Bad Medicine: 'Gun Control' Advocacy
Doesn't Stand Up to the Facts
By Dennis Petrocelli, MD. February 2, 2020
Dr. Patrick Neustatter recently penned an op-ed for the Fredricksburg Star supporting typical "common sense" 'gun control' legislation. I feel for my colleague because I too once believed the medical mythology that guns are bad and need to be "eradicated."
Over the past year — I celebrate my first guniversary next week — I've opened my Hippocratic eyes to actual facts and figures and have reached the conclusion that "guns save lives." Here are my rebuttals to the usual points people like Dr. Neustatter make:
"Gun violence" isn't a public health problem. It isn't even an actual thing. Like "gun sense" and "assault weapon" it's a made-up phrase designed to do one thing: facilitate civilian disarmament.
"Gun violence" consists of two parts suicide and one part criminal homicide, the latter largely the result of inner-city gang and drug-related warfare. According to Giffords, it is perpetrated by 1% of the population. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't even make the CDC's top ten list of public health problems and Virginia is the fourth safest state in the Union.
..... 
"Guns are about deterrence, and an armed population provides a necessary and important reminder to the government that its officials govern with the consent of the governed. Human nature hasn't changed much since the Bill of Rights was written, and history has proved, over and over, what happens to unarmed civilians."
