Background: The high rates of death, injury, and long-term disability related to firearms in the United States have led to growing concern in the health care community. Medical organizations and jo...

Internists' and Surgeons' Attitudes toward Guns and Firearm Injury Prevention

To the Editor. —The Commentary by the New York Academy of Medicine panel1is seriously flawed as public health policy and yet another example of the fact that a medical degree does not a criminologist or policy analyst make. The article completely ignored the vast criminological research literature on the subject, which generally concludes that the gun control measures proposed by the panel have failed and, even worse, may actually have led to more innocent victims.2 Rational public policy balances benefits and costs. In ignoring or dismissing the extensive criminological literature on the subject, the panel failed to explicitly consider the benefits conferred by private firearms ownership, which are potentially large. For example, research during the past decade suggests that between 30 and 75 lives may be saved with privately owned guns for each life taken with one.3,4Instead, the panel's one-sided "costs only" approach to firearms

https://jamanetwork.com/HttpHandlers/ArticlePdfHandler.ashx?journal=JAMA&articleId=382065&pdfFileName=jama_272_18_021.pdf

Firearm violence and public health.

To the Editor —The public health paradigm underlying your firearms control scheme in your Editorial 1 of June 10, 1992, is inconsistently and incompletely applied, and the automobile registration and licensing model is inappropriate to the regulation of firearms The inconsistency becomes obvious if we apply similar criteria to the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), Dr Koop's earlier celebre Would you require AIDS carriers to be registered? To demonstrate knowledge about safe sex? To have their sexual practices monitored? To forfeit their right to have sex if they violate these conditions? I would hope not Then why do you consider such restrictions acceptable for firearms owners? Your analysis is woefully incomplete in that it failed to consider the benefits conferred by private firearms For example, a highly publicized firearms training program for more than 2000 women in Orlando, Fla, caused the incidence of rape to drop 89% in 1 year without

Eric S. H. Ching

Papers

Firearm violence and public health.

Violence in America: time to bite the bullet back.