Handgun Still In A Box Under A Christmas Tree
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In the throes of the holiday shopping season, I often hear radio ads promoting guns as an ideal gift. They make owning a gun sound so benign, so American, so patriotic.

I have worked in both inner-city and small-town emergency rooms. I have treated hundreds of gunshot victims and pronounced so many patients dead from gunshot wounds that I prefer not to keep count.

Guns don’t mean anything positive to me. They signify only death and destruction. They are certainly nothing to put in a festive box with a bow under a Christmas tree.

When you buy a gun, you may think you are purchasing a weapon to protect your family, your home or your possessions. Perhaps you want to own a weapon in case society or the government breaks down and you need to defend yourself in troubled times. You may as well be worrying about a zombie apocalypse.

Whatever reason you have, let me disabuse you of the notion that you are somehow safer with a gun in your home. You aren’t.

– Steven Sainsbury in Guns don’t belong under your Christmas tree. They don’t belong in your home, either

If you’re still wondering what to put under your tree for that special someone this year, see our handy gift guides, below. We promise not to tell Steven Sainsbury.

Gifts for hunters
Gifts for concealed carry
Gifts for shooters
Stocking stuffers!

via GIPHY

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

125 COMMENTS

    • The “good” doc has all that education and little “actual” knowledge on how the world works. What a dumb bass.

    • Bu;t, but . . . wait. Doctors always know better, don’t they? //sarc// What people in the public health and medical profession are trying to do is called the “meticalization of deviance”. First gun-ownership is determined to be “deviant behavior” so that just owning a guy sets you apart from “normal” people. Then they begin working to make gun-owing a sickness that can be “treated” by doctors who, of course, have superior knowledge. Then, because guns are dangerous and make people “sick”, they must be confiscated.

  3. Nothing new here. Just a rehash of every unsubstantiated gun-grabber claim of the last ten(?) years. Not even worth a comment but I’ll chime in anyway.

    • “Physician, heal thyself. Doctor’s malpractice kill more people than firearms.”

      Yeah, no shit.

      Their response : “But the doctors were trying to save people! ”

      My response to that “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions…”

      • Consumers Reports magazine has proof that there are 440,000 DOCUMENTABLE deaths in the US each year from medical errors and omissions. True number is almost double if death certificates listed actual cause of death. That means over 1,200 per day! Truly a mind numbing amount. I personally have seem this several times just in people I knew.

  5. Why isn’t he talking about cars or alcohol which put far more people in emergency rooms? Because he’s a hack who should stick to worrying about his next malpractice lawsuit instead of deciding what’s safest for everyone else. Don’t take offense you Americans who had to protect your own life or your family member’s life with a firearm. You only hallucinated that traumatic event. Hey pregnant lady in Florida with the AR who shot home invaders assaulting your husband, that didn’t really happen!
    What a scumbag.

    • Why isn’t he talking about cars and cell phones. Talking on your cell phone puts you at a higher risk of crashing than driving at 0.08%BAC. Or maybe he should be talking about smart phones since the number of pedestrians killed by cars has doubled since the i-phone came out. Cell phones don’t mean anything positive to me. They signify only death and destruction. They are certainly nothing to put in a festive box with a bow under a Christmas tree.

      • (starts slow clapping….) Bravo, sir!!! Once we begin applying the same logic to basically anything else, the arguments of the pro-control folks become more transparent.

      • Yeah but not many points to be scored there. What’s a little attention span deficit, vision impairment and catastrophic accidents to a shill? He must have excellent bedside manner with that level of sympathy. Looking forward to AI having him learn to code. I wonder if he’d repeat that trash to women who came into the ER beaten or raped.

        With you on the smartphone thing. I just want a phone with no GPS or apps but that’s pretty much impossible to find. I looked into jitterbugs at one point LMAO. I am giving my eldest teen an iPhone this Christmas though. He’s very conservative and gets straight As so I agreed with the wife’s request. He’d only play games on it. With the craziness at schools these days it’s a good way for him to contact us if there’s an emergency.

