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Good gun. Lousy grip. (courtesy huffgintonpost.com)

Some have called Mike “The Gun Guy” Weisser the gun world’s kapo. As the son of a Holocaust survivor who believes that no Jew should ever allow him or herself to be disarmed, indeed, that all Jews should go out of their way to make sure they are armed, I couldn’t possibly comment. Except to say this: Weisser is pro-civilian disarmament. Oh he’s danced around the issue plenty. But his most recent Huffington Post dietribe [sic] leaves no doubt that “The Gun Guy” wants Americans to surrender their firearms (to someone) for their own good. As a medical matter. Check this out . . .

One disease which continues to escape government-mandated controls is something called gun violence, which kills more than 30,000 Americans each year. And if the NRA and other pro-gun folks want to continue to debase this discussion by claiming that these deaths have nothing to do with guns, that’s fine. But notice that I’m not casting blame on anyone for these gun deaths; I’m not saying that people with guns are good or bad. I’m simply saying that, at the end of the day, if someone puts a loaded gun to their own head or to someone else’s head and pulls the trigger, I guarantee you that someone will be dead. And death from anything other than natural causes is a medical issue and if it is not brought under control, it constitutes a medical risk.

“Gun violence” as amorphous evil and straw man argument aside (“if the NRA and other pro-gun folks want to continue to debase this discussion by claiming that these deaths have nothing to do with guns”), Weisser’s claim that “death from anything other than natural causes is a medical issue” foreshadows the insanity (inanity?) to come. Under this catholic definition, fatal car crashes, drownings, lightning strikes, even combat are all “medical issues.”

The logical corollary to this illogical assertion: doctors should talk to their patients about their guns. Now don’t get me wrong. I believe doctors should be able to talk to their patients about anything they want – from smoking habits to basketball scores to the possibility of alien abduction to what’s in their patients’ gun safes. Patients are equally free to refuse to answer or to tell their physician to FOAD, and then find another doctor. But there’s no mistaking Weisser’s agenda. Not anymore.

The fact is that nobody ever committed an act of gun violence, no matter how it’s defined, without first getting hold of a gun. And since, by definition, none of the 31,000 Americans who will die from gunshots this year will die a natural death, physicians need to adopt, in the words of Sean Palfrey, the strongest possible defense in order to go on the offense regarding the medical risks of guns.

If a gun-owning patient believes that anything said by a doctor about guns is out of bounds, he’s not required to accept the doctor’s advice. And God knows there are plenty of us walking around, sicut me, refusing to follow medical advice about our smoking, our drinking, our guns or our weight. But the government’s inability to go on the offense about gun violence has absolutely nothing to do with any evidence-based knowledge that having guns around reduces medical risk. And until a credible, evidence-based argument proving that guns reduce harm is produced by the pro-gun side, physicians should continue to ask patients to immunize themselves against gun violence by getting rid of the guns.

Seriously? The government should go on offense on “gun violence” – by which I assume Weisser means enact more and stricter gun control legislation rather than jail criminals longer or increase suicide prevention efforts – because there’s no evidence that having guns around reduces medical risk – defined as anyone getting shot by anyone?

Do we assume that Weisser rejects any and all “evidence-based knowledge” of defensive gun uses, which, it must be said, reduce “medical risks” (defined as anyone getting shot, stabbed, raped or beaten by an attacker)? I guess so. How else can you explain his call to doctors to tell their patients to “get rid of guns”?

You’d think Weisser would urge doctors to ask patients to ditch their guns where a patient or a family member is at risk of suicide. Or where there are small children in the house. These are the usual caveats gun control advocates rely on to hide their true intentions re: docs against GLOCKs. But no. Weisser wants all guns gone. Four words for that Mr. “Gun Guy”: over my dead body.

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104 COMMENTS

  1. If being nuttz is a “medical” issue this guy needs to see a doctor.
    A gun is nothing more then a tool. If some ones depressed enough to use a tool, any tool to off themselves. Its not the tool that is the “issue”.

      • “The fact is that nobody ever committed an act of [keyboard] violence, no matter how it’s defined, without first getting hold of a [keyboard].

