Quack Alert: gun control politics and ideology under color of medical advice

Quack quack! Take gun control snake oil!

Quack Alert Patients: recognize gun control "quackery."*
Physicians and nurses: introduction of gun control politics into the doctor-patient relationship may endanger your professional licenses.
Medical professional organizations: Promotion of gun control legislation, and especially political candidates, may put your 501(c)(3) tax exemption at risk. [DRAFT, 6/14/01, NOT YET READY FOR OFFICIAL RELEASE. INFORMATION MAY BE USED TO DEVELOP LETTERS TO THE EDITOR AND OTHER MEDIA.]

Quack quack! Take Ban the Bomb miracle elixir!

This 2-page leaflet may be copied freely in paper (nonelectronic) form for distribution to patients, medical professionals, and medical organizations. Duplex or 2-sided copies are recommended. It is available online at http://www.stentorian.com/2ndamend/psr/medical.html

*Nothing in this leaflet is to be construed as a statement or implication that anyone is incompetent in the practice of his or her profession. (Gun control politics, nuclear defense policy, and global warming are not elements of the medical and nursing professions, although the Physicians for Social Responsibility apparently consider themselves experts in all three.) Nothing in this leaflet is to be construed as legal advice or a legal definition of any state's professional conduct standards. Consult your state's medical board or professional licensing board, or an attorney, for formal guidance.

Warning: