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Dr. Robert Sege (courtesy apbspeakers.com)

“The NRA’s influence has peaked. Surveys of NRA members show that they’re a little tired of their leadership . . . There are 60,000 of us and we see almost every American child almost every year. If the pediatricians are strong on this issue, it’s hard for me to believe that there will be such a discrepancy over what we believe and what the families we care for believe.” – Boston Medical Center pediatrician Dr. Robert Sege, quoted in ‘Doctors Fight the NRA Over Gun Safety’ [via news.yahoo.com] [h/t Pascal]

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94 COMMENTS

  1. I’d be curious to know if he has ever personally treated a child for a gun shot. My initial guess would be that he has not and is weighing in on they issue purely because it is chic in his circle.

    • Pediatricians will tell me what to believe and I’ll believe it – because they’re wicked smaht pediatricians and I’m apparently just a dumb lawyer. Got it.

    • whats up wth the emotard news lately ??why do we have to go chase links after reading some emotard headline and a short emotard quote ?? am goona unfollow this page if this is the editoial policy here

  2. Be wary of doctors and doctors’ organizations like the AMA, and pediatric organizations in particular.

    They are not bad people, but they’ve taken it upon themselves to ‘heal’ everyone and try to prevent any bad thing that happens. Guns, to them, are evil devices that cause harm on a populace that they want to treat to get better.

    They’ve allowed their good intentions to corrupt themselves into attempting to control people’s behavior through law. For our ‘own good’.

    This isn’t a Boston-only issue. These people are here in Texas too.

    • RE the AMA. I was chatting with our family doc during my recent checkup, and I asked him how Obammacare was affecting him and his practice. It was overall very negative, but one related note: The AMA membership is comprised of only 17% of all the docs. The main goal of the AMA is for the care codes, etc. Basically, the AMA does NOT truely represent the medical community, though they are frequently framed as doing so. They represent gov regs, codes, etc. Big surprise. not

      • You are correct. AMA membership is at an all time low for a reason. Their liberal tendencies and support of the Affordable Care Act and Obama in general has driven most physicians away. Take away medical students as members and there are less members than physicians in any state in the US.

      • As a physician, I learned long ago that AMA stopped representing anything but themselves and ‘serve’ only ways to enrich themselves.

        As a physician in Maine, I can attest that gun-safety is more than adequately accomplished by the parents; I occasionally get venison or moose after admiring the trophy pics of my patients’ children (or grandchildren).

        With my anti-gun colleagues, I point out more Americans die from our mistakes (some preventable, others not) than guns. And when I describe how anti-gun groups play with statistics – and most docs are reasonably familiar with statistical analysis – eyes glaze over.

        Alas, facts mean little to many liberals, no matter how well educated.

  3. As a new father, count on my son and any future children to be taught proper respect for guns, proper gun safety, and American history including the Constitution.

    Sorry Doc, your degree doesn’t make you an expert on everything. You can handle stomach aches and ear infections, but I doubt you can prepare your own tax form, finish your basement DIY, or repair your car.

  4. Fight the NRA over gun safety? What does he want? A 5th rule added to Col. Cooper’s 4 rules the NRA teach? I am sure there is no way he means gun “control”. Liberals are always honest and never use double speak.

    #sarcasm

      • Libtard soccermom thing. Take your kids to a real doctor. Who you trying to impress with that overpriced “pediatrician BS anyhow. I GP/family doc can handle what needs done. Psychosomatic nonsense.

        Same dolts take their son in to hair stylist Buffy rather than a BARBER. The father doesn’t have a pair and soccer mom intends the son never grows any. And all a dems.

  5. 4 out of 5 dentists surveyed recommend AR15s for their patients that shoot guns.

    See, it doesn’t take 4 or six, whatever…a bunch of years of schoolin to make a presumptive statistic based statement.

  6. — doctor & gun owner. I regularly shoot with other doctors. No worries. Oh, and I renovated my kitchen and bathrooms, helped my pops build four houses and wrenched on my fully modded WRX. 😉

  7. Isn’t that the hospital that kidnapped that teenage girl for medical experiments and denied her the treatment for her condition for over a year?

      • Actually no!

        Justina Pellitier was taken from (Tuft’s) New England Medical Center to the (Harvard) Children’s Hospital Medical Center which started the whole mess.

        Boston Medical Center (associated with Boston University) is whole ‘nother kettle of worms on the other side of Boston. BMC used to be City Hospital.