        You see how that works?

        ah, yup!

        • I was about to comment this same thing, almost word for word! His argument makes no sense, like just about any of these irrational lib arguments. It’s like they don’t teach logic in school anymore. Because they don’t. Because if the general public understood basic logical principles the progressives propaganda would get them laughed away.

    • Japan and South Korea have higher suicide rates alone than the US’s combined total suicide and and total homicide rates (per 100k). Japan and South Korea are continually held up a shinning examples of gunless utopias. Proggies keep throwing the suicide rate into their anti-gun rants so they can beef up the numbers (when the homicide rate keeps falling, the numbers need to be more shocking apparently), but when you point out what I mentioned in my first sentence, only then does it become a “cultural differences” argument. I know Mendacious Mike trolls these boards and I’d welcome him to try and explain to me how banning guns will change the suicide rate when suicide methods are an independent variable across the globe.

      • In Japan, it is common to kill yourself by jumping onto train tracks. This is not “gun violence”, so it doe not matter. Japan should ban trains. It is for the children after all.

      • First off most progressives support euthanasia laws that legalize suicide( I guess they’re fine without as long as you don’t use a gun). Secondly ,mike, there are plenty of credible sources that report research saying that gun ownership does reduce an individual’s risk of certain violent acts,esp rape. Also conceals carry reduces a populations risk of certain types of violent crime.
        I don’t mind if violent death as treated as a medical or safety issue so much. I doimd if gun violence is treated as a separate issue from other violence thus eliminating anything useful coming from that study. One might argue being shot is a better way to go that stabbing or whatever BUT generally speaking a murder victim is not concerned nearly as much with the process as the outcome.

        • “generally speaking a murder victim is not concerned nearly as much with the process as the outcome.”

          I use that line quite a bit. Same for those injured by a gun or knife or blunt object. Further proof that anti’s don’t give a rats ass about victims of violent crime. It’s then I realize just how screwed up in the head these people are… especially the Josh Sugarman’s and Shannon Watts’ of the world that seem to have a Pavlovian response to the possibilities of more mass shootings.

  2. “physicians should continue to ask patients to immunize themselves against gun violence by getting rid of the guns.”

    Yes clearly this simple panacea is the answer. It’s a proven fact that it takes a minimum of 1 gun and one person for a shooting to occur, and making sure that you don’t have a gun raises that floor to 2 people and 1 gun which we know for a true fact is less than half as likely as the former situation. That is, if you feel like you’re likely to hurt yourself. Otherwise carry on.

    If he wants to focus on suicides that’s fine, but he should be honest about that fact and disregard homicide numbers entirely, and he really shouldn’t believe that it will make a difference.

    • “physicians should continue to ask patients to immunize themselves against gun violence by getting rid of the guns.” Perfect fail on every level. Physicians advising on guns have a bout as much credibility as physicians advising on vaccines. Ironically both the gun grabbers and the vaccine pushers use very similar, junk science arguments to push their agenda.

      • I try to avoid mixing those topics together. Same with climate change, abortion, or pretty much anything else that people are divided on. Anything else usually ends up alienating people on one issue or another, and then it’s that much harder for them to be open to logic and facts about firearms.

        • Agree, but Mike the gun guy had already drawn the 2 together. Just a recent observation as the medical/pharmaceutical/govt complex is ramping up to weaken peoples rights when it comes to making their own health care decisions and in doing so use many of the same tactics and semantics that are used when they ramp up to attack the 2nd Amendment.

        • At the same time gun rights don’t exist in a vacuum, and I think it is useful to look at the biggest picture possible to understand where you are and where we are headed.

  3. He’s a shill for whatever pays him. A common whore

    He had a gunshop that went out of business. So he was for guns before he was against guns. Then that stopped and now he gets paid by huffpo. So he’s with them fully as this moronic piece shows.

    Absolutely no integrity

    • I’ve met several self proclaimed “gun people” who believed in rights and guns for me, but none for thee.

      Lowest of the low life gun grabbers, says me.

      • To be honest, I’ve NEVER actually heard of a US citizen that was HONESTLY anti-gun, and this includes Obama, Bloomberg, Boxer etc.

