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By Robert B. Young, MD

The AMA just announced that it will make an “unprecedented” push for more gun control laws through resolutions presented at its House of Delegates at its next annual meeting June 9-13. This is not really unprecedented, as the AMA has been advocating anti-gun measures for three decades now, along with many co-conspirator specialty associations. But it is a way for it to jump on the current popular bandwagon for restricting guns since some of the teenagers from the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas Valentine’s Day shootings have become media celebrities.

Jumping aboard progressive bandwagons is the main tactic left to the AMA to wield influence, since it now includes no more than 25% of America’s physicians as members, even though it claims to represent us all. Its leadership has left most physicians behind by focusing on politics more than medicine and undercutting physician autonomy by supporting Obamacare.

In this case, they continue denigrating the vast number of Second Amendment respecting health care providers by continuing to back gun control—as if anything short of full civilian disarmament would substantially reduce “gun violence”, let alone affect violent crime. (Regarding eliminating scary “assault rifles” see the latest school shooting at Santa Fe using a pump-action shotgun and a .38 caliber revolver; regarding the consequences of handgun prohibition, see the United Kingdom—or anywhere.)

The AMA has a very long history of attacking guns and gun ownership as too dangerous for commoners. Rarely, members with other views get a hearing (which is then ignored); more typically, even that doesn’t happen, as its governance seeks to justify positions, not develop them.

It quotes manipulated data, like all anti-gun rights groups, basing this outcry on an inflated list of 2018 school shootings making the rounds, even though only a fraction of those events qualifies as attempts at mass shootings on students during school. (PolitiFact occasionally gets it right.)

From the Forbes article:

“This year, here are just some of the measures doctors want the AMA to back:

  • Ban the sale of bump stocks. AMA delegates will consider supporting “a ban on the sale of any device, including bump stocks, that converts a firearm into a weapon that mimics a fully automatic weapon.”
  • Strengthen the background check system for firearms. AMA delegates will consider supporting legislation that requires “all gun sales and transfers” to “fall under strengthened regulation.”
  • Ban on semi-automatic assault weapons and high capacity ammunition magazines. AMA delegates will consider supporting “a ban on the sale, transfer, manufacturer and importation of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines to the public.”
  • Increasing the legal age of purchasing ammunition and firearms from 18 to 21. AMA delegates will consider supporting “increasing the legal age to purchase firearms and ammunition.” ”

Some corrections are in order here.

First of all, “here are just some of the measures the AMA wants doctors to back.

Then, regarding the claim by AMA President David A. Barbe, MD, that “Gun violence in America today is a public health crisis”,  DRGO has repeatedly put paid to that untruth (e.g., here). Is it “one that requires a comprehensive and far-reaching solution” such as:

  • Ban the sale of bump stocks. This may be a device implicated in the fewest shootings of all, only in Las Vegas last October, which wasn’t even necessary to inflict all the casualties the gunman caused.
  • Strengthen the background check system for firearms. They mean, of course, universal registration of all firearm transfers, as of the effective date of universal background checks. That is not consistent with individual freedom in our country.
  • Ban on semi-automatic assault weapons and high capacity ammunition magazines. This suggests the next step would be to ban all semi-automatic weapons, since there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the function of the Ruger Mini-14, the Browning [semi-]Automatic Rifle and any AR-model semi-automatic weapon. All pistols, gas-operated shotguns and even most .22 caliber plinkers would be gone. But this is “a good start”, to quote any anti-gun activist, including outlawing what have always been standard magazine capacities up of to 30 rounds.
  • Increasing the legal age of purchasing ammunition and firearms from 18 to 21. This is self-evidently discriminatory, as we rely on 18 to 20 year olds’ judgment in most states about drinking and consider them able to decide to join the military and die in war zones without question. Wonder how most would vote on this question of their older betters intent to deprive them of a constitutional right?

Legislating morality has always been impossible in a diverse polity like the United States. They’ll have no more luck with this than the abortion, capital punishment or immigration battles have had in uniting American opinion about them.

To quote William F. Buckley, Jr.’s National Review mission statement, DRGO “stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” There’s progress (like ensuring a well-educated, ethical populace enjoying all the rights of individual liberty) and then there are progressives (the opposite). DRGO stands for progress.

Let’s not let them get away with it!

 

DRGO Editor Robert B. Young, MD is a psychiatrist practicing in Pittsford, NY, an associate clinical professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

This post was originally published at drgo.us and is reprinted here with permission. 

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66 COMMENTS

  1. Is there anyway we can get a list of the doctors who actually voted to support this movement? Personally, I will change doctors if mine are among that group. Not somebody I would want to do, but I am not going to hire somebody for my medical work if they are spending the money I pay them to try and take away fundamental rights.

