Yesterday, the American Medical Association’s House of Delegates passed anti-liberty resolutions surpassing what we anticipated just two weeks ago as we covered its planning. You can read about it on AMA Wire and MedPage Today, outlets that uncritically regard the AMA as the fount of all medical correctness. Even the Associated Press wrote that the “physicians group bowed to unprecedented demands from doctor-members to take a stronger stand on gun violence.”
But it didn’t—less than one quarter of the nation’s physicians join the AMA. Its positions do not even represent all its members, let alone the vast majority of physicians who don’t belong. The vote of 446 to 99 suggests that fewer than 80% of AMA members may favor these positions. Less than 20% of total audience support is not, shall we say, statistically significant when it comes to mass movements.
The AMA, like most medical specialty organizations, doesn’t ask those it purports to represent what it should do. Its leadership tells us what we ought to believe. This attitude has worsened over the decades as it has taken more sides politically on subjects irrelevant to patient care or physicians’ needs, such as how to insure health care and advocating gun control under the guise of “public health.” That’s why it no longer represents America’s doctors.
To summarize, roughly, from most to somewhat less objectionable, the AMA now stands for:
- Required training courses and licensing of all gun owners, and registration of all firearms.
- Banning ownership of “all assault-type weapons, bump stocks and related devices, high-capacity magazines, and armor piercing bullets.”
- Banning sales to, ownership and unsupervised use of all firearms for 18-20 year olds.
- Keeping schools “gun-free” except for law enforcement, and opposing requiring or providing incentives for teachers to carry weapons.
- Stopping nationwide concealed carry reciprocity.
- “Red flag” laws permitting family and household members, intimate partners (including dates) and law enforcement to seek firearms confiscation as well as restraining orders.
- Adding to the National Instant Background Check System the subjects of all domestic violence restraining orders and gun removal orders, and misdemeanor domestic violence and stalking convictions.
- Enhanced training of physicians in suicide risk assessment and intervention, encouraging them to discuss lethal means prevention with families.
There is more, although these are the high (or rather, low) points. The magnitude of these goals is mind-boggling when their full implications are considered.
Licensing all gun owners and registering all their firearms would create the database needed to confiscate them as more types of firearms may be declared illegal.
Banning “assault-type weapons . . . high-capacity magazines, and armor piercing bullets” is manipulative obfuscation at its worst. The most popular rifle in the United States, whose form merely follows function (and is used in maybe 1% of shootings), ordinary magazines that have been legally sold and possessed in the millions for decades, and bullets of all sizes that transfer the energy required for effective impact would all be outlawed.
Eighteen, 19 and 20-year-olds are legal adults in every other respect. Why not as gun owners?
Barring “incentives” for school districts and teachers who want to protect their pupils could preclude paying for training for those that realize the necessity of affordably armed, qualified staff. Believing that just labelling schools as “gun-free” actually protects our children is delusional.
Nationwide concealed carry reciprocity is simply what is deserved by the legions of exceedingly safe, legal concealed carriers across this United States. No more, no less.
“Red flag” laws passed thus far in a number of states have such minimal due process protections for this constitutional right that their abuse will be too easy. Adding their subjects, and those accused (not convicted) of domestic violence, to the NICS would impose on thousands more people the Herculean task of clearing their NICS prohibitions after being absolved of unproven accusations.
Training physicians to better evaluate risks of dangerousness in patients is all to the good, until one realizes that the focus will still be to convince them to reject gun ownership as an irredeemable sin.
Anyone who is familiar with good research knows that 99.9% of the time legal gun ownership and use is safe, rewarding, and strengthens the safety of families and communities. Anyone who can read knows that the Constitution’s Second Amendment unequivocally protects that individual right. Most physicians know these things, too.
“Noblesse oblige” is a principle that has long demanded that the more fortunate and capable contribute in large measure to the welfare of those less so. The AMA used to be exemplary in this way, as nearly all physicians still are. But on gun-related matters, organized medicine has lost its way. For the AMA, noblesse oblige has mutated into “the conceit of the anointed” (from Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as the Basis for Social Policy).
The basis for the AMA’s positions against guns and gun owners is, simply, because they say so. We say no, and can back that up.
So who are you going to believe?
Reality, or their own lying “ayes”?
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.
If I remember correctly, 4 times as many people are murdered by medical negligence by doctors than are killed by guns
No wonder they want to deflect attention away from themselves
Medical mistakes are not “murders”. And just like guns, doctors save more lives than they cost.