  8. I bet doctors kill more people than NRA members. And there are cops and military in the NRA’s ranks.

    • Well, not all soldiers or police are NRA members so the numbers of people they have killed would be very difficult to determine, however, according to the Institute of Medicine 98,000 people in the US are killed annually by preventable medical errors. Based on that I’d say that doctors really do kill more people than NRA members.

      If a doctor is actually interested in preserving life he could take up some cause that he is highly qualified to address, such as resisting those who are against childhood vaccinations, or simply advocating for the checklists that are well proven in multiple studies to be highly effective in preventing injury, illness and death from medical errors.

      Now, if a doctor wants to sound ‘fashionable and chic’ or has some agenda other than actually saving lives he could enter the gun control debate. But then again, absolutely anyone from any field who is interested in the preservation of human life could address some issue other than gun control and immediately be more effective. Given this, I conclude that no one who is committed to gun control has an interest in the preservation of life unless they are badly misinformed.

  9. I have been hearing how the NRA membership has been fed up with the organization for years. This a standard propaganda technique used to marginalize the target. Simply state an untruth and continue to repeat it. Here is what happens. You end up believing it while nobody else does.

    • Well, who isn’t tired of WLP? Maybe tired isn’t the right word — many NRA members think he’s past his sell-by date. He’s been leading the organization since the 90s.

      • Maybe, but none of us are tired of him because we want him to agree to AWBs or universal background checks. They really believe their own propaganda, don’t they?

        • Yeah, that’s not the same thing, is it? In fact, though we’d pretty much like to see him replaced, he’s still there because his attitude toward infringements on our rights is predictable and unrelenting. Says I, a Patron member.

      • The reason that you are tired of WLP is a good reason to keep him around. I am not saying this as a put down. He is the right face of Second Amendment Rights to influence those who neither committed gun rights activists or gun banners. We need a boring everyman like Wayne to deal with Congress and the media. We don’t want a firebrands as spokesmen in those kinds of forums. We want firebrands to go head to head with Shannon Watts.

        • You think WLP is an everyman? What f*cking part of doesn’texistville, USA are you from?

  10. I don’t ask doctors how to ride motorcycles. They hate those, too, and they are much more likely to cause injury than firearms. I don’t ask doctors to advise me how to carry a knife, or how 154 CM compares to S30V. I don’t ask doctors for political advice. I could frankly care less what doctors think about non-health related issues.

    Come to think of it, so many doctors have endorsed crappy products and ideas over the years that I don’t immediately trust them. The whole discipline is suspect. I’m inclined to get a second opinion or to switch doctors.

  11. Sure, guns are a public health epidemic. And how many people are killed by medical malpractice or prescription drug overdose yearly? HMMMMMM

    • Yep, if he was actually serious about saving lives, he should push to reduce malpractice. His training and background would actually give him some relevant expertise and credibility on the issue.

  12. He’s from Boston? Hahahahahahahahahaha! He wouldn’t last long as a pediatrician over in my flyover part of the country. Our doctors go deer hunting with us around these parts.

  13. Peaked eh? I wooooooooonder about that.

    I love the ‘survey says’ quote too. Wat survey? Which NRA members? Does NRA give out their membership list to gun hating doctor groups for statistical analysis?

    A year ago the NRA was dead. A year before that it was a paper tiger. Now its influence has peaked.

    Someone else already said it. Physician, heal thy self!

    • Been a member of one kind or another for 40 years. No one has ever asked me any such thing. BS flag.

  14. So since I HATE pedophiles and fat people, I guess the doc won’t mind if we start discussing his sexual life and cholesterol levels then, huh? Ok – game on.

  15. The number of people killed by doctors by medical mistakes FAR outweighs the number of gun injuries. Maybe they should worry about themselves before attacking law-abiding citizens defending their families, which is the safest demographic in the world.

    “Preventable medical errors kill and seriously injure hundreds of thousands of Americans every year”
    http://www.justice.org/cps/rde/justice/hs.xsl/8677.htm

  16. There’s 60,000 of you, but there is 5,000,000 (and counting) of us as NRA members. Don’t think because your a Doctor that your title and position overrules the people who exercise their a civil right.

    • I was just thinking about his underlying math-fail there. There’s 60,000 of them, and I doubt they could count more than half to agree with him, verses 5 million of us, on the one subject we ALL obviously agree on.
      I know his 60,000 is totes more important than the rest of us rubes, but I would’ve thought as a doctor he’ be a little more candid about his odds.

    • It is complete arrogance that this physician claims to represent every physician in the American Academy of Pediatrics. That is just not true. Many physicians are gun owners and NRA members.