        • You can shut off the GPS and (theoretically) they can’t find your exact location, but any cell phone can be traced to the tower you’re connected to, so if the right (or wrong depending on your perspective) people want to know where you’ve been there’s no way to hide what neighborhood you’ve been frequenting. If you really don’t want anybody finding out where you’ve been, better just leave the phone at home.

        • You can actually just put the phone in an em proof bag. That’s the only sure way to secure it. Yeah towers will tell anyone with $50 where you are unless the carriers actually cut that off. I’m not a fan of tech companies selling my movements and other data to every jackhole with a database and a dream. There may be some Android ROMs that have prioritized privacy. I know there are a few phones with hefty pricetags that you can observe the fake towers the FBI uses in Cessnas and that are around some govt installations and other intrusion attempts. Whole lotta bs to be subjected to just to use map apps and text grocery lists

        • with the craziness going on in schools …..what?…teacher might go off the deep end?…then he can call home. Some days it’s hard to get your comment associated with the original post.

  6. Context is important.
    You might be buying a gun for a 13 yo whom you will train.

    You might be buying a gun for your loved-one who is already very well trained and enjoys guns.

    Or, a loved-one who has expressed a desire to learn and is committed to training. (You buy her a 22 rifle or revolver as an intro gun.)

    In the foregoing circumstances, it’s perfectly appropriate.

    If the gift is unwanted, then it’s not a good idea.

    If the gift is wanted, appreciated, but the recipient has no intention to learn/train/practice, then its a BAD way to introduce the person to gun-ownership.

    Better to make the learning/training/practice prerequisites to the gift-giver’s participation in the gun-acquisition step. The new gun-owner should know what feels right in her hand, know whether she wants a revolver, semi-auto, derringer. How heavy/light. Recoil. All these things have to proceed the selection decision. Then buy her the gift as her “graduation” present.

      • “Hey slow down with the logic and common sense!”

        Yeah. Leave me alone. I believe truth over facts.

    • Generally speaking, you don’t giftwrap a gun and put it under a tree for just anyone. A gun is a personal thing.

      You might give one to Charles Bronson so he could get even with those who killed his wife and put his daughter in a psych ward, but you don’t give one to your brother’s kid. You let your brother do that.

      As for the doc saying he was swamped with gunshot victims, he must have been working in Chicago or some other Democrat bastion of gun control. Off hand, I can’t think of a small town where things are like that. How many of the patients were gang members, drug dealers, and so on?

  8. I bought a gun for my son in AL via the internet from the comfort of my home on a double lot in TX. Put it right in the gun trust in which I am one of three trustees. Also, I just checked on my three cars, and they’re safe. Now I just have to ‘stomp some hairless nutsacks’ and then it’s back to my Christmas cards. Yep, I’m stable alright!

  9. Thanks for the life advice, if I need more Doc I’ll let you know.
    By the way did you learn the back stories to those ER cases or just assume the gun was at fault?

    • GS650G must be an attorney for I assume he knew the answer to the question before he ask. And the answer is, the doc assumed! It’s what asses do!
      If the doc reads the comments posted here, he probably thinks these people don’t even know me and are saying all these things. That is true and you(doctor) do not know us or you might just realize that law abiding citizens who own guns are not the problem in any way, shape or fashion.

  10. My in-laws came in for Christmas, and I was doing my normal “hide in the basement doing stuff” routine. The FIL will come down and socialize for a few minutes, and then leave me to go about my business.

    Yesterday morning, I had set up my chronograph, and got some numbers for loads for my AR10, and he commented on how cool the rifle looked, and asked how much something like that cost.

    All-in, it’s about a $6k rig, and he said “oh, that’d be way more than I could spend”. That caught me funny. He owns a couple 22s and a 30-40 falling block that his uncle built him, but I didn’t think an AR would even be on his radar.

    I asked him “you’d want an AR?”
    “Heck yeah.”

    So we went inside and I pulled a stripped lower out of the safe, dug through the pile o’ parts, and built him a 16” Mforgery. Even dug him up a case, a handful of mags, and 500 rounds I bought last week at the Walmart blowout.

    We got it sighted in, and he’s like Ralphie with his Daisy. The MIL is none too excited. I guess she watches too much TV, and thought we needed to do a background check, and take “some paperwork or something” to their sheriff.