        Even the staunchest of “Anti-Gun” proponents commonly either carry guns themselves, or have ARMED security details that carry for themselves.
        But even the lowest of “ANTI-Gun”-sheep, don’t want the POLICE disarmed.

        That’s why I always ask the anti-gun-sheep these 2 questions: “Do the police in your area carry guns? WHY, what do they KNOW, that YOU are obviously ignorant of?”

        • I know several who want the 2nd completely repealed and guns taken from all but the military. (Credit where it’s due, they want the police disarmed too.) Predictably, they’re in San Francisco and NYC. Obviously I disagree with them, but I appreciate the honesty and purity of their hatred, however irrational it may be.

    • As far I could find, he still has a store/range in Ware, MA…Yelp gives it all crappy reviews. Why would anyone in their right mind patronize this guy? Even if it is Massachusetts?

    • I think the term would be “Judenrat”.

      From what I’ve heard, they were a Jewish council that would collaborate with the Nazi’s in enforcing German oppressive laws on their own Jewish population.

      One of which was making sure their people had turned in all their guns.

  4. “death from anything other than natural causes is a medical issue”

    Come on, RF, you know he’s right! Look here, if you or someone else fires a bullet of .45 or larger through your brain, the natural result will be that you are dead, therefore the cause is “natural causes”. When your vehicle is run over by a choo-choo train, your death is certainly expected, of “natural causes”. If you leap off the Empire State building, there is only one “natural” result. Things, in fact, that are NOT “natural causes” would be cancer, AIDS, pneumonia, ebola, etc, and he is obviously correct, they are medical problems. MDs should have regular discussions with their patients on such subjects, and they should be respected and believed to have at least some basis for their statements. Guns? Not so much.

    • Yes, and it’s the Big Pharm lobby’s fault. They support the death of tens of thousands of people by allowing doctors to continue to pre…

      Ok, done. I couldn’t continue the nonsense, but you get the point.

        • To really get down to the nitty gritty… All deaths are caused by lack of blood to the brain. ANYTHING that kills you ultimately does so by depriving the brain of blood.

        • Lungs full of water stops the transfer of O2 in the blood to the brain, so, if you want to be picky about it, cut off Oxygen to the brain by any means kills you.

          And then you are dead…

          (But still eligible to vote in many (read, Democrat) areas…)

    • I hear the UK is big on “rope violence”, and China is big on “knife violence”. The middle east seems to have a thing for “IED violence”, and “immolation violence” (which seems to be catching on in certain quarters here in the US, too). Speaking of the US, where is the clamor for doctors to address “vehicular violence”?

      And let us not forget that scourge of college campuses (and the world over): “alcohol violence”.

  5. He’s the founder of ‘National Medical Council On Gun Violence’. Their ‘Advisory Board’ lists gun control notables such as: PJ Cook, Matt Miller, David Hemenway, Sean Palfrey and Stephen Teret.

    Oddly enough, he hasn’t gotten around to telling his readers about the demise of his gun store and his new job with NMCGV.

  6. What’s in a name?

    I can call myself John L. the Liberal Pacifist if I like, but I’m not gonna convince anyone of that from my writings unless they don’t know anything about either Liberalism (modern sense) or pacifism.

    I guess that’s why this person uses “the gun guy” as his nom de shill at HuffPo. They just don’t know to call him on it.

    • His bio ‘splains why he calls himself a ‘gun guy’…

      ” I am the author of 5 books and numerous blogs and articles. I spend most of my time writing about guns and related subjects. I have been in the gun business for more than 35 years as a wholesaler, retailer, importer and firearms instructor. I am a certified NRA firearms instructor and have trained more than 2,000 men and women in guns and gun safety. I have sold more than 40,000 guns and I know as much about guns and hunting as anyone. When I was a kid I had three hobbies: toy soldiers, toy trains and toy guns. Now it’s just guns.”

      • Yes. I know.

        My point is that actions speak louder than words, and words louder than self-proclaimed titles.

        He may well have been a gun guy at one point. No longer, IMHO.

        • I think he’s a “guns for me but not for thee” guy–but that takes too long to use as a byline, and it’s too honest.