    • Even if you got a list of AMA members, that would tell you virtually nothing, since most members do not go to the national meeting. Moreover, although the “conference of delegates” may approve a proposal, all the AMA will tell you is that it passed, not who voted for it. The organization is more interested in ramming through its own agenda than truly discussing any contrary position. It is, as one might expect, mostly run by wealthy big city doctors who vote democrat.
      In many ways, the AMA is no different than the American Bar Association, an organization historically controlled by big money democrats from big cities who typically ignore the positions of the more conservative members. (Just as the AMA is a voluntary organization, so is the ABA.)

      • And that is why the country is such a poor shape is maggots like those democrats who in congress have done nothing but spit hate and distaste for what the Trump administration is trying to accomplish. Those maggots in congress should all be hand cuffed to and electric fence and the power turned on. Illegals by the millions, debt that probably will never be paid off and gangs that are killing at will and nothing being done. I would list all gangs as terrorist and let the military go get them dead or alive. Kick every Russian out of this country . Invoke the draft back so that these kids coming out of high school will learn Honor and discipline . Then make sure they are able to read and write, not print. dumb asses.

    • The AMA does nothing for working physicians. I dropped them years ago. They are a lying progressive organization with a liberal agenda. Their science is bullsh*t

  2. They can kiss my common ass. You would think these so called thinkers , would know how to read !! I guess after 4 years studying psychology and earning my psy, degree in human behavior , I’m a commoner with some semblance of common sense. Read the statistics and make a fair assessment according to the facts. Not the coffee room political outright hatred and rumors spilling out of the mouths of who heard what on tv. I challenge anyone of sound mind , to discuss the facts : sick individuals use guns to kill. Eradicate the mental health issue’s in the U.S. not the 2nd amendment. Stop debating something you hate , you are medical people. Not politicians. Act like it !!

  3. The medical profession in collusion with the pharmaceutical industry is officially the 3rd leading cause of death in the USA. And given these are only the reported numbers, it’s likely the partnership is the leading cause of death in the USA. This same partnership quotes manipulated data and statistics on a daily basis regarding the efficacy and safety of everything from statins to vaccines. And they have the hubris and greed to attack our individual liberties……

    • “And they [American Medical Association] have the hubris and greed to attack our individual liberties …”

      Perhaps the American Medical Association thinks that armed good guys might bring their reign of terror to a violent end? That would be an obvious self-serving reason to oppose our right to keep and bear arms.

      • there have also been pushes for legislation from within their ranks to make certain “medicines” (some for diseases that are rarely if ever lethal) mandatory. sorry but even in my own country i have come across doctors that wish to push certain “medicines” without consent informed or not and i have told them in no uncertain terms that it will be them getting that medicine if they try to force it into me. was the case with a doctor who started to try to force me to get the flu vaccine. it should be fully informed consent regardless or they should have their license to practice removed not the uninformed coercion they are starting to try now

        • @toni- If you are referring to vaccines, there is no informed consent here in the US. Sure the parents sign the paper accepting risk, but no doctor ever explains the actual potential risks of the shots their children are about to receive. How can a parent make an informed decision without this information?

        • @PG2 i know and it is the same here with vaccines and it is to the point where if you ask for the vaccine insert to study what it says so you can weigh up the risks for and against most will refuse to give it to you despite it being a requirement. most other medications that they prescribe when you get them at the chemist it has to be in the box with the medication but they wont give you that before you purchase it. for it to be INFORMED consent both the pros and cons must be known by the patient. i would suggest that the list of possible side effects should be given to the patient BEFORE purchase of any medication and that goes for all medications

        • That’s why it will never happen. If parents understood that these products were never adequately tested and that from the information we do have, we know brain damage is a possible adverse event from EVERY single vaccine manufactured, not to mention multiple other potentially catastrophic events including death, there is little chance anyone with a rational mind would choose to play this Russian roulette with their children.

  4. We can push back with a push for regulations of the AMA as a lobbying group, and sic the broke (D)1ck FBI on them for their anti-Constition fundraising schemes.

  5. I cancelled my membership over 10 years ago. The AMA does not represent the vast majority of physicians and has not done so for years. With all of our focus in medicine on Evidence-Based practice, it shames me that a national group could have such an irrational take on the data we do have.

    • Doc, where do vaccines fit under “evidence based”? To my knowledge, very few, if any, of these products are safety tested against true placebos. Isn’t that the evidence based, gold standard?

        • Absolutely!

          Evidence based medicine does not always test against placebo. For example, if you have an effective medication for cancer and come out with a new one, you can test your drug against placebo, or against the current medication to see if it is as effective or more effective. Also, if you can test for increased immunity to a disease, say with antibody titers then you would be able to test the people who got a vaccine against the baseline of not getting a vaccine.

