Before COVID, I’d generally listen to medical professionals on most things. I know I’m not an expert on everything, which means there are times when I’m going to rely on experts. Not doing so just made no sense.
Unfortunately, doctors have always been humans, which means they have personal biases and opinions that may color the advice they give. My wife’s late grandfather saw a doctor who was big into homeopathic remedies for stuff. That might be why he’s my wife’s late grandfather, though.
Most doctors are probably pretty good at what they do, though, but I’m really sick of people giving physicians a platform to push gun control.
Allow me to explain as we start looking at a piece out of Tallahassee, Florida, home of Florida State University.
I am ashamed to admit it, but I have grown numb to gun violence.
Working in medicine, the constant exposure to victims can make it difficult to stay connected to the deeper issue: we live in a society that treats the symptoms of shootings but rejects any preventative measures.
When I started my surgical residency with FSU at TMH two years ago, I was shocked by how frequently shootings occurred in our community. But that shock quickly wore off.
The constant stream of gunshot victims made it feel routine and even normal. I stopped recognizing gun violence for what it is: a preventable public health crisis, no different from any other condition we work to mitigate.
This is the first “sin” of the anti-gun physician. This is an attempt to insert expertise in areas where it generally doesn’t apply.
Yes, shootings are often preventable, and the scale of so-called gun violence could arguably be enough for some to consider it a crisis, and as it applies to the health of members of the public, “public health crisis” is a term that may well apply.
But from there, the author goes on to say it’s not any different than any other condition they try to prevent, and that’s not remotely true.
Most other health concerns that are preventable are generally the result of decisions patients make. Obesity is the result of people eating too many calories, often from very calorically-dense foods don’t actually amount to a whole lot of food in volume. Lung cancer is often the result of things like smoking. Type II diabetes is the result of things like obesity, or at least exacerbated by it.
In each of these cases, the patient makes the decisions that lead to the health outcomes in question.
Shootings, excluding suicides, which is a different issue, are a completely different thing. They’re the result of decisions made by third parties. That alone makes them different.
While healthcare professionals have the opportunity to perhaps short-circuit the cycle of violence, it’s not the same as talking to a patient about dieting or getting more exercise.
However, let’s also see where the author is coming from in this piece, since that’s far from the totality of his message.
The recent FSU shooting shook our city. It devastated families and was a public reminder of the harm gun violence brings.
It also forced me to take a hard look at my own detachment. I had been focusing so narrowly on the patient in front of me that I stopped thinking about what led them there in the first place.
As a resident with ties to FSU, I can see that shaking someone a bit. I get that. I understand it.
However, let’s not let the author fool you here. He’s not suddenly anti-gun because of what happened at FSU. Oh no, this comes from well before he started treating patients.
My relationship with guns has always been complicated. I wouldn’t say I hated them, but I held a healthy disdain. I learned how to shoot growing up and even won second place in skeet and first in rifle at Boy Scout camp one summer.
But I never felt at ease with the culture surrounding guns. It always struck me as cavalier and overly casual for something so deadly. The ease with which people handled something so dangerous always left me uneasy, and over time that discomfort pushed me to speak out.
In college, I protested bills that would allow guns on campus. In medical school, I joined rallies honoring victims of gun violence.
To me, firearms were dangerous tools that didn’t belong anywhere near the public unless in the hands of someone fully trained and fully responsible.
First, tell me you’ve never talked to anyone who was part of the gun culture without telling me you’ve never talked to anyone who was part of the gun culture. “Cavalier and overly casual,” he said? Literally none of us are cavalier or overly casual about the guns we own and carry. We accept a deep responsibility that comes with carrying a firearm, of owning one.
There are people who own guns who might be like that, but they’re not people who are actually part of any gun culture. They’re casual owners who specifically aren’t part of it. They’re not part of it often because people like the author try to demonize it as something dark and evil, when if they’d joined that culture, they’d have learned how their actions are irresponsible, dangerous, and likely to get someone hurt.
But beyond that, the author protested campus carry bills? Assuming he went to college in Florida, that means he explicitly campaigned against the bills that might have allowed someone to put down the FSU shooter before so many people could have been hurt. Great job there, Sparky!
Yet beyond that, as the author goes on to talk about what he’s seen in the hospital, I have to talk about the greatest problem of elevating physicians as experts on guns, “gun violence,” or anything associated with it, namely that they see only one side.
When a patient comes into an emergency room, the doctors may or may not know what happened. They just know the patient was shot. Maybe they get some story from the paramedics about what happened, but that’s still only a small sliver of what’s really going on in the world of guns.
The doctors don’t see the 97-year-old woman who is only able to sleep at night because of the revolver in her nightstand. They don’t see the stalking victim who no longer fears for her safety after buying a Glock 19. They don’t see the guy who got shot dead by a father after the dude broke into the daughter’s bedroom in order to sexually assault her. They don’t see the mugger who ran away when his 30-year-old female target produced a firearm.
They don’t see any of that.
What they see is an unfortunate sliver of what all happens on a daily basis with guns.
More than that, how the shooter got a gun is never part of what they see in the ERs and ORs of this country. That comes later, and they’re often pontificating on the dangers of gun rights, all while being clueless about the fact that the shooting victim they treated was shot by an 18-year-old convicted felon with an illegally obtained handgun.
They don’t know nearly as much as many of them believe, but they’re so blinded by their own self-important arrogance that they can’t accept there’s more to the story.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
Help us continue to report on and expose the Democrats’ gun control policies and schemes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership.
Read the full article here