Yet a person killed by a negligent discharge would be charged with muder
Generally, no, you are incorrect. If they are charged at all, the usual offense is either Manslaughter (if there is some level of culpability beyond a mere ‘accident’) or ‘Criminally Negligent Homicide’ (if there is no enhancement of culpability that would rise to the level of Manslaughter).
Any ‘murder’ charge requires malice, intent, or gross reckless indifference.
Making the comparison between medical error and negligent shootings, one would be hard-pressed to claim that they shot someone in an attempt to save their life, and that their unfortunate death was merely an error in aim, technique, or caliber–unless, of course, a 6.5mm Creedmoor was used, in which case, due to the cartridge’s extreme precision and accuracy making it able to hit individual cancer cells at will, all bets are off.
Finally a 6.5 CM reference. I was worried.
He’s talking about negligent preventable errors. The AMA and it’s members have blood on their hands. The AMA and it’s members don’t represent the vast majority of physicians who support the constitilution and are committed to evidence based medicine. The AMA is lining its pockets with partisan kickbacks to advance a political agenda. The AMA is simply looking for a revenue stream as they are becoming irrelevant and will be replaced by common sense and innovative groups who are doing more to protect American’s health. Consider yourself trolled troll.
He’s talking about negligent preventable errors.
I know. And those are not “murders”. As John in AK explained, murder requires malice or intent. The worst a doctor would likely face for a mistake would be negligent manslaughter.
The AMA and it’s members have blood on their hands.
…among other bodily fluids. They are doctors after all.
Would you care to elaborate on what they’ve done?
The AMA and it’s members don’t represent the vast majority of physicians who support the constitilution (sic) and are committed to evidence based medicine.
I never said they did. But the 250,000 deaths from medical mistakes are not just from AMA doctors, so I’m not sure how that point is relevant here.
The AMA is lining its pockets with partisan kickbacks to advance a political agenda.
Source? The AMA spends a lot on lobbying, but what kickbacks are they getting?
The AMA is simply looking for a revenue stream as they are becoming irrelevant and will be replaced by common sense and innovative groups who are doing more to protect American’s health.
Source?
Consider yourself trolled troll.
What troll behavior did I engage in?
Prove it. Literally. People repeat that like all the time..’doctors save more lives than they take..’. If you’re going to repeat it, back it up with credible evidence. We have the stats putting the medical/pharmaceutical partnership as the 3rd leading cause of death in the US(likely #1 if all cases were reported), where Is the data to back up your statement?
You are sadly mistaken.
For every American murdered by a firearm, 40+ Americans are murdered by “Healthcare Professionals”.
10,000 Americans murdered by firearms every year.
440,000 Americans killed by healthcare professionals every year. Trial Lawyer’s Estimate.
Please provide link to source.
OIG for HHS (generally considered very reliable) claims 180,000 from some Medical cause per year with 80% or more being because patients did not disclose all conditions.
20% of 180k = 36k which is roughly same as 38k annual gun deaths
A lot of truth there Sammy.
It isn’t until you see a MD make a screw-up that a mere EMT knows not to make that the scales really fall from your eyes.
Exactly. My wife is a top notch dentist and she saw how poorly trained the people at the bottom of a graduating class can be. If you have incompetent and lazy dentists then you surely have incompetent and lazy doctors. Being at the bottom of your graduating class is the first sign of a lousy doctor.
These anointed ones that take the oath to do no harm and then are active in the abortions of millions of the unborn. ” Physician, heal thyself ! “
Exactly. They are trained in “medicine” to “heal” but take jobs murdering unborn children and then laugh about it. They need a psychological and morality test for every type of care giver in the system. Psychotic murderers should be excluded, and listed in a database so they cannot kill in the future, something like “registration” of dangerous, arrogant people who applied for a medical care license.
Did they at all cover how to reduce medical mistakes and malpractice? Their body count greatly exceeds that from gun deaths. If they cared, they’d mind their own house first.
Is the AMA a 501c.3? If so, such naked politicking could be reason for pulling their non profit status. Not one more inch, and let’s level the playing field.
No, but they are tax exempt. Perhaps that needs to change. What they advocate won’t improve their business conditions. It actually harms it by their logic.
AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
330 N WABASH AVE STE 39300, CHICAGO, IL 60611-5885 | TAX-EXEMPT SINCE MARCH 1946
EIN: 36-0727175
Nonprofit Tax Code Designation: 501(c)(6)
Defined as: Business leagues, chambers of commerce, real estate boards, etc, created for the improvement of business conditions.
