public health crisis” and pledged to actively lobby Congress to overturn a 20-year ban on funding for the Center for Disease Control’s research on the issue. It took the horror of 49 people being murdered in Orlando and another 53 suffering injury for the mainstream doctor’s group to finally take a stand on an issue that receives broad support from the scientific community, criminal justice experts and many elected offi
This is maddening. Why, in a nation where some 13,431 people died from gun violence and more than 21,000 individuals used guns to commit suicide in 2014 does anyone think a research ban makes sense? The U.S., armed to the teeth with an estimated one firearm for nearly 90% of its 321 million citizens, has the most firearms per capita in the world and accounts for 82% of all gun deaths among 22 nations that include the U.K., France, Australia and Germany. What combination of twisted logic and paranoia has p
That responsibility rests on the minority of die-hard Second Amendment supporters who have consistently used their outsize influence to drive a pro-gun agenda. Convinced that actual scientific research will bolster the case for tighter gun control measures they prefer to rely on tired rhetoric and false associations to support their arguments. After every shooting, be it massively horrific like in Orlando or the more “ordinary” murder of a wife by an abusive husband, gun control opponents tell us “guns don’
Health Beat by Maggie Mahar