The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on-line edition opened a Pandora’s Box in its Monday edition with a story on the staggering number of deaths annually due to “preventable medical errors.”
The P-I should be congratulated for this story.
By the most conservative comparison, this number, alone, is three times as high as the number of firearms-related deaths annually, an estimated 98,000 medical-error deaths and an estimated 30,000 gun-related deaths.
But the P-I story did not end there. It goes on to report that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, another 99,000 people die each year thanks to “hospital-acquired infections.”
Do the math and you have almost 190,000 fatalities annually thanks to some medical foul-up.
Unintentional injuries from firearms represent less than two percent of all firearm deaths in theU.S.
How ironic, then that a lot of anti-gun physicians, occasionally encouraged by leaders in the medical community, have focused their attention on guns. This is what a group called Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership (DRGO) has labeled as a “boundary violation.” That is, unless a physician also happens to be a firearms instructor or some kind of gun safety expert, he or she has no business counseling patients about guns in the home. They should not be asking questions about guns in the home. In fact, guns in the home are none of their business.
DRGO is a project of the Claremont Institute and its head is Dr. Timothy Wheeler, a Southern California surgeon and a genuinely nice guy. His discussions about boundary violations can give anti-gunners heartburn.
Experts estimate that a staggering 98,000 people die from preventable medical errors each year…In addition, a federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study concluded that 99,000 patients a year succumb to hospital-acquired infections. Almost all of those deaths, experts say, also are preventable. - Seattle Post-Intelligencer
I once quipped to an audience in Phoenix during a Gun Rights Policy Conference a few years ago that if a doctor asked whether I have any guns in the home, the response might be, “Heck, I’ve got one right here. Want to see it?”
(My doctor can give all of the advice he wants to, as he’s a member of the same gun club to which I belong, he’s an accomplished shooter and more than once I’ve bumped into him at the range, but not for a medical exam! Find yourself a doctor like that.)
Seriously, when one starts discussing statistics relating to gun deaths in this country, one is entering a veritable “Twilight Zone” in which fact too often is disregarded as fiction, and fiction all too frequently becomes fact. (We’re not talking about teen vampires in Forks, Washington, and probably not Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone, though this statistics game can have a surreal quality about it.
There are all kinds of data available on-line, and all kinds of things one can do with that data, including push a political agenda.
Earlier this year in the New York Times, Bob Herbert wrote an opinion piece suggesting that “more than 12,000 people are murdered with guns annually.” He adds that to the number of suicides, accidents and police shootings to reach an annual figure of roughly 30,000 gun-related fatalities, mentioned above.
However, Herbert also noted that the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (which Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, sometimes calls the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership) says more than 3,000 kids are fatally shot during an average year.
Firearms are involved in 0.5% of accidental deaths nationally, compared to motor vehicles (37%), poisoning (22%), falls (17%), suffocation (5%), drowning (2.9%), fires (2.5%), medical mistakes (1.7%), environmental factors (1.3%), and pedal cycles (0.7%). Among children: motor vehicles (41%), suffocation (21%), drowning (15%), fires (8%), pedal cycles (2%), poisoning (2%), falls (1.9%), environmental factors (1.5%), firearms (1.1%) and medical mistakes (1%). - National Rifle Association
It’s not clear where the Brady Campaign gets that figure. The National Center for Child Death Review Policy and Practice puts the figure far lower, where accidents are concerned. Overall, firearms account for just over one percent of all accidental deaths annually, according to figures published by the National Rifle Association.
Data compiled from the National Vital Statistics Report for 2002 by consultant Steve Eggleston and the Eggleston Group noted that firearms accounted for 13 deaths under 1 year of age, 46 deaths in the 1-4 year age group, 377 in the 5-14 year age group and a disturbing 5,789 deaths in the 15-24 year age group. But that last figure is deceiving, because, after all, who can consider anyone in the very late teens or early 20s to be a child?
Far more children die from drowning, poisoning, car crashes, fires, and a host of medical conditions.
But instead of tackling these other issues head-on, gun prohibitionists – including those in the medical community – target firearms. For the typical gun grabber, it probably comes down to an issue of emotionalism. For physicians, it may be an exercise in moral hypocrisy.
Here’s some “medical” advice: If you suddenly feel yourself overwhelmed by a desire to “do something about guns,” take a Valium and stay in bed until it passes.
Visit with other Gun Rights Examiners:
For more info: Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership. Second Amendment Foundation.
Comments
It is my opinion, based on my own experiences with qualified professionals, that doctors do not ask questions if they do not know the subject matter. If your doctor asks if you have guns in the house, get another doctor!
My doctor has asked me about guns that I own and about the gun club I am a member of... she wanted a reccomendation on a good reasonably priced shotgun for both skeet and clays... she was interested in getting back into shooting as she hunted birds with her Dad (now departed) on their farm in Southern Ohio and she had gotten away from it when she went off to med school. That and her skills in keeping my old butt on the right side of dirt for the past few years makes her the perfect "anti-Obama Hell Care" doctor in my book.
I would also like to further remind readers that doctors can (and I believe (could be wrong)in some places are required to) report you to 'the authorities' if you are prescribed / on medication that can impair your sense of reason. Also, if you get depressed, have 'workplace stress issues' etc your doctor may be interviewing you in order to make a recommendation to limit your ability to purchase firearms, ammunition, legally transfer arms etc. For some medications that are 'anti-depressants' some actually create a strong sense to commit suicide (my wife had that problem) due to an incorrect dosage or medication type. Recognize the symptoms and ask for a re-evaluation, manage your firearms appropriately (lock them up etc) and take care of your family.
Don't become a statistic!
BTW: Last I checked, lead poisoning was a medical condition, not a firearms ownership issue!
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