    Building the militia, one modern musket at a time.

  13. Tens of thousands patients die every year because of HAI (Hospital Acquired Infections), why does this doctor not do anything about this? It’s his f.. field of expertise?

    • just happened to someone close to me…[he’s still alive..but close to a vegetable]…and they won’t admit to a damned thing….Merry X-mas.!….

  14. Meh…my favorite Christmas present as a kid was a shiny Mattel metal snubbie revolver & and a Tommy gun! Home invasion is a be-otch doc. And so are you(and my wife appreciated the gat I got her a few years ago!)

  15. I didn’t get my future son-in-law a firearm for Christmas.

    I got him a Polymer80 and we’re going to complete it over the holidays. It’ll be his first pistol.

  17. “ You may as well be worrying about a zombie apocalypse.”

    Zombies are unthinking human bodies that aggressively pursue the living in order to feed on their life. To me, sounds an awful lot like the (D) authoritarians and their socialist welfare programs.

    If you care about someone, there really isn’t a much greater gift than giving them the capability to protect themselves from the “zombies.”

  18. When I was ten I received an Army surplus M1903 “rubber ducky” (it was a replica rifle used for training early in WW II when they didn’t have enough of the real thing), complete with a plastic bayonet. For the record, it was NOT rubber, it was a standard M1903 stock but with a fake receiver, bolt and a fake barrel and sight sticking out the other end. I was the envy of the entire neighborhood when we played war.

    When I was 12 my uncle gave me a replica Thompson he had built from a mail-order kit. It was all wood, no moving parts, but it looked EXACTLY like the real thing but about 10 pounds lighter. Probably get me shot by the local cops today.

    Best presents ever.

  19. I live in Kentuckiana (thats southern Indiana northern Kentucky for those not in the know). I have never once heard a radio ad about buying a gun for Christmas. Plus he chooses zombie apocalypse as a comparison to defending against something like a home invasion. Lets see which has happened an which is a complete fantasy. I also call BS on his “hundreds of gunshot patients” line unless he is talking about over the course of decades in a chicago type crap hole. A completely deluded fool.

    • I live farther south, and they do play those ads on the radio. As far as society or the government breaking down being on par with a zombie apocalypse, like it couldn’t happen, I guess he’s never heard of a natural disaster, like say a massive hurricane, and the ensuing chaos.

    • Hey neighbor…. I’m in Louisville!!!…. I’m glad to see someone from the local area here!

  20. Physicians are merely human too. I fear we, as a nation, have become too complacent. However, as long as we have main stream media (MSM), the Second Amendment will survive (hopefully).

    While we complain about the MSM’s liberal agenda, their achilles heel is greed…and the truth. Besides their obvious agenda for gun control, they sensationalize murders and violence of all stripes. It’s their bread and butter.

    Discerning people can read between the lines and realize that their safety primarily resides with them. Not law enforcement.

    I’d be interested in the exact number and nature of “gun violence cases Mr. Sainsbury has worked on. I’m certain some of them he has valid concerns. However, for him to decide for the entire country indicates to me he has a God complex. Especially in light of nonexistent evidence.

    • Thank you Mr Rogers. I totally agree. People on this forum/blog are human too and have the same desire to continue living peacefully. Many with the God complex most likely live in restricted, gated communities with plenty of security and must think the rest of the world lives in neighborhoods as safe as theirs.

    • Well, they say the difference between a doctor and God is that God doesn’t think he’s a doctor.

  21. Well there goes my gift idea for my 3 and 4 year old nieces. I was going to get them each a barrett 50 loaded full of API rounds. Thank goodness the good doc didn’t say anything about claymore mines, I wouldn’t want to find them new stocking stuffers too.

  22. Two of the best Christmas gifts I ever received. Where a 22 rifle at age 9 and a 410 shotgun at 12. Dad taught me many important life lessons around the use of those guns. Safety,Responsibility,Respect,Ethics in Hunting and Honor. Life lessons that many of the younger generations haven’t learned. Even without a firearm as the catalyst. The problem doesn’t lie with the tool. It lies with the lack of Parental Education. Stupid Lazy Irresponsible people often rear Stupid Lazy Irresponsible children. Even a So Called education does not disqualify a person from being Stupid,Irresponsible or Lazy. Keep Your Powder Dry.

