Bullets by prescription

October 17, 3:17 PMDenver Gun Rights ExaminerDan Bidstrup

Previous Next

5 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Denver Gun Rights Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Researchers are now studying gun deaths using the  research tools of epidemiologists to try to see if carrying a gun makes you safer, or less safe. This particular study finds that carrying a gun makes you four times more likely to get shot than if you don't carry one. (Hmmmmm)  The author is looking at gun violence as a disease.  The study methodology is pretty absurd, but the idea of treating gun violence as a health care issue is gaining credibility.  The health care reform currently under consideration by Congress will give the federal government broad new powers to discern healthy and unhealthy lifestyle decisions, coupled with the ability to deny services to those who don't follow the guidelines. We know from England's example, that eventually care decisions will be guided by your level of involvement in healthy life choices. Here is a discussion among English doctors of what services should be withheld from patient deemed too fat.

Here is another nightmare for your consideration.  Under the health care reform currently being considered by the US congress, what would stop the government from placing bullets under the control of the FDA?  In the current amorphous language, the proposed legislation leaves legal room for what's safe and unsafe to be determined at a later date by a bureaucratic entity.  Clearly, a gun that is empty is simply a transport mechanism with no cargo.  It makes a poor cudgel, and won't come back to you if you throw it. It is the bullets that make a gun dangerous. Perhaps guns are like smoking:  If you don't have the smokes, you don't get the cancer.  If gun crime is a disease, starve the disease of its fuel, the bullets. Police officers would get the bullets they need, but everybody else would be deeply scrutinized to see if they had a compelling need for such a toxic prescription. Like heavy painkillers, you would need to have a doctor's prescription, pick them up in person, and account for all that you had before being allowed to have your prescription renewed.  Rather a dismal thought....

Update:  The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is beginning to study gun safety as a health issue:
" 'Gun related violence is a public health problem - it diverts considerable health care resources away from other problems and, therefore, is of interest to NIH," Don Ralbovsky, NIH spokesman, wrote in an e-mail responding to questions about the grants."  Washington Times, October 19, 2009