          Vaccines are effective. To argue against someone who says the opposite is kind of like arguing with someone if the moon is made of cheese… I could try but life is too short. If you want to argue that the downsides/side effects of vaccines are stronger than their benefits then we could potentially have a discussion. But let’s be honest, I won’t convince you that you are wrong, and you won’t convince me that I’m right.

          So let’s agree to disagree, and if by some chance you get exposed to Mumps, you will finally be able to say you had the balls not to vaccinate.

        • @lil joe, stopped reading at cheese moon…when you you’re capable of an informed response, I’m listening.

        • That’s ok, you got through the part where I answered your question…. the rest of it was just me mocking you, no need to read it, it was more for my amusement.

        • Completely fitting that in comments on an Pro-gun post, a troll goes off the rails with an anti-vaccine post. Both the anti-gun and anti-vaccine positions are based on irrational interpretation/manipulation of the available data. The pleural of anecdote is not data. The highest quality data does not support banning guns or vaccines. (Note: I am not responding to PG2 as I have a strict no-feeding-the-trolls policy)

        • RingoMD i am not against vaccines being available. what i am against is the pushing of them to also attempts to make them mandatory. it is my free choice, as it should be everyone else’s and if a physician were to try to physically force it into me they are the ones who would be getting the dose and then some. now before you say that would not happen one doctor i saw once was trying to push the flu vaccine on me, actually got out a vial and the syringe and started filling it. i told here clearly that if it came near me she would get not just the syringe full but the entire contents of the vial in her neck. she put it away in quite a hurry…… CDH

        • @ringomd. Not surprising you refuse to answer the question. Your answer would likely expose you as a hypocrite. That’s the pattern with many pro 2A medical professionals….support individual liberties except when it negatively influences their wallets.

        • The tinfoil is strong with this one. May the farce be with you.

          Say hi to Jenni for me!

        • @jhon-wow, you managed to get tinfoil, jenni, and farce in one post….how original. Surprised you missed the chance to use Wakefield.

  6. The AMA only cares about keeping your doctor bills as high as possible. It once threatened to decertify a major medical college because the school wanted to increase admissions, which would increase the number of doctors and (presumably) constrain the growth in doctor-related expenses.

    The AMA is a criminal conspiracy, rivaled only by the ABA.

      • Ok this is a serious response, no mocking on this one.

        There has literally, not figuratively, been billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man/women hours spent studying the safety of vaccines. Every time a new theory comes out they spend more money and time researching those claims. Doctors, scientists, and even some pharma employees actually want to help people, not harm them, so they do the research. I have read many of the papers and articles because I talk to parents daily about vaccines. I vaccinate my children, and recommend my patients get vaccinated as well.

        As per current research and data, vaccines are as safe as we can make them. Could someone have an anaphylactic reaction and die? Yes, but the same thing could happen from peanut oil, and people still go get Chinese takeout. Everything has a risk and benefit, and the benefits of vaccines way outweigh the risks.

        Now, if you want to ignore current medical recommendations and research, that’s fine, it’s a free country. You’ve weighed the risks and benefits and decided it isn’t worth taking the risks. Hopefully you made that decision with good and truthful information gleaned from non prejudiced scientific sources… I know I have.

        • Liljoe, cite the vaccine safety studies you feel conclusively demonstrate the products safety. Should be easy for you since you seem to believe there is an abundance of these studies and safety data. If you cite epidemiological studies comparing vaccinated groups against other vaccinated groups you’re citing tobacco science, literally. I’ll grab some popcorn joe and wait for some of the data that ‘billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of men/women’ have put forth supporting your position that these products have been adequately tested for safety.

        • No reply liljoe from your “serious” comment? No surprise, like ringomd your answer would expose you as a liar, hypocrite, or as a person who is really ignorant on the subject while pretending not to be.

  7. 12.5M medical professionals kill 250k people every year, that’s 0.25M/12.5M=1/50.
    300M guns kill 10k people every year, that’s 0.01M/300M=1/30,000.
    On average, a medical professional is 600 times deadlier than a gun.

  8. “we rely on 18 to 20 year olds’ judgment in most states about drinking”

    I think you mean smoking, not drinking; very few states, in fact, in the US rely on 18 to 20 year olds’ judgment on drinking.

    Other than that (I assume) typo, good article.

  9. Regarding 18 to 20 year olds’ judgment – they are allowed to vote because they were subject to the draft during Vietnam and at the time it only seemed right to allow the vote. Whether they have enough judgment to vote is another question.

    Meanwhile, I know MANY doctors who own firearms and would take exception to the AMA House of Delegates’ position on gun grabbing and many other issues.