  7. The old Soviet Union started the “Medical Issue” type of control where people that disagreed with the government could be placed in sanitoriums as mentally unstable simply because they disagreed with the government. If we believe gun rights are inherent to a free people, then we could be declared insane using the logic that the desire to own a gun is insane.
    Love the picture accompanying the article. I for one, will not place my left thumb on top of my gripping hand when firing a semiautomatic pistol. Unless it’s a P 08
    Paul in Texas

    • I for one, will not place my left thumb on top of my gripping hand when firing a semiautomatic pistol. Unless it’s a P 08

      Yeah, die Alte Togglebolt should be safe. 🙂

    • “The old Soviet Union started the “Medical Issue” type of control…”

      This +1,000. Measures like this start with taking guns from “depressed” people and end with taking guns from anyone who doesn’t vote for the correct political party.

  8. Well, the good news is that whoever was photographed holding that gun has probably lost his/her left thumb by now.

    Or am I the only person who has noticed that?

  9. And death from anything other than natural causes is a medical issue and if it is not brought under control, it constitutes a medical risk.

    Anyone can die from anything at almost anytime – that means everything is a medical issue.

    * If an asteroid from space plummets to earth and kills someone – medical issue.
    * Tiger breaks free from Zoo and maims – medical issue.
    * Guy trips and falls down stairs – medical issue.
    * Swimmer gets a cramp and drowns – medical issue.

    With this logic, every single thing we do in life should fall under the jurisdiction of “medical issues” including free thinking.

  10. I see Mike’s problem. He hates guns because that stupid grip gives him slide-bitten knuckles every time he shoots. A nice thumbs forward grip and he’ll like guns a lot more.

    • Yea I bet that is what happened. He pulled some moronic grip and sliced his thumb open. He then went to the doctor paid an amazingly high price for mediocre medical service that could have been better provided from any other country on the planet (including 3rd world countries). Then we flipped open his laptop and wrote a “Mike the Gun Guy” hate article about how guns should be banned because they present a medical issue. Other things ( like those I posted above) do not present medical issues – but guns do! Because Guns! and because Mike the “Gun Guy” said so and it falls within the acceptable topics and views of the huffpo editorial management and ownership.

  11. “… physicians need … to go on the offense regarding the medical risks of guns.”

    “… physicians should continue to ask patients to immunize themselves against gun violence by getting rid of the guns.”

    I will happily embrace this proposal when physicians also instruct their patients about the medical risks of train violence, gravity (heights) violence, velocity (fast car crash) violence, rope violence, poison violence, knife violence, fist violence, hammer violence, bludgeon violence, and pillow violence.

    And I will happily advocate that physicians continue to ask patients to get rid of trains, gravity (heights), velocity (fast cars), rope, poison, knives, fists, hammers, bludgeons, and pillows.

    In case you are wondering about those long lists, they cover several items that people have used to either kill themselves or others.

  12. Get rid of every gun. then comes the push against knife violence. then comes arrow violence. all the way to blunt object violence. everything can be a blunt object. We all end up naked living in a bare parking lot. Even cloth can be a weapon.

  13. Two things:
    1. If we get rid of guns, would he then be Mike “The Guy” Weisser?
    2. Considering that guns “cure” more than 750,000 crimes and cause about 30,000 “issues”, wouldn’t guns be more like a vaccine and gun violence be more like the side effects of said vaccine?

  14. About three decades or so ago, car safety advocates made strenuous efforts to impose mandatory helmet laws on motorcycle riders. Delete “motorcycle” and insert “guns” and the arguments are exactly the same. In a pattern pretty much in alignment with gun-control, some states require helmets while other don’t don’t. But repeated efforts to pass universal, nation wide, helmet laws have failed. The reason universal helmet laws failed is because the American people sided with bikers and supported freedom of choice. Even though most Americans aren’t bikers, they nonetheless supported the basic ideas of liberty and freedom that bikers were arguing were about to be abridged. A similar dynamic is now occurring with guns. If you paid attention to that earlier effort, it’s eerie how similar those arguments to the current gun-control debate. This is one reason why gun controllers are losing, despite huge amounts of money being spent on gun-control propaganda. While this is no guarantee that freedom and liberty will win this time around, it does mean there reason to hope.

