Dear Doctor,
Our profession is being hijacked in the service of gun confiscation. In September, Virginia gun ban activists held a so-called “gun violence” symposium medical education event. It was sponsored by St. Mary’s Hospital, the City of Richmond, Virginia Commonwealth University and, ostensibly, the Virginia Department of Health, but featured branded slides and speakers from the gun ban group the Coalition Stop Gun Violence, which proudly claims to “combat the NRA.”
Instead of focusing on mental health (two-thirds of gun-related deaths are suicides), and inner-city gang- and drug-related gun deaths (nearly one-third of gun-related deaths), the Bloomberg-financed and Governor Ralph “Blackface” Northam-sponsored so-called “gun safety legislation” is nothing more than a pile of “citizen endangerment laws.”
Possession of guns and magazines in lawful common use will become felonious, and the removal of state pre-emption will allow each locality to capriciously decide where you can carry.
None of this has anything to do with safety. This was driven home by the call to use the National Guard to force compliance, and Northam’s admission that none of this would have done anything to prevent the atrocities at Virginia Beach and Virginia Tech.
All of us are saddened by any death, but it is essential that public policy be based on facts, not feelings. For example, guns are used defensively vastly more often than they are used criminally. Additionally, as Venezuela and other nations demonstrate, civilian gun ownership deters government tyranny.
No doubt Venezuelans didn’t foresee their current predicament when they disarmed about seven years ago, and Venezuela health care providers wouldn’t have imagined being dragged off hospital grounds for peacefully protesting the lack of the most basic supplies.
These laws are just the beginning. Regardless of the Constitution, your personal ethics or your specialty, don’t be surprised if in the near future you are legally required, as proposed in Massachusetts, to interrogate your gun-owning patients and then “counsel” them against gun ownership.
Or, as in other states, be expected to initiate a “red flag” gun confiscation without due process against your patients, executed at gun-point. Legally-imposed ethical and boundary violations are likely to follow, with potential malpractice exposure for acting outside the bounds of professional competence and experience.
As grim as the present situation is, there is hope. We recommend visiting Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership (DRGO) at DRGO.us. Our three-part History of Public Health Gun Control will bring you up to speed on the hard facts about the disgraceful ongoing “public health” war on gun owners.
While you’re at DRGO.us, please click on <JOIN NOW> in the top right corner of the page. Since 1994 DRGO has worked to expose fraudulent public health “research” that is in reality thinly disguised anti-gun propaganda.
We urge you to attend the Virginia Citizens Defense League’s annual Lobby Day on Monday, January 20, when thousands will gather in Richmond to politely but firmly stand up for their constitutional rights. See VCDL.org for details.
Remember the stature you have as a medical doctor who supports all of our civil rights, including the Second Amendment. Imagine how powerful our message will be when droves of white coats show up on the January 20th Lobby Day. We look forward to seeing you!
Join DRGO by clicking that JOIN NOW button at DRGO.us.
Be well, be safe, and be free!
Sincerely yours,
Dennis Petrocelli, MD, Forensic Psychiatrist, Richmond, VA
Arthur Przebinda, MD, DRGO Project Director
Hypocratic oath should include “And stay out of partisan politics”!
I am glad this letter mentioned the Massachusett law telling doctors that the must interrogate their patients. I cannot believe doctors want political positions and SJW positions forced on their practices.
Respectfully disagree with your statement. Many physicians are deep into their own “godhood”, wherein they firmly believe that they should make life decisions for you…especially, if you don’t agree with their “more enlightened” viewpoint…after all they are smarter than you.
Medical doctors are contracted by the patient to provide medical opinion, care and services. You are paying them for their medical knowledge…NOT for their Constitutional views. Use your discretionary medical spending to choose a doctor who does not seek to impose his / her personal politics or agenda into your life through their medical practice.