    • I bet you fit every one of your little judgements of people…
      You are making uneducated comments about stuff you have no idea about…
      And of course, you have your little words you use to describe others….
      I bet you’re one of the laziest, irresponsible and dumb mfers walking the planet…
      Just my observation….. you know, my .02 cents…

      Now quit trying to label others to make your own lazy a$$ feel better about being irresponsible…

      😉

  23. Hey doc, how many of those patients you treated were criminals? And hey doc, what about all of those people that have died by gross medical malpractice/negligence? If I’m not mistaken there have been more that have died from those causes than gunshot wounds. So how about you pull the power pole out of your own eye before attempting to pull the speck out of anyone else’s eye?

  24. Sainsbury’s perspective on this is about the diameter of a soda straw. The best gift I ever got was a .22 rimfire rifle my Parents gave me for my 13th birthday. I still have that rifle and shoot it fifty-seven years later. My Parents bought it at Sears (J.C.Higgins Brand) for $19.00 in 1963. It is incredibly accurate, despite 10’s of thousand rounds. My Wife “snipes” empty shotgun cases with it at 50-100 yds using an inexpensive TASCO 3-9 Variable Scope, a bit of Kentucky windage {if a good cross wind is blowing} and Federal “Thunderbolts”.

    I am sure Dr. Sainsbury has seen a lot injury and death resulting from firearms-involved shootings, but, apparently, he stops correlating causation at the injury he deals with failing to see that another Human Being inflicted that injury using that firearm in wanton criminality or with inexcusable negligence. So, in the end, Sainsbury draws an incorrect and ill-reasoned conclusion. His opinion is neither insightful or original, but certainly establishes him as merely another “useful idiot” used by the enemies of freedom and rational thought to brainwash other “useful idiots”.

    BTW-the rifle I talked about in the first paragraph has never been used in fifty-seven years and thousands of rounds of ammunition to threaten or injure another living creature. It has been used to terrorize empty cans, plastic bottles, paper targets, spent shotgun shells and some other non-living inanimate objects, but never another living being. That is because the Humans who have shot and enjoyed it made deliberate choices to do no harm with it. Understand that, Dr. Sainsbury, and you will possibly understand how wrong you are.

    • aside from a lot of toy guns…remember getting that Mossberg bolt-action shot gun when I was about 15…[remember when they were popular?]….got a lot of bunnies with that one!

  25. Lots of dangerous things are great gifts: guns, vehicles, and power tools. A few years ago, I was sick the week after Christmas. In the waiting room, there were two men whose forearms and hands were wrapped in thick gauze. Both had received table saws for Christmas and put their hands into the blade. Untold numbers of teens have received cars and injured or killed themselves or others. Dangerous gifts need to be given to people with the knowledge, skills, and attitude to use them safely.

  26. Sure, guns are dangerous. So are many things. In my life, I have raced cars on the track, camped in a national forest where there are bears and mountain lions, gone rafting through rapids and on horseback pack trips. My wife and I bought our first horse in our mid sixties. I haven’t climbed mountains because it’s too much work and I don’t like heights. I expect the doctor would discourage those activities, too. I’m surprised he doesn’t tell his patients they should live only where there is convenient public transportation because it’s too dangerous to drive.

    Dangerous doesn’t mean unsafe. Dangerous means there are significant risks against which you should take reasonable precautions. Car racing is dangerous. Therefore, you equip your car with a roll cage, fire extinguisher and competition seat belts, wear a helmet and fire suit, know your car’s and your own limits. Unsafe means the only thing keeping you alive is dumb luck. Walking around while concentrating on your phone instead of your surroundings is unsafe.

    • I remember reading, years ago, that safety advocates had despaired of persuading people to be careful. They changed their focus from education to idiot proofing everything possible. That’s why your lawn mower or snow blower stops running when you take your hands off and your chain saw has a guard at the tip. For a while, in the mid 1970s, there was an interlock to keep your car from starting unless your fastened your seat belt. (People bypassed the interlock or simply fastened the belts and sat on them.) Self driving automobiles, flawed or not, are the next goal. It’s a corollary to discourage or explicitly prohibit activities with a potential for injury.