Donations to this organization are not tax deductible.
Then they are operating outside the guidelines of their “permit” and should be heavily taxed in the future.
As a physician, and a “firearm aficionado,” (aka gun nut) I am trying to do my part to break the mold, so to speak. It’s an interesting phenomenon, speaking about owning a gun–much less enjoying shooting–is taboo amongst many docs. At my practice I don’t hide the fact that I have an extensive firearms collection, and take every chance I am given to take colleagues who have never fired a gun to the range. I know I am doing my part to champion firearm ownership when other physicians see me in the hall and stop me to ask my advice on buying a gun. Puts a huge smile on my face.
Just show them a Creedmoor and the scales will fall from their eyes.
GasMD
Perhaps you might consider joining DRGO and participating in our patient referral service 2Adoc.com
Arthur Z Przebinda
Project Director
DRGO
Thanks for the link. I’m looking for a GP closer to my new home, so I gave it a try. Although I’m not hopeful of finding one in the Seattle area.
It all depends on how far you want to travel.
To the best of my recollection, we do have some primary care providers in that town.
Requests are pouring in and we are doing our best to find matches as quickly as we can.
Doctor, I admire your taking people unfamiliar with guns to the range. More often than not it results in them losing their fear of firearms and even acquiring their own.
But I absolutely would not tell anyone other those whom I totally trust that I have an arms collection. That used to be basic gun security; lack of knowledge by others that one has guns is worth several gun safes. But now GVRO/Red Flag laws are proliferating and gives anyone the power to denounce a gun owner to the po-po thus: “He threatened me, he owns many guns, I’m sure he’s planning a massacre!” Due process is dead under these laws; the accused is never aware of the denunciation made against him until the po-po show up at his door with GVRO in hand to seize his guns.
Even worse, penalties for perjury which normally mean prison time have been downgraded under Red Flag to misdemeanors; thirty days of community service, whoop-ti-doo. Watch for cities to bring back the 1970’s snitch hotlines “and you don’t have to give your name” when notifying the po-po that someone you don’t like has guns.
Doctor, am I exaggerating?
The ABA is the same. A cadre of rich, liberal elites set the agenda and tell all the other members what they should believe. Having been outvoted in trying to limit the ABA’s crass liberal politicking, legions of conservative lawyers have simply quit.
Your Tinder date has the authority to dial up a SWAT team to take your guns? Bwahahaha. Fuck these people. Idiot doctors kill far more people than shootings.
So now a whole new generation of “victory girls” can seek out young men and then turn them into the police as “violent” just to keep one more person from guns. Sounds like “entrapment” just waiting to happen.
Mama told me about girls like that.
While I’m definitely for 2A rights, I have to say that the author is clearly clueless about statistics and statistical significance, thus shouldn’t be using the words.
The AMA needs to fix their own problems….10 percent of all U.S. deaths are now due to medical error. (via @HopkinsMedNews) http://ctt.ac/6UDuI+
That increase could also be a sign that more people are getting medical care, and living to an age where they require medical care on a more regular basis, including riskier procedures.
A more appropriate statistic would be whether medical malpractice deaths per 100k for a given diagnosis or given procedure are up or down.
No step on snek.
Not much to add…baby murderer’s have NO moral authority.
How about they go piss up a rope.
It’s the Doctors who have created the Opiod Crisis.
Drug companies cannot sell to individuals.
Pharmacists can only sell to folks with prescriptions.
It’s the doctors who are writing prescriptions to thousands of patients who have no real need for pain meds. Those drugs are then sold on the street. Obamacare gives free meds to millions of Americans, who can easily scam ignorant or naive doctors into prescribing the dope to them.
I’m non-military. There’s a reference to the AMA wanting to ban “armor piercing bullets”. First, couldn’t all rifle rounds be loosely considered “armor piercing”? Is there even a legal definition of this? I’ve seen ignorant sophists declare hollow-points to be armor piercing. Second, wouldnt an armor piercing bullet be less lethal due to lack of expansion? Last, how is this even an issue? I’m guessing gang members use cheap ammo and whatever gun they can get illegally. I know they aren’t using rifles or AR’s.
If you are not a criminal, owning a firearm makes your household members about 25% less likely to be violence victim than members of households with no gun.