      The data this guy is referring to was a survey sent to some pediatricians. First off they don’t talk about how many physicians didn’t fill out the survey and return it (probably the ones actually working taking care of patients, not the ones who never practice and are into politics/business which is almost half the number of doctors out there). They never talk about if the survey was large enough to represent the whole. It was just that, a survey, not research, and they rigged the questions to get the answers they like.

      3 types of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and statistics.

  17. More than 100,00 innocent victims die yearly in hospitals from infections caused by the failure of staff to properly wash their hands and sterilize medical instruments. Millions are saved yearly because of medical staff and instruments.

    Sadly, some thousands (low four figures after you exclude bad guys killing each other, and suicides which would occur using different methods) of innocent people are killed yearly because of guns in the hands of bad or incompetent people. Hundreds of thousands (more?) are probably saved yearly because of guns in the hands of good competent private citizens.

  18. 90,000+ deaths and 280,000+ critically maimed annually in the US due to Medical Malpractice. Is Medical Malpractice preventable? You bet’cha.

    If you want to save lives, try starting with your own profession. Hell, isn’t that part of your Hippocratic Oath?

    Clean your own house!

  19. The notion of “ending gun violence” is a fool’s errand. Even Japan, an island nation with a near total ban on guns still has gun violence.

  20. “Only 12 percent of the pediatricians surveyed stated that they always identify families who keep firearms in their homes. Fifty percent of the physicians surveyed never identify which patients’ families have firearms at home.

    “Some 33 percent of the physicians surveyed reported that they always recommend that families should unload and lock away their guns. Thirty-seven percent of the physicians never provide that guidance.

    “Only 18 percent of the physicians surveyed stated that they always recommend that handguns be removed from their patients’ homes.”

    See more at: http://www.aap.org/en-us/professional-resources/Research/Pages/PS25_GunsandChildrenAAPPeriodicSurveyResults.aspx#sthash.exLmipJO.dpuf

  21. Once again cue the Sarah MaGlaughlin background music….

    Dr. Bobby here, like so many of his fellow misguided gun control advocates, suffers from a psychological condition known as False Consensus Syndrome. He truly believes his opinions are shared by everyone else, because…well he’s a doctor with a crappy beard. Your donation to the NRA can help Dr. Booby and those who needlessly suffer like him. For just pennies a day, less than the cost of a McBloomburger with cheese, you can help….

  22. The NRA’s peaked huh? Why do leftards continuously rag on it?
    Every other s##t article on Yahoo or HuffPoo is a hit piece on the NRA. I’d say overall the good guys are winning. Yes doctors kill more people than gun owners.

  23. Sadly, I work at Boston Medical Center, and this attitude is all to common. No one seems to realize that the problem is with the criminal, not the lawful gun owners. I do not worry about the questions, but about what is done with the answers. To the folks wondering about how many pedi GSW patients he has treated, BMC sees a lot of trauma and some of that is shooting involving pediatric patients. Although surgery would be the service that does the treatment, he may be doing the initial evaluation and eventual follow up.

  24. “These guns, these bullets blew open these children’s heads, their bodies, their limbs,” Auerbach wrote. “In what kind of society do we live, whereby these weapons are needed to defend and protect?”

    Well, I suppose the kind of society where people occasionally go on rampages and kill children. We’d LOVE to carry these weapons to protect and defend children, but you won’t let us. WHY won’t you let us protect the children? Don’t you CARE about the CHILDREN?

    “An estimated 20,600 people under the age of 25 are injured by a gun every year and 6,570 die, according to the AAP.”

    Jesus Christ Monkeyballs. Why not use the numbers for all Americans under 50? Really, aren’t you a young person until you get that AARP card? But seriously, all those 23 year old bang-bangers in Chicago are exactly the examples you want to use when waving the bloody kid’s shirt.

    “The most recent policy statement affirms that “the most effective measure to prevent suicide, homicide, and unintentional firearm-related injuries to children and adolescents is the absence of guns from homes and communities,”

    ‘…prevent suicide…’ Sure, just ask the Japanese.
    ‘…homicide…’ Because until firearms were invented, nobody ever murdered.
    ‘…unintentional firearm-related injuries…’ Well, you got me. With the absence of guns, there will be less gun related injuries. So why aren’t you calling for the absence of pools, cars, bleach, stairs, dogs, malaria, SIDS, and other things that kill kids?

    Sadly, the ridiculousness of the article puts the more important point in the shade. Promoting gun safety should be a part of a pediatrician’s M.O., the same as promoting other home safety initiatives. My pediatrician had pamphlets on electric outlets, pool safety, stickers for hazardous chemicals, (bleach, etc.) , car seat info, and more. A pamphlet on gun safety sounds like a great idea.

