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COMMENTARY


Essential liberties


BY JOSEPH SCAMARDO, MD The recent murder of children in Newtown horrified the nation. Media furor focused an enor- mous amount of attention on this tragedy. “Big Government” advocates were quick to use this tragedy to advance their po- litical agenda. They believe the answer to every problem is more federal control and authority. However, as physicians we are trained to rely on evidence, not hyperbole, to evaluate potential treatments and avoid emotional rhetoric. Numerous studies prove that limiting our ability to defend our- selves simply results in more vio- lent crime. The FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) show U.S. firearm murders are decreasing. In 2011, there were 8,783, down 3 percent from 2010. However, this is not due to


fewer firearms. In fact, the lowest crime rates are in states like Texas, where we can legally be armed in public. In Texas, the violent crime rate is 24 percent lower than the U.S. average, the murder rate is 28 percent lower, and the robbery rate is 50 percent lower, according to the FBI UCR.


Numerous studies prove


Those in favor of gun bans ar- gue that more firearms will result in more accidents. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics, of the 123,706 fatal accidents in 2007, 613 (0.5 percent) were due to firearms. The only categories of fewer fatal accidents were bicycles, accidental stabbings, and overexertion. There were 15,698 U.S. emergency department (ED) vis- its due to nonfatal firearm accidents (0.05 percent), roughly the same as for dog bites. Of the total 27.7 million ED visits, shootings resulted in 5,045 hospitalizations (0.4 percent). The current gun ban effort targets semiautomatic rifles. The Left calls them “assault rifles,” a term they invented because


that limiting our ability to defend ourselves simply results in more violent crimes.


of its inflammatory tone. You will not find it in military inven- tory. The president, again using inflammatory rhetoric, terms them “weapons of war.” They are not. Civilian ownership of automatic rifles is illegal. The Left devotes a large effort to vilify these semiautomatic varmint caliber rifles, even though their ban will not substan- tially lower gun violence. A similar ban under President Clin- ton expired under the Bush administration because there was no evidence it affected crime rates. In a Jan. 4, 2013, Department of Justice internal document, Greg Ridgeway, the deputy director of the National Institute for Justice, said, “The current proposals before Congress are unlikely to have an ef- fect on gun violence since assault weapons are not a major contribu- tor to U.S. gun homicide.” According to 2005-11 FBI statis- tics, the number of murders using blunt weapons (clubs, hammers, and the like) exceeds those com- mitted with rifles. In 2011, there were 323 murders with rifles and 496 with blunt weapons. Nearly twice as many murders are com- mitted annually with bare hands. Banning semiautomatic rifles is simply an incremental step taken in the larger goal of banning all firearms.


Another mantra the Left repeats is the federal government is effective in restricting criminals’ access to firearms. In a Feb. 28, 2013, Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham said, “Almost 80,000 people failed background checks, and only 44 people were prosecuted.” Jeffrey Shapiro, a former District of Columbia prosecutor,


wrote in a Jan. 15, 2013, Wall Street Journal article, that after the Washington, D.C., City Council outlawed personal firearms in 1976, “the gun ban had an unintended effect: It embold- ened criminals because they knew that law-abiding district


April 2013 TEXAS MEDICINE 7


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