      The Darwin Award is a recent creation. Before then, people understood that carelessness could have fatal consequences. They didn’t need to have it pointed out to them.

    • recently had a dumb broad actually walk up and bump into the front of my car while blabbing on her phone…good thing my brakes worked!

  27. >30 years in emergency healthcare, retired ER nurse. Guns are no more dangerous than any other tool. There, yet another time of a nurse saving a docs butt!

    • Wrong and shame on you. I highly doubt you were ever a nurse in an E.R. because if you were you would know that when a child commits suicide with a gun its usually fatal but when they try to commit suicide by overdose, hanging, drowning etc they are far more likely to have a better chance of survival.

      Moral of the story is that the gun is not just like another tool, its the most deadly tool.

      • Wrong again Vlad. My experiences with folks I know/knew who committed suicide (or tried to) is that the success rate was pretty even. If you take the gun away from someone who seriously wants to off themselves they will find a myriad of other ways. Stepping in front of a speeding train is not safer than a gun! Diving off of very high places is not safer than a gun!
        Japan has very few guns but a much higher suicide rate; and I am willing to bet a higher success rate too. Your phobia about guns is just as childish as your psychosis about President Trump.

        • Whenever they talk about guns and suicides they never go near the subject of the suicide rate in Japan, where owning a firearm is only slightly more likely than riding a unicorn. If the Japanese rate was transferred to the USA they’d be collecting bodies on flat beds. The point is that suicide is a subject all its own and has no place in the discussion about firearms.

  28. Doctors do not like skateboards, parachutes, most winter sports, etc. They tell you to exercise and then take the fun out of it, but many will help get rid of a problem if you enjoy horizontal sports that are a Biblical imperative.

  29. The third-leading cause of death in US most doctors don’t want you to know about
    Published Thu, Feb 22 20189:31 AM EST, Updated Wed, Feb 28 20189:39 AM EST
    Ray Sipherd, special to CNBC.com

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html
    ———————————————————

    Leading causes of death in the US:
    https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/282929.php

    1. Heart disease, Deaths in 2017: 647,457
    2. Cancer, Deaths in 2017: 599,108
    3. Unintentional injuries, Deaths in 2017: 169,936
    4. Chronic lower respiratory disease, Deaths in 2017: 160,201
    5. Stroke and cerebrovascular diseases, Deaths in 2017: 146,383
    6. Alzheimer’s disease, Deaths in 2017: 121,404
    7. Diabetes, Deaths in 2017: 83,564
    8. Influenza and pneumonia, Deaths in 2017: 55,672
    9. Kidney disease, Deaths in 2017: 50,633
    10. Suicide, Deaths in 2017: 47,173

    —————————–

    What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S.
    https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/

    “In 2017, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 39,773 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC. ”

    “In 2017, six-in-ten gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides (23,854), while 37% were murders (14,542), according to the CDC. The remainder were unintentional (486), involved law enforcement (553) or had undetermined circumstances (338).”

    =====================================

    The moral of this story is that while death by gunshot is tragic, the larger picture is that it is also rare in the USA.

    Vastly greater numbers of lives could be saved with better access to health care. Or by eliminating medical errors. Or by eradicating tobacco, it would be far cheaper to pay the entire industry to stay home than to pay the cost of treating all those who suffer and die each year from smoking.

    • “Eradicating tobacco”…… what, are you some busy body trying to tell others what to do?
      Let me guess, you think everyone should have to lock their firearms in a safe at all times…?…..
      Don’t worry about what I smoke….. or carry….. IT’S NONE OF YOUR GD BUSINESS!

      😉

      • “Eradicating tobacco”…… what, are you some busy body trying to tell others what to do?”

        I think you misread this one.

  30. Dear Former ER Doc,

    The fact that you title yourself “Former” is cause for pause, however….

    As a physician, you (and your peers) are highly trained gig employees. I need you when I do, and don’t when I don’t.