If you have insurance, you are not paying them for their services. the company is. (You are, indirectly thru premiums.) Many times insurance dictates care/services. Most doctors are employees of a medical corporation, today. They may dictate treatment plan. If you can find an independent doctor, and pay him without insurance company bean counters, you are very lucky. The doctor is freer to do what you want. The best doctor I had was trained in Europe during WWII. She was a gem, (and a tough cookie).
the Dr. I use don,t care what the Gov. says about guns he said you are giving that right don,t let them take it away because where I come from we don,t have that right
Old Guy
Speak for yourself. I have been a surgeon for quite some time and I very much involve my patients in all of their treatment decisions. I give my educated opinion and ultimately respect my patient’s wishes. When I counsel my patients, for example, on tobacco use (which my state kind-of requires) I don’t lecture them nor offer no choices. I tell them the truth, let them know what the likely consequences regarding complications to their specific surgery could be and let them decide for themselves. I would probably have lost my license by now were I required to provide my patients unconstitutional advice regarding firearms. I am glad I don’t practice in MA. Not all doctors are anti 2A, in fact, all that I know personally are pro 2A. I come from a family of doctors ranging almost every existing specialty from obstetrician to coroner and everything in between, and many who are or were active in competition with firearms; even one Olympic champion. My family survived a national confiscation event that eventually lead to a totalitarian government that still exists (and to our exile) . So don’t lump all of us into one odious group. In fact over a year ago, our specialty journal conducted a study and came the conclusion that about 2/3 – 3/4 of surgeons in my specialty are solidly conservative politically.
Thank you for your response.
If you re-read my original message you will note that I said “many” not “all” physicians.
It is heartening to read that some medical professionals are conservative in their beliefs (my GP is strongly Pro2A). That being said, I stand by my comment that too many physicians suffer from excess hubris.
I speak from my personal experiences as a former 91B and as a civilian paramedic. I’ve worked with many DoD and civilian physicians through the years…doctors are still people with all the good, bad and ugly that comes from being human. Some have been humble…others massively egotistical. Most were caring and competent…some were grossly incompetent and patently unfit for their profession.
I reiterate again that doctors are service providers that we, as patients, contract with to provide specific services. If your doctor is not a good fit with your needs, personality or whatever then the onus is on you seek out a physician that you are comfortable with.
Old Guy,
Thanks for your kind words.
“If your doctor is not a good fit with your needs, personality or whatever then the onus is on you seek out a physician that you are comfortable with.” Wise counsel.
Now if we could just get rid of the traces of HillaryCare (from way back when Bill was POTUS) and ObamaCare, patients might just become free to follow your excellent advice.
It’s 2/3rds suicides? I find that hard to believe. I’d guess most is gang related. Also, they’re all men… (not transgender men.) Women don’t want to be a disfigured mess at their funeral. That’s why their choice is pills, maybe jumping into water from a bridge, carbon monoxide. We’re vain, even if we say we don’t care.
65-70% of firearms deaths in the United States are due to suicide. The majority of firearms HOMICIDES are gang related (+\-80%).
The United States is the only nation to include suicide in “firearms related deaths”. The media equates ALL firearms deaths as “violent” or “homicide”, so you have to be careful about the information you get fed.
The best source for firearm related homicide is the FBI UCR Database.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018
“It’s 2/3rds suicides?”
It’s around that.
Funny thing is, Leftists, the ones who are supposed to be all about “My body, my choice”, put gun suicide with violent crime. The very definition of empowerment means the individual is the one to have final say over what they want done to their bodies…
“My body, my choice”
You see, that only applies to women, in spite of the fact that the subject at hand can only be created with the help of a man. In other words, they aren’t really for equality. In the U.S., men are four times more likely to die by suicide by women. They aren’t sounding the alarm bells about this because they aren’t really for equality. If they were, they would be teaching women better methods of getting the job done. Or maybe, you know, sounding the alarm bell about this major problem instead of just using the statistics to help with gun control.
It is at times like this when the calm voice of reason and the use of real facts and real analysis must prevail. Thank you for making the effort. Hopefully Bloomberg’s goons will listen.
“Hopefully Bloomberg’s goons will listen.”
Fat chance on that happening, they have an agenda to ram down your throat…
I’ve said it before in comments on this site, but if you receive Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare you will at some point, perhaps innocuously, be asked if you have firearms in your home. Your response will be documented. Be advised that the VA’s computers already “talk” with the IRS’s and SSA’s computers. Lord only knows what other alphabet government agency’s computers are “talked” with. You have been warned.
As they say, just say no!
I’m a doc in Virginia and planning to attend Lobby Day. I’m also a veteran (army paid for med school), life member of the NRA, and member of the VCDL. I have not ever been a “god” and you would probably like my “partisan politics” and “Constitutional views”.