  10. Not only doctors. Many people own firearms and are fine with the government taking “other peoples'” guns. One person in a family is a gun owner and the other family members drink the kool aid, so he goes along with it.
    This is like any other bigot, just because most of the family has those views, does not paint the whole damn family with the same brush.

      • i also wonder if those figures are correct how many of those had recently had a flu shot. i have seen quite a few people who have rarely had the flu and if they did it was mild get the flu shot on the doctors recommendation and for the first time in their life end up bedridden from the flu within a month. A couple of them it stuck around for over a month, and people wonder why i have no faith in doctors especially when my partner went in with a severe chest infection and the doctor was trying to say it was asthma which she has never had though some in her family did get it (as is the case with my own family, only mum and i never got it). i also have problems with slipped discs. doctors keep saying that it is just muscular yet on the one occasion when i pushed extra hard and got sent to a specialist to get MRI’s done (which BTW were done on an area of my back that was not causing me pain at the time) they wanted to start fusing discs. i deal with it myself with regular chiro and massage which loosens the muscles that become tight trying to hold it all in place due to cartilage damage so the chiro can get it back in with less strain on what is left there. here we also need to get a script for medicatons as basic as nurofen plus now. “no effective painkillers for you pleb without our say so”. F all tyrants no matter what field they are in

      • Geoff i think he meant that those dying of the flu was 20+ time higher than those that die of firearms in Australia and New Zealand. yes was not written clearly. possible he is about to head to bed and is tired 🙂

        • Either way there is NOT X20 on either deaths.
          It’s very hard to find the number of Flu related deaths from Australian websites.
          I’ve gone through about a dozen that reported on the 2017 Flu “epidemic” and found 72 deaths as of September last year. May have reached as many as 100.
          72 X 20 is 1440 Flu deaths and there were only 238 gun deaths in 2016, can’t find data for 2017, but even those 238 firearm deaths are only 6 times the 72 deaths by the Flu.

        • Correction 3 times the deaths by firearm as by the Flu.
          I hit the wrong key on the number pad.
          238 vs. 72.
          Fat fumble fingers.

  11. “a ban on the sale of any device, including bump stocks, that converts a firearm into a weapon that mimics a fully automatic weapon.”
    Which will accomplish exactly nothing.

    I’m sure that will go over big with Jerry Miculek.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1nqRcAsZAE
    And with enough practice.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RdAhTxyP64

    And the ATF proposed rule change to redefine what makes a machine gun?
    A piece of plastic with no serial number.
    May as well declare ALL AR15 lower receivers to a be a machine gun, because technically and with the right tools and parts, they can be “readily converted” to be a machine gun.
    Simply drilling ONE HOLE in the lower receiver above the safety selector makes it a machine gun even if the parts do not fit or are not installed. That is “readily converted.” ATF even considers putting a punch mark at that location makes it a machine gun by what they call “constructive intent.”

  12. Yesterday, I had a doctor’s physical. On the (4) page questionnaire, I was asked “do you have a gun in your home?” I thought who owns “a” gun, so I answered “no”.

    • Yes, I’d just lie too–it is none of their business. You
      could perhaps write in your own question maybe ask what kind of security system they have for their home…

    • ” I thought who owns “a” gun, so I answered “no”.

      That is really funny—need to remember that

  13. the AMA are social terrorists. Doctors and nurses commit homicide at a far higher rate than firearms. Check the FBI statistics if you don’t believe me. Time for “commonsense” laws on healthcare workers.

  14. Hey AMA, how about you focus on deaths resulting from medical malpractice/mistakes. They dwarf deaths by guns.

  15. Whoever came up with this was a damn fool. The little CNN mothered twit of a David Hogg is by no means a representative of that high school’s students. He is a liberal plant and SOB since he wasn’t in class that day anyway. This is all BS!

  16. What will they do when they find out that 25% of gun crimes take place in Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago and D.C. and that more than 50% of murders occur in just 5% of the counties in the country? That doesn’t make it a metal problem, it’s a people and drug dealer problem!!

  17. For all the “Schooling” a doctor gets and they still do not understand, It’s NOT the weapon, But the NUT on the trigger! “New” laws will not stop the bad guys and will just make more targets for them.
    Enforce the current laws better and there will be a drop, Other wise not.

  18. When is the AMA going to do something to reduce the 250,000+ annual deaths caused from Medical Mistakes?

  19. At the end of a recent doctor’s appointment, I asked my doctor if he had forgotten anything. He gave me a puzzled look and asked what he had overlooked. I said “You did not ask me about my guns.” He started laughing and said that was only one of the reasons he was not a member of the AMA. We had discussed our guns in the past, and I know he always carries in his car.

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