    As temp help, I expect you to perform your duties to your utmost ability, If asked for advice, I expect you to provide it to the best of your knowledge and training. If asked for advice beyond your training and research, I expect you to point me to a source (other temp employee) better suited to respond. As a temp employee, I am purchasing your time for a limited range of my need. Never forget there are other human system mechanics who are in competition for my business. For non-medical purposes, there are service providers available, from which I can choose. For knowledge and advice on firearms, I will turn to providers who are knowledgeable and skilled in firearms. Rest assured, I will not seek medical advice or treatment from an FFL.

    In short, know your place….and stay in it.

    • Good God Sam She was giving the pro-gun viewpoint and you now try to assassinate her character and opinion and competence. You must really hate nurses and or females and or both. What you posted just made no logical sense from the pro-gun point of view. You seem to be saying women and nurses should not comment on guns. And your supposed to be a supporter of Constitutional Rights except of course the 1st Amendment that all you Right Wingers would like to destroy in a heart beat.

      Bizarre to say the least

      • Maybe your dentist will give you a discount for performing brain surgery on you. I can understand trying to keep expenses down, but seriously? You take advice from professionals who are unskilled or ignernt in the area in which you need advice and skills?

        Because you missed it……I don’t care whether a doctor/nurse/janitor is giving advice on gun ownership and use (pro or con); they are not expert in that area….I don’t want to hear from them.

        Well….maybe I would listen if the medics are telling me which bullet is most effective in creating damage in an attacker.

  31. Who fkn cares what this pansy mfer says about guns….
    I don’t recall asking to be told what his opinion is…..
    If you guys at TTAG are that desperate for content, then maybe toy should let ME write your articles for you…..
    Jesus Christ, help these MORONS see the error of their ways.

    • Were trying to do this with you. Your at the top of the list but probably a hopeless case.

    • They run the article so that you can sound off against the content, did you miss the part at the bottom where they point you towards another article they ran proposing exactly the opposite?

  32. No doubt edumuhcated (brainwashed) at some lib. run school. This is the kind of idiot that would be all for patients having to disclose if they have firearms and then ratting them out to a socialist government to kick their door in and confiscate their property.

  33. The sad fact is that too many parents who buy guns for their kids are such morons they end up having dead kids in a pool of blood because they never kept the guns locked up.

    The Doctor also hit on a valid point and that is that you are far more likely to be murdered by a family member than by a break in in the middle of the night. The Stats proved that over and over again many decades ago when mental illness was far lower. Today mental illness is becoming a national epidemic especially among children. The rash of weekly school shootings prove it beyond all doubt as does the suicide rate that is fueled by children getting a hold of their parents guns.

    • Well Vald, you and I finally agree on something- parents should teach their children how to safely handle dangerous objects. (Ever notice that these incidents of gun “accidents” almost always involve liberals?)
      As to the mental illness theory I suggest you quit reading the L.A.N.Y. Times and quit watching MSNBC and CNN.

      • “”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””(Ever notice that these incidents of gun “accidents” almost always involve liberals?)”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””

        Documentation? There is none. Sling your wild bullshit somewhere else. As a matter of fact its the opposite. Liberals usually do not even own guns but most right wing Hillbillies do and it is they that are too shiftless, lazy and indolent and ignorant to keep guns locked up. Really you must have been hitting the bottle too hard tonight.

      • I hate to say this but its a close call on that one. Depends who your relatives are or who your doctor is. I have known some of each who should not be trusted.

    • “The rash of weekly school shootings prove it beyond all doubt”

      Please cite the week by week example you claim. That’s at least 50 for this year, and to make it more illustrative of a trend, go back ten years, doing the same. Every week.

      You waste a lot of time and space here with everything else, least you could do is provide verifiable evidence, I mean you must already have it to believe and say what you do right?

      • “Please cite the week by week example you claim. That’s at least 50 for this year, and to make it more illustrative of a trend, go back ten years, doing the same. Every week.”

        He may be onto something. Former Virginia Governor McCauliff said 96 million people are killed each year by guns.

      • Look stable geniuses and that includes you to Sam which you are not. If you want to get technical it was every other week and I make this statement by dividing 52 weeks into the mass shootings we had in one year. I may have used last year or this year I do not remember. It averaged out to one every other week. If you add all mass shootings this is correct and they include the school shootings as well. The point is not to say ha , ha we did not have a school shooting every other week if we do not add in all shootings. The point is we have an out of control situation with mass murder here in the U.S. and the Republicans are making damn sure nothing is done about it.