  15. If gun violence is a medical issue, here’s some free medical advice:

    Prolong your life by obeying the law and by avoiding risky behaviors, such as joining a gang, stealing or breaking and entering etc. Get a job. Recommended dosage: once a day x 365.

  16. The way the guy in the photo is gripping that SR9 he’s going to need a doctor with that thumb over the top of the strong hand. If not a good band-aid.

  17. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that Huffington Post, Politico, Salon and the like exist only to get clicks. They do that by posting outlandish positions. When their click rate falls, they put someone like Mike up to draw us in. All he is is bait and we fall for it. We all know he’s a complete idiot.

  18. “And death from anything other than natural causes is a medical issue”

    I wonder if having one’s head inserted in their rear and resulting suffocation is a medical issue? Afterall mikey(Bnumbers) is clearly braindead.

  19. Okay, I love an extended metaphor as much as the next person, but this makes even less than no sense. It seems like the kind of thing you write down in the middle of the night after a half-remembered dream, only to wake up in the morning and realizing what you wrote down was nonsense.

  20. Weisser is as well-regarded here in MA as is shingles or nasal catarrh. He was a Fifth Columnist when he was selling guns, and he’s even worse now.

  21. Holding on… since when was dying from “natural causes” not medical?

    “Sorry sir, your heart attack is a natural cause, and so isn’t medical. Please go die in the streets, come back if you get shot”

    The flu… heck cancer is a natural cause. What a dumb idiotic moron. This is why I don’t believe in democracy, is because absolutely dumb, head so far up arse it is coming back up through their neck, are raised a authors, teachers, intellectuals, despite being glaringly dumb.

  22. So, uh “Gun Guy” Mike (not to be confused with Rich Mike) … when are you going to give all of your guns to the local PD or otherwise rid yourselves of them?

    Or is this more of a “do as I say but not as I do” article? How strongly do you believe what you’re preaching?

  23. Should someone tell Mike that medicine is the 3rd leading cause of preventable death in the USA, and that’s according to their own numbers?

  24. “…. And until a credible, evidence-based argument proving that guns reduce harm is produced by the pro-gun side,”

    What is wrong with all the currently available studies? Are they not Science-y enough? Or just too pro-gun to fit within his desired definition?

  25. In a lot of ways, the whole argument is irrelevant. Gun deaths are an insignificant cause of death. Even if we grant – for the sake of argument – 30,000 killed by guns, consider from an epidemiological perspective the numbers according to CDC:

    Number of deaths: 2,596,993 people died in the US in 2013

    Number of deaths for leading (top 5) causes of death:
    Heart disease: 611,105
    Cancer: 584,881
    Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 149,205
    Accidents (unintentional injuries): 130,557
    Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,978

    For firearms, by contrast:
    Accidental discharge: 505 (yes, 505 out of 130,557 accidental deaths)
    Intentional self harm (suicide): 21,175
    Assault (homicide): 11,208
    Other causes: 748
    Total: 33,636

    Let’s do some math:
    (33,636 / 2,593,993) * 100 = 1.3% of deaths in US are due to guns in any respect.

    Now if one considers Assault (homicide) numbers only – i.e. the only category that is actually “gun violence” the data is even less supporting of gun control:
    (11,208 / 2,593,993) * 100 = 0.43% of deaths are due to “gun violence.”

    In other words, when you consider that in 2013, the estimated population of the US was 316,497,531, the percentage of population killed by guns is:
    (33,636 / 316,497,531) * 100 = 0.01%

    That’s one one-hundredth of one percent of the population killed by guns. And THAT is the real reason why we are winning. From a population perspective, gun deaths do not have a real impact on the American people or American life. Any loss of innocent life is a tragedy and the gun controllers get a momentary boost when something happens due to the emotional empathy rush. However, the reality is that even though guns are a big part of American society, death by guns are not.