I would suggest we direct our fire at what the are doing Democrats instead of each other.
Keith, you sound like a doctor that I could see. Where in VA do you practice? I’m near Roanoke.
Doctors kill more Americans in a year than gun-wielding goons kill in a two decades. So if any of my doctors want to tell me about guns, I’d tell them to wash their fvcking hands, stop killing their patients and fvck off.
I am shocked. After a lifetime of serving in this profession I was convinced that physicians are unable to learn because their brains are “full”. I stand corrected.
I had a doctor that asked me if I kept guns in the house. I told him to break in if he really wants to know.
I got my medical records on the way out and found another doctor.
I think it may be time for gun-friendly docs to start placing small ads in the various gun-publications. If I saw a physician advertising his/her office in a gun magazine I’d feel confident about going to their office. Just sayin’ . . .
In times of war, doctors, nurses, and medics will sometimes treat enemy soldiers, along with treating civilian casualties, right along with treating our own soldiers and other U.S. military personnel, assuming they can do so without cutting short on critical services to their own and so forth.
In times of peace and/or in civilian practice, doctors should likewise treat all patients as best they can, regardless of whether those patients are criminals or police, democrats or republicans, or of whatever race, color or nationality, and so forth. Political affiliations are completely irrelevant and doctors thus need to be politically neutral in their medical care. Ownership of guns – not just a constitutionally protected right but as a necessity for the security of a free state as outlined in the 2nd Amendment, is completely irrelevant to medical care as well, and should be treated as such. Irrelevant.
What the anti-American left fears most as they work to dismantle our constitutional republic, is organized resistance. Especially well armed organized resistance in the form of those well regulated (smoothly operating) militias as specified in the 2nd Amendment. THAT is why they keep going after the very firearms that would be most suitable for militia purposes, irregardless of the fact that any such rifles of any kind are so very rarely ever used for criminal purposes. Our ability to form ourselves into voluntary militias is our final ability to resist tyranny, our ability to insist that our governments remain constrained to only those powers specifically enumerated in the U.S. and/or state constitutions, and not one inch more, THAT is what is under attack here. And doctors without borders, doctors who have sworn to do no harm, need to absolutely and unconditionally _refuse_ to be used as political tools by anyone for any reason. And it really is as simple as that.
Stick with doing what you were born for doing – doctoring – and leave the soldiering and politicizing and so forth to others. What you do on your own time is of course your own personal business. But how you treat your patients – including those that may delay too long in coming to see you for critical treatment because they fear you will be used like a tool to deprive them of their constitutional rights, is all on you and your conscience. Just be that good doctor that ALL of your patients can fully trust, with full doctor / patient privacy privileges intact. Period. If you cannot keep that vital good trust then you need to quit doctoring because you’re in the wrong line of work.
There are plenty of physicians who are not pawns of the Insurance/Government medical complex. As you get older you will interact with multiple doctors some of which may be, the best answer for anyone asking the gun question is to answer the question with a question. For instance: Oh, one of my co-workers was recommending I get a gun for protection, but I don’t know, do you recommend that? This implies you don’t have firearms and puts them on the spot to take a position.
I have had my current primary doctor for over two decades, and can’t imagine him asking that kind of pointless personal question. His assistant did ask me if I had been feeling sad or depressed on my last visit, I laughed, grinned at her and said: “What do you think?”
I remember I had to speak at a student symposium at the University of Endovascular Medicine, too. It was very disturbing because I was not a very responsible student due to family circumstances. And of course I was looking for someone to help me with this speech and essentially the main work I had to present. Fortunately I was able to find a suitable place for Pick The Writer , where there is a rating of companies that can help with this case. For example, even writing the same research paper myself would be very difficult. I know some of my friends who have already contacted these people and they have provided invaluable help. So be sure to look at this top company, if you also face difficult work in an area where you do not understand much, professionals will cope with these tasks. I hope I was able to help.
Good luck and success to everyone! word counter
Thanks a lot for your great article.
There are plenty of physicians who are not pawns of the Insurance/Government medical complex. As you get older you will interact with multiple doctors some of which may be, the best answer for anyone asking the gun question is to answer the question with a question. For instance: Oh, one of my co-workers was recommending I get a gun for protection, but I don’t know, do you recommend that? This implies you don’t have firearms and puts them on the spot to take a position.
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