      • FBI stats from1982 to present (including El Paso):
        114 mass shootings (3 or more dead), including school shootings
        932 deaths; 1406 wounded
        37 years
        25 dead/yr
        38 wounded/yr

        here is a source you can use quickly (but don’t tell anyone), let ’em think you are making it up, then slam them with the link, from that notorious, well-known racist, homophobic, white supremacist, misogynist rag called “Time Magazine”:
        https://time.com/4965022/deadliest-mass-shooting-us-history/

  34. Sorry doc, I’m going with a second opinion.

    If everyone paid more attention to what they are doing both on the job and off – in other words being mindful – there would be a whole bunch more lives saved than from any other threat. Yes, I am referring to Medical Violence specifically.

      • “doc’s have to make those boat payments!”

        We had five cats, and used the same vet clinic for 13yrs. I always asked “my” vet if he was keeping up his boat payments. The last of the cats died two months ago. We talked to the vet and his permanent technician about the years we have known each other, and that it was difficult to not only lose all the cats, but to lose the friendship as we no longer had reason for vet services. After last good byes, and on the way out of the clinic, the vet held the door open and asked, “Have you considered finding new cats?” I was puzzled and said, “I think we are done raising children.” The vet said, “Well, rats. I was looking at this new house in our sub-division.”

  35. Emos gonna emo.

    In this case that takes the form of throwing in some headphones, cranking up the Dashboard Confessional/My Chemical Romance playlist and writing a hoplophobic essay.

  36. About 5,000 people die every year in motorcycle crashes. I wonder how passionate he is about banning motorcycles?

    • The would if they could. When I broke my leg in my late twenties, the orthopedic surgeon who examined me was reluctant to believe I hadn’t done it riding a motorcycle. A colleague had a son who rode motocross. When the kid injured himself, the hospital staff was unsympathetic until his father asked them if they were similarly unsympathetic to football players. (Football is practically a religion in the state.) I’ve heard that hospital staff are not sympathetic to injured victims of violent crime if they were injured while fighting back.

  37. Easy there, Doc. I’m getting them a gun, not a gun shot wound.

    One does not necessarily (or even usually) fills the other.

    • Here are some astronomical numbers from John Hopkins on medical deaths annually. 250,000 with some reports as high as 440,000 deaths each year from medical errors. That means you are 10 times more likely to get killed by a doctor, to include ER doctors, than you are from a gun. Now that does need some sincere regulations and punishments for doctor errors. It should be a felony with long jail time.

      • This kind of thing is just as much bullshit as the gun issue.

        The issue is not the raw number.

        440,000 people die each year from medical mistakes and malpractice.

        So what? Just for significant surgeries in the United States Stanford had 23.982 million of them reported to their records service last year. Then there’s all the doctor’s visits, 883.7 million of them yearly per the CDC.

        Combine those numbers with the facts that most people lie to doctors, don’t know fuck all about their own medical history, don’t follow instructions, the variations in human biology and the myriad of ways we fuck ourselves up or get fucked up and it’s a damn miracle millions don’t die from “malpractice”.

        Guns and doctors, yeah shit happens, but neither one is a significant problem for the overall population. Pure 1st World problems.

        • ….”shit happens” should be a sign over the entrance to most hospitals instead of that no guns allowed one that you usually see….

        • Both gun stores and medical establishments could truthfully advertise “Significantly less than 1/10th of 1% (0.01%) chance that what’s inside kills you”.

  39. This doctor is entitled to his opinion. Some will agree, some will not. Has a familiar ring, doesn’t it?

  40. “When you buy a gun, you may think you are purchasing a weapon to protect your family, your home or your possessions. Perhaps you want to own a weapon in case society or the government breaks down and you need to defend yourself in troubled times. You may as well be worrying about a zombie apocalypse.”

    He equates real concerns(self defense from criminals) with fantasies like zombies in an effort to ridicule gun owners and would-be gun owners. Appeal to ridicule is the logic fallacy used by the writer.