    • Let’s add to those stats–accidental/unintentional gun deaths –so we can understand the magnitude of the issue. I did a quick little google search and landed on an anti-gun site that cited US Government statistics as follows: app 760 unintentional gun deaths for all ages between 2005 and 2010, of which 260 were under 25. So what these guys are proposing are gun bans in all homes with “children” to prevent a remarkably small number of accidental deaths each year.

  25. Maybe this asshat should look at the death rate directly due to medical malpractice, see how it compares to the relatively miniscule # of murders with firearms, and then we should have a real discussion.

    And don’t give me the ‘Oh but Doctors save lives too’ thing either. So do guns.

  26. You guys are wrong about the 98 or 100k killed. It’s a lot more!

    Went to an asthma PA one time, they had just come out with Advair. She said if I wanted to try it I could. . . . I said since I was doing okay, why change? She said fine.

    Then she said if she wrote so many scrips of Advair per month, the Doc got $400 and she got $40. Wonder if that motivated the DOC or her?

    Had a gallbladder removed. After the initial dosage of knock out preps, I’m in this really big “holding/staging area” alone. This guy walks up and asks me if I am taking any scripts and if I’m allergic to any meds or anything, he has a small yellow sticky in his hand as he was prepared to write. I was too groggy to answer correctly so I told him to “read my f**king chart”. Pissed him off, he was the anesthesiologist, started to put me out with no surgeon in the room, nurse stopped him.

    Waking up IN OR, nurse is holding my arms as I struggle. She says it’s okay honey, we’re giving you a breathing treatment, someone else says put him out, they did. So the asshole never read my chart. Surgeon did do a great job. Two and a half hour operation should have taken 45 minutes. When I ask about the time issue afterwards they tell me there was nothing unusual.

    So why during the operation did he come out and tell my there was a small problem and they were fixing it?

    Doctors are like gun guys and every other profession.

    MDA should start demanding video cameras in every operating room when a kid is operated on. Watch the number of deaths plummet. Maybe we should start DDAAD, Dads Demand Action About Doctors, maybe Bloomie and Shannon will contribute.

  27. Been my experience in life that anyone trying to smile that hard in a picture is a fake person. but that is only an opinion. I`m not a doctor…

  28. I am a pediatrician, I used to live in NY, I now own guns and live in NV, I used to be anti-gun, I am not any more…. Any East Coast Pediatrician has no clue about guns and has about as much credibility counseling on this as they do counseling on the appropriate mixture of rocket fuel that NASA should use.

  29. As an NRA certified pistol instructor I volunteer my time to teach people how to be safe with firearms. How many of those 60,000 pediatricians do that?

  30. Be wary of any doctor enthusiastic to vaccinate children, they’re already displaying statist groupthink bias.

    • Hopefully that’s sarcasm. if not then this isn’t: ‘eff off. People like you are the reason children are dying from vaccine preventable diseases and why we are seeing a resurgence of polio.

      • Its not sarcasm. Either you have a financial stake in this, or you’re dangerously naïve. Your “eff off” sums you up.

        • It does… I lose about 5-10 dollars per vaccine given, make it up on the visit codes but thank you for proving the fact that a little knowledge is a very dangerous thing.

    • Unfortunately, we can’t vaccinate against stupid!

      Vaccines along with modern water sanitation/chlorination have increased healthy lifespans more than anything else. Perhaps this guy wants to go back to the days when you had 8 kids just so you could raise 4 to adulthood.

      • It’s awesome when people throw insults while wrapping themselves in a cloak of ignorance. If you want to talk vaccine facts, go for it. If all you have is ad hominem, then beat it.

        • Paco,
          Challenge accepted and sorry for the ad hominem.

          I don’t really have the time right now to get you data, but I can tell you this: I’m a doc who has personally seen children needlessly die from preventable bacterial diseases that could have been vaccinated against. Luckily I’ve been spared watching children die of small pox and polio. This blessing is thanks to immunizations. Those who leach off everyone elses herd immunity by choosing not to immunize are relatively protected by the rest of us. If everyone stopped immunizing, I assure you that we would have plaques upon us again.

          I wonder how many children you would have to watch die before becoming pro-immunization?

        • Wes, there is no evidence that equates vaccine induced herd immunity and naturally acquired herd immunity. The “leeching” argument is a false one because it is not based on any science. If vaccines do work, that should protect those who choose to vaccinate.

  31. Breaking News:

    Doctors know very little about health. To disguise this fact they are actively looking for other ways and areas to display their lack of expertise…

  32. “If the pediatricians are strong on this issue… ”

    Seems he assumes all pediatrician have exactly the same views. As if all pediatricians were in support of his stance. I know mine isn’t.