Multiple jurisdictions data show well above 90% of gun murder in a home is with a gun owned by a household member, occurs in the approximately 8% of US homes with a criminal domiciled owning an illegal gun.
In fact child rape, child sexual assault, child beating to death, domestic murder by with gun, knife strangulation or beating is in very large majority , again over 90% committed by a prior criminal domiciled in the home or in a relationship with the female head of household.
The AMA won’t touch the real risk with a 10’pole. If they were honest about the data they would recommend no one with criminal record be allowed in a home with children.. Control for that and remaining homes with firearms are safer more, not less, safe.
AMA may portray it’s self as caring for the people, in reality it cares about money. A vast majority of gunshot victims do not have insurance. The hospitization and care for those that survive is a monetary burden to the hospitals and the rise in their insurance premiums and insurance payouts, thst is why the AMA is so concerned with firearms. It has nothing to do with saving lives. Eventually the insurance companies will climb on board for gun restrictions and the cost to own a firearm will become very prohibitive. America is at a tipping point. We are required by law to wear seatbelts, that law was passed because insurance companies lobbied congress when they were paying to much for head injuries and loosing money. It too, had nothing to do with saving lives. In this capitalist society with the very strong influence insurance companies have in this country money trumps the Bill of Rights. Truth
The AMA supports and pushes untested medical procedures on children. That’s all one needs to know about the AMA.
All my physician colleagues own guns (many NFA full auto versions). They have never killed anyone. I can proudly say that, since becoming a physician in 1981, I have never belonged to the AMA. I encourage my patients with CCW permits to carry when coming to their appointments at my office. Many do. I even had a very nice and grateful native Egyptian ex-military veteran and devout Muslim offering to bring his decked-out AR-15 for a “show and tell” at my office. I graciously declined on behalf of my “non-gun patients” in the waiting room. Backyard pools and MV crashes kill (way) more children than accidental gun discharges. Never heard the AMA proposing to ban pools deeper than 3 inches or cars with more than 25 HP engines.
https://www.cdc.gov/injury/images/lc-charts/leading_causes_of_death_highlighting_unintentional_2016_1040w800h.gif
The medical profession has been transformed into a population control proxy both figuratively and literally.
People who demand as a taxpayer funded “right” their uninterrupted access to scissors to kill the born and unborn for food, need to be beaten half to death 2x for suggesting for even a second that they give a flying fuck about anything, much less “safety”.
The AMA is a pack of fucking monsters. Evil vicious satan-slurping monsters.
They need a Federal probe, heavy taxation, and jail time for murders
Every “medical” post needs these citations for a reminder.
https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139
https://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-primary-care-policy-center/Publications_PDFs/A154.pdf
I’ve been a general surgeon for 22 years. I don’t know a single member of the AMA. Can’t stand them.
It’s a good bet the American Malpractice Association points elsewhere to distract from deficiencies in their domain, that they’d rather not address. Membership associations so often descend into cheerleaderism, and deflection for their constituents. Way more comfortable than helping them improve.
People inside organizations do the same thing. I have three responses when person, team, or function working for me spouts off about what someone else should be doing,
— I assume they don’t have enough of their own work to do & give them more.
— I start exploring whether that other thing should be their job. Maybe that’s a better fit? Clearly they are interested.
— I poke around in their half acre. Obviously, everything’s fine there.
The point off referring to medical errors is to note that maybe the AMA isn’t all that good at knowing what to do about this or that. Mis-diagnosis. Delivery errors. Blah, blah, blah. Besides, why would a bunch of doctors know how to *design a system* to address a public health issue? Maybe pay attention to being competent at what they already do.
One of the worst problems with the ACA, following on similar problems with other Imposed Giant Medical Systems, is they put highly-skilled technicians — doctors — in charge of designing and operating complex systems full of humans. These are vastly different skills, even when done well.
Au contraire. Systems are laid in place by administrators, bureaucrats, etc that have never laid a hand on a patient before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHfan71zHKk
While there might be a weed or two in my lawn, the front yard of The AMA is completely overgrown. Before pointing fingers, they need to clean up the medical profession’s failings. For instance, how many deaths take place, year after year, from what is politely referenced as Medical Misadventure. In any case, when did the AMA learn of the difference between the breach end and the muzzle end of a firearm, rifle, handgun or shotgun? By the way, to what extent does the AMA actually represent physicians?
The AMA can do what it feels like it has to do, and we can do what we think and feel what we must do. My position on someone trying to confiscate my gun, or guns, has always been clear in my mind.
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