    In the real world guns are used over a million times per year for self defense, as discussed on this site before:
    https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/cdc-study-confirmed-klecks-2-5-million-defensive-gun-use-statistic-so-they-hid-the-data/

    And we Americans have seen society and government break down within our lifetimes, at least temporarily: Hurricanes Katrina, Andrew, etc., and riots like the Ferguson, MO and Freddie Gray riots in Baltimore left honest people without police protection and left to whatever protection from criminals honest people could rig for themselves.

    “Whatever reason you have, let me disabuse you of the notion that you are somehow safer with a gun in your home. You aren’t.”

    Again, there are over 1 million defensive gun uses a year, as opposed less than 40,000 homicides and suicides regardless of the tool used to end a life.

  41. Quote: “The Doctor also hit on a valid point and that is that you are far more likely to be murdered by a family member than by a break in in the middle of the night.” Except the doctor never said that. As to more likely to be murdered by a family member that just means they don’t need a gun to kill you. They live there, they can simply poison you or wait until you are asleep and smother you with a pillow.

  42. He’s wrong but he’s wrong for the wrong reasons. The real reason why it’s not appropriate is the same logic behind why rabbits are the worst gift for Easter. If somebody already owns a piece, a second one is no harm and would be a great idea (but it would be expensive). I wouldn’t recommend one as a stocking stuffer unless the person expressed a desire to have one prior to Christmas, it’s not the kind of gift you just drop into somebody’s lap who doesn’t even know the difference between a clip and a magazine.

    With that aside, ER doctors are either terrific or horrible. One time I’ll get treatment and leave, the next one will ask a bunch of stupid questions and kick me out with a misdiagnosis. We can safely assume which group this quack falls under.

  43. Gee, I still remember the smile on my better half’s face when she opened a box on Christmas with a new bright shiny S&W Model 60 Ladysmith plus the paid for NRA Pistol Classes at our local range. That was 37 Christmases ago, and she still enjoys going to the range, and owns and safely handles every firearm in our safe.

  45. It seems that people have this all wrong, the Doc is trying to save lives and help people. It is a fact, if there is a gun in the home there is more likely to be a Negligent Discharge. No gun, no ND. Just like if there are golf clubs in the home, there is more likely to be golf balls in the home and you are more likely to hit someone with a golf club. If there is a car in your garage, you are more likely to be in an automobile accident.

    It is also an inconvenient truth that, if there is a gun in the home, you are more likely to be able to defend yourself from home invaders. If you carry a firearm, you are more likely to be one of those 500,000 to 2,000,000 people each year that defend themselves from an assault instead of being one of the millions of victims.

    Still after almost 40 years of gun ownership, concealed carry, hunting, target shooting, subject to three attempted assaults and having firearms in my life daily; I haven’t been injured, no one in my home has been injured, none of those with me have been injured. And, as of yet, no shots have needed to be fired in self-defense.

    But some people don’t need to have a firearm because they aren’t willing to take the personal responsibility of ownership.

  46. I agree with Doktor gunm to dangerous, that’s why grandkinders got woodchippers and trampolines..Mama say,”But papa, don’t you think wood chipper is a little close to trampoline?”

  47. TTAG neglected to say that clicking on that link went to the Miami Herald website.
    I would not have given them the click as they use Facebook plug in and you need a Facebook account to make a comment there.
    I need not have bothered as 90% of the comments were the same as on this site.
    Multiple People pointed out malpractice kills 10 times more than guns.

    As a doctor I can tell you that we also see plenty of deaths from firearms
    . The great majority are criminals or justified homicide

  48. I saw Sainsbury speak a few years ago at a Democratic Party meeting in CA. He was then and will probably always be a shill for the anti gun movement. He is full of shit and a grand manipulator. The back story on him is that he accidentally shot a friend of his with a 22 and has been anti gun ever since. I guess he figures since he is too stupid to be safe with a firearm everybody else is too. I wouldn’t let him doctor my goldfish.

  49. A white coat and a stethoscope don’t make you an expert in all things.
    We’re the firearm experts, not you.
    How many of those gunshot victims were truly innocent people, versus how many were scumbags that got what they deserved – shot by another scumbag or a good guy?

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