  33. My son’s pediatrician is an NRA Life Member and has NRA gun safety materials in his office. I doubt that he toes the AAP line…

  34. Let’s see I grew up in the country my so-called pediatrician was 50 miles away in the nearest town. I was taught gun safety at a very early age as most children were all of us had .22’s and went hunting, by 13 we were often on our own shooting rabbits for dinner not uncommon none of us got hurt. The pediatrician would disappear for a week every year for either deer or elk in Colorado. Broke my wrist on a skateboard, concussion on a bicycle and arm broken falling off a horse. Should I be suing my parents for letting me have a life or perhaps we should look into banning skateboards, bicycles and horses?
    We always had firearms in the house and never under lock we were just trained to handle them and not to mess with the weapons, does that mean we were that much smarter than the current crop of dumbed down over sugared children of today.

  35. Our pediatrician is a shooter.

    There are three doctors in my family…. all of them shooters.

    The AMA can claim a membership of about 15% of all physicians. Their opinion means little in its own profession.

  36. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick had the executive power to pardon convicted criminals with the stroke of a pen, yet ignored the plight of an innocent, sick adolescent in state care. It’s a dereliction of duty that Governor Patrick did not take action to free Justina into the loving arms of her family,” commented Rev. Patrick Mahoney a spokesperson for the Pelletier Family. It is tragic that every young person in the Wayside Youth Facility was able to spend time with their family and celebrate Easter except one. That is Justina Pelletier. It appears that the DCF was punishing Justina and the Pelletier family rather than trying to reunite them, which is their stated purpose. How does this horrible Dr. Eli Newberger, have such enormous and unchecked power? This Juvenile Court Judge Joseph Johnson is even worse, he should be thrown off the bench. Unless a local media source picks up the story, or it happens to someone you know, most Americans are totally unaware that this is happening quite frequently in the United States. Medical tyranny is sadly a reality today in the U.S., and if you disagree with a medical professional over the care of your child, you face losing custody of your child. Justina’s case is especially bizarre, because the parents were actually following a treatment plan for her that was recommended by doctors in their home town. Their only “crime” was to disagree with the doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital and want to discharge her and take her back to her original doctors. Boston Children’s Hospital is part of the Harvard Medical School system, with strong ties to funding from the
    federal government. Boston Children’s Hospital “is home to the world’s largest research enterprise based at a pediatric hospital. More than 1,100 scientists, including nine members of the National Academy of Sciences, 11 on-staff members of the Institute of Medicine and 9 members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.”
    So if you’re child is lucky enough to be picked for a medical trial (without you’re consent), you and you’re child no longer have any rights of course. But consider yourself lucky pions, lucky to serve the Almighty Boston Children Hospitals and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. What’s the big deal? So what if you’re childs life comes into danger? We at the Harvard Medical School system need more human “lab rats” and we will decide what is appropriate!
    Could it be that Justina is part of a medical research trial? There is the story of Sarah Hershberger in 2013, the 10-year-old Amish girl who fled the U.S. with her parents to avoid forced chemotherapy treatments. A court had awarded custody of Sarah to a nurse at Akron Children’s Hospital. Her parents claim that their daughter was part of an experimental chemo drug trial, to which they had not given consent.
    By the way folks, why isn’t this news story on the main stream media (CBS, NBS, MSNBC, CNN, PBS, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, etc)?
    A bill in the Massachusetts Legislature which would have overruled the judge and freed Justina immediately, HD 4212, written by MassResistance and filed on April 4, was blocked by the Democratic leadership in the House, despite national outrage and a flood of calls and emails from across the
    country. I thought the Democratic Party was for the people? Apparently not!
    Now, the DCF has announced that Justina will be moved to a hospital in Connecticutt instead of with her parents! 15 months this has been going on!
    Remember folks, never put your child in a Massachusetts hospital. Never!
    Justice is coming Justina. Hang on.

  37. The problem with propaganda stunts like this is that it makes medical doctors look bad, which is unfortunate, because being in the health care field my experience is that most medical doctors mean well and are good people.

  38. Medical mistakes by doctors kill more folks in one week than firearms do in a year. This douche is a tool for the anti’s.

  39. I am a pediatrician. Pediatric ER to be specific. I’ve seen plenty of gun shot wounds in kids. And I am still what the antis would consider an “extremist” when it comes to gun rights. I have been shooting as long as I can remember. I am teaching my girls to shoot, because self defense. I can personally attest that this a$$hat certainly does not represent all pediatricians. Not even close.

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