    To close with a purely editorial thought, these numbers are actually good for us. As the gun control lobby loses more ground, they seem to get more shrill – especially when confronted with fact. Check any left leaning news source when they have a gun story. The more shrill they become, the less credible they appear to the public. We are seeing this now as the Mom’s Demand Action group slowly sinks into oblivion.

    • Ahh; fact, logic, history and perspective.

      For many liberal/progressives, this is as incomprehensible as a foreign language, even with a dictionary.

  26. One thing you’ll notice that is rarely addressed is that, though not a fuzzy warm thought, many of those deaths they lump in together are necessary deaths. People that should have died. People that were better off dead.
    Obviously not the suicides, except maybe in the case of someone terminally ill and/or in horrible pain.

    Some people are so deluded and corrupt that they are willing to take other people’s lives for $20, or a pair of shoes, etc. etc. When a dog bites a human it becomes necessary to put it down.

  27. This is some of the most backwards logic I’ve heard yet. Take suicide out (we all know those who plan to commit suicide will do so with the best tool at their disposal, if it’s not a gun it will be something else), take criminal behavior out (that’s going to happen whether the rest of us own guns or not- and likely at a higher rate if we don’t) and you have a minimal number of firearm related deaths in this country. We’d be better off having doctors talk to us about the best way to climb and descend stairs. But of course, the “gun moron” at HuffPo already knew that.

  28. Huff puff’s go to useful idiot. I (for one) was offended when you let it comment on TTAG. Might as well let Di Fein be your blogger RF…

  29. To buy his conclusion, you must first accept that there is a fundamental difference between a death by a gun and a death by any other means. I submit that there is no fundamental difference between death by gun and death by knife.

    Secondly, his defenition for a medical issue is incorrect, if not perfectly inverted. Death by heart disease is naturaly caused, and heart disease is about the biggest medical issue in the country.

    Once again we see that the only obsession with guns is in the minds of anti gun folks.

    Am I just rehashing things Robert said? I don’t even know because hearing anti-gun crap like this has become exhausting enough that i usually just jump down and leave my $.02 worth.

  30. My comment over on huffpo.

    “A MD that asks about guns, other than how to shoot his own more efficiently, is committing malpractice. Guns are a tool, not a pathogen. As a BSN, RN I know this quite well, I learned it in Microbiology while attending the University of North Carolina.

    All MDs should know this too, if they don’t, find another MD, yours is marginally competent.”

    • My MD asked me about guns one time…
      He wanted to know where to get the best deal on one and where to take his family shooting. He was formerly a sniper in the army.

  31. Indeed someone putting a gun to their head (or someone else’s) and pulling the trigger is a medical issue. So why doesn’t he talk about suicide prevention, psychiatric help for the murderers, or helping to keep the criminals behind bars so good people don’t have to shoot them in self defense?

  32. Not that it invalidates anything people are saying but, some people need to realize that the images accompanying an article are usually just stock images to dress up the article….
    if you think the horrible grip depicted in this article is of Mike “the gun guy” then you need to rethink it…

  33. “The fact is that nobody ever committed an act of gun violence, no matter how it’s defined, without first getting hold of a gun.”

    But what if I define “gun violence” as “writing for an online ‘news’ source so inane that one wishes it were actually printed just so one could refuse to give it the dignity of even being used to paper train one’s dog”? Surely THAT has been done at least once without first getting hold of a gun?

    Of course, I’m not sure I can really come up with multiple definitions for “gun violence”, because the only one that keeps jumping out at me is “violence performed with a gun”. By definition, then, of COURSE one needs a gun to do gun violence! But the problem isn’t with the gun, it’s with the VIOLENCE!

    I don’t doubt that everyone here agrees that serial killers (killers who kill multiple people in succession) are bad, and should not be tolerated. Does that mean, then, that we should pass laws preventing anyone from doing anything in series?

  34. I’ll ask again, since it apparently did not “post” yesterday. Are people here going to continue to sh*t all over me for calling out Mike Weisser for being the anti-America scumbag he CONTINUALLY proves himself to be? Anybody? Hello! McFly!?!?!?

  35. Yep lets register and disarm civilians of guns. It worked out so well for the Jews last time.
    As a society I think we are probably either the same or perhaps less tolerant than society was during the holocost.

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