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Posted on 11/11/2001 4:21:08 AM PST by LarryLied

Violence "due to gunfire should be treated like any
             other epidemic disease," Dr. Bernard Feldman of the
             Department of Pediatrics of the University of Nevada
             School of Medicine wrote to me on April 9, 1997. "If
             society wishes to protect children from having a slug
             of lead slamming into their heads or chests and
             succumbing to this disease ... parents should know
             whether guns are present in the homes of their
             children's friends. ... In this way parents can make
             informed decisions about allowing their children to
             play in such a home. ... "

             Dr. Feldman asserted that one American child was
             killed every 92 minutes by gunfire -- including as
             "children" 19-year-olds and thus arguing that
             19-year-old dueling drug dealers are "innocent
             children."

             In fact, only five American children under the age of
             10 died of accidents involving handguns in 1997,
             according to Competitive Enterprise Institute scholar
             (formerly of the University of Chicago and then the
             Yale Law School) Dr. John Lott, author of the book
             "More Guns, Less Crime."

             "People get the impression that kids under 10 are
             killing each other. In fact this is very rare: three to four
             per year," Dr. Lott tells me.

             But for a really big-bore rebuttal to this memorized
             nonsense, now comes the book "Armed: New
             Perspectives on Gun Control" (Prometheus Books,
             2001) by attorney Don P. Kates and Gary Kleck
             (professor of criminology at Florida State University).
             It again dispatches the "more likely to harm their
             owners" shibboleth, by the way, but its second
             chapter, "Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of
             Violence, or Pandemic of Propaganda?" is based on
             an article of Mr. Kates' in the 1995 Tennessee Law
             Review, to which none of the baby doctors therein
             debunked found themselves able to respond, even
             when invited to do so by the editors.

             I cannot substantially recreate here the findings of this
             fine 75-page chapter (including footnotes), with its
             scathing indictment of the disinformation, fraud,
             suppression of inconvenient data, and "outright
             mendacity" which have become so typical of the
             anti-gun "public health" sages

             Instead, let me settle for quoting primarily from Kates
             & Kleck's introduction and conclusion, and urging all
             interested readers to lay hands on this fine book
             themselves (at 800-421-0351, or e-mail
             pbooks6205@aol.com):

             "In 1979 the American public health community
             adopted the `objective to reduce the number of
             handguns in private ownership,' the initial target being
             a 25 percent reduction by the year 2000," Kates and
             Kleck begin.

             "Based on studies and leadership from the Centers for
             Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the objective
             has broadened so that it now includes banning and
             confiscation of all handguns, and restrictive licensing
             of owners of other firearms, with the goal of
             eliminating firearms from American life, excepting
             (perhaps) only a small elite of extremely wealthy
             collectors, hunters or target shooters as in Europe,"
             the authors continue.

             "Antigun health advocates seem blind or unconcerned
             about the danger that their emotions may preclude a
             rational evaluation of gun ownership. Psychiatrist
             Emmanuel Tanay, M.D., who admits that he loathes
             guns to the point of being unable to look upon or touch
             them with equanimity, asserts that gun ownership
             betokens sexual immaturity or neuroticism. ... Dr.
             Tanay invokes Freud's view of the sexual significance
             of firearms in the interpretation of dreams. This is
             particularly ironic because Freud's comments were
             not directed at gun ownership or owners. Insofar as
             Freud addressed the matter at all, he seems to have
             deemed fear and loathing of guns a sign of sexual
             immaturity and neuroticism. ... "

             A 1989 article in the Journal of the American Medical
             Association approvingly quotes a Center for Disease
             Control official's assertion that his work for the CDC
             involved "systematically building a case that owning
             firearms causes death." The CDC officials later
             claimed JAMA had misquoted him, protesting that
             acting on such a political agenda would be "anathema
             to any unbiased scientific inquiry because it assumes
             the conclusion at the outset and then attempts to find
             evidence to support it."

             This "constitutes the only repudiation of the antigun
             political agenda we have found in a health advocacy
             publication," Kates and Kleck report.

             "The health advocacy literature exists in a vacuum of
             lock-step orthodoxy almost hermetically sealed from
             the existence of contrary data or scholarship," Kates
             and Kleck state in their chapter conclusion. "Such
             data and scholarship routinely goes unmentioned and
             the adverse emotional reaction of the gate-keepers of
             the health journals assures the elimination of contrary
             views from their pages. ..."

             The New England Journal of Medicine, particularly,
             "has an editorial policy which is strongly and explicitly
             antigun, and not only has published poorly executed
             antigun articles, but has excluded articles which
             disagree with this editorial policy. These actions forfeit
             its claim to be a research journal rather than just a
             political advocacy publication. ..."

             The solution? Remove all government funding from
             the CDC (and the University of Nevada School of
             Medicine, while we're at it); if these political "doctors"
             choose to militate for repeal of the Second
             Amendment, make them raise their own funds and
             register as a political lobby. If they whine that they "do
             other good works," the answer is that if they valued
             nonpartisan public funding for those ventures they
             should have stuck to medicine, and let our freedoms
             alone.
 

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