I received several responses to my PAAD calling for an assault weapon ban. Here are some
From Brian Donahue
Myron, it has been a pleasure to receive your daily pediatric anesthesia articles of the day. I have greatly enjoyed the academic challenges and insights you have provided, and I have always looked forward to the discussions involving my colleagues. I use past tense because your daily e-mails took a very sharp political turn today, to which I respond now. Although I find it distasteful that you use your fine academic forum as a platform to advance a clearly political agenda, I will save this discussion for another time. My hope here is that you actually read this letter in its entirety and take the time to consider its arguments.
For the record, I am not a member of any gun lobby, I’ve never been a member of the NRA, nor have I ever contributed to anyone’s political campaign or any political action committee. I share every bit of your passion and sorrow in response to mass shootings. Like you, in my role as an anesthesiologist, I have very graphically witnessed the tragedies of gun violence. Like you, I agree that any act of violence in our society is a serious moral stain, worthy of condemnation, investigation, and cohesive efforts at prevention. Like you, I would love to see something effective done.
In response, you issue a call to ban “assault weapons.” This term captured my attention, because there really is no standard definition from policy makers, gun enthusiasts, physicians, or even gun manufacturers regarding what an “assault weapon” is. My guess is that you’re referring to the popular AR-15 rifle, which fires a 223 / NATO 556 round. For the purposes of this letter I assume this is what you mean.
Now, being a man of science, Dr Yaster, I think you may be interested in some facts regarding this weapon. First, the round fired from it is the same diameter as a 0.22 round, considerably smaller than the 9mm or 45-calibur handgun rounds carried by most law enforcement officers. Second, the firing power and lethality of this weapon is far less than that of my grandfather’s 30.06 deer hunting rifle, which has been available to citizens for more than a century and has never raised the political concerns we are observing today. Third, outside of the military, no AR-15 rifle sold today is available as fully automatic, which means the weapon rapidly fires rounds as long as the trigger is pulled. Rather, the AR-15 rifle is semi-automatic, which means each round requires a separate trigger pull, the exact same mechanism used in handguns. Therefore, contrary to your claim, it has no more capacity for “rapid fire” than handgun does. This rifle is popular today not because it is “killing machine” (it is clearly less lethal than many other weapons available), but because it is very reliable, durable, accurate, easy to service and clean, has multiple options for accessories, and has standard replaceable parts. So it seems a bit of an exaggeration to make unsubstantiated emotional appeals to how deadly these weapons are. It also clouds the issue of whether restricting them will have a significant impact on violent crime.
Fourth, please understand that the weapons ban which ran from 1994-2004 had little or no effect on criminal activity, firearm deaths, or lethality of gun crime. In fact, gun violence actually decreased once the ban expired in 2004, because there are numerous other factors that contribute to crime statistics. Fifth, handguns continue to be used in the great majority of all gun crimes, so any ban on rifles is unlikely to be successful in accomplishing what we all would like to see.
If these weapons are banned, I surmise that there will again be little or no effect on violent crime, which will be frustrating and disappointing. Justifying such an ineffective, politically charged ban as “a step” is disingenuous, and does not justify the wasted time, effort, and resources spent to no avail. If these weapons are banned, I also surmise that politicians will seize the opportunity to arrogantly gloat about how they pushed forward this “important legislation” and will castigate their opponents for being sold out to the gun lobby, and obviously not caring about children. Such grotesque misrepresentation of equally concerned citizens who simply disagree about policy, is again disingenuous and will only further polarize our country, keeping us from coming together to the real problems behind gun violence, pushing the solutions to these problems even further from our reach.
What are these problems? The issue cannot be guns, or access to guns, because the guns have always been there. If you’re my age, you probably recall kids in high school with hunting rifles (like by grandfather’s rifle, more powerful than the AR-15) in their cars or trucks parked in the school lot, and not a single thought was given toward shooting up the school. I estimate some 40% of my high school classmates in Wisconsin went deer hunting every fall. We have had guns in our culture since before our nation was founded, but only in recent decades have we witnessed the atrocious increases in gun violence, particularly against our children.
What we are observing is a society in decline, an unraveling of civic order, likely arising from a general disregard for the lives and properties of others. I think you’ll agree that in our lifetime we have witnessed increased illegal drug use, fatherlessness, erosion of the family, crises in education, and increased rebellion and purposelessness among our youth, all of which are serious social problems and contribute in major ways toward violence. More recently, we have witnessed political violence in the form of riots, property damage, theft and looting, arson, assaults on law enforcement, and attorneys general and judges who are soft on crime. We even have politicians calling for and justifying violence against their opponents or their opponents’ supporters. Violence is glorified in our entertainment, music, video games, and social media. While I cannot propose a simple solution to all of these problems, they need to be part of our conversation on violent crime, if we are to have any hope for consensus or problem resolution.
Banning one particular rifle may make us feel like we’ve “done something,” taken “a step,” but it hasn’t been effective in the past, will further polarize our already fractured society, waste time and resources, and distract us from the more significant contributory issues.
From Mark Rockoff
Dear Myron - I just read your recent commentary in the PAAD. Nicely done! I have an additional suggestion that perhaps you would consider advocating for as the founder and leader of the SPA. Though you note that the SPA and other medical organizations cannot officially lobby, it seems to me organized medical groups can take a strong public stand by refusing to schedule any of their national meetings in states that do not have at least some laws against gun violence (for example, a ban on assault rifles, at least for individuals under 21, background checks, red flag laws, etc). Thus, the SPA could refuse to schedule future meetings in states like TX, but there are plenty of other nice venues (including CA, FL, MA, and many other states) where meetings could appropriately be held. If ALL medical organizations did this, perhaps the “power of the purse” would get legislators in many states to wake up and pass reasonable gun control laws. This would also make a powerful statement from organized medicine that this indeed “is our lane”. Just a thought…
From Carine Wood
I live in Canda. My congress women (provincial and federal) do not carry a gun, anymore that I do, and have done all my life. I have never had a weapon, a good thing in view of my shooting skills using a light air gun shooting... snails on tree trunks as a child. I never felt the need for a weapon, and never feared that my children would be gunned down in their school. I lived in France and the UK too, never in the US. I wish I could do more to stop what is and will continue to happen south of the border.
If you carry a weapon, you will use it. Five years ago I spoke to an US surgeon from Oregon, a keen bicyclist. He told me that he always took a gun when on a bike ride. When I asked him something like "what on earth for?" he told me that he shot a rattle snake once and a dog who was bothering him another time. I am not "protective" of dogs, I like them, not more, some are dangerous. With his titanium bike my surgeon could easily outrun both animals, but he had a gun, so he used it. The only way to stop this carnage is to remove weapons from the hands of people. Yes, I have heard of the second amendment. You could let them carry a small handgun with a maximum of 4 individual small bullets. That would allow "self-defence" but not mass slaughter. From the history of the US I know, this will not happen, further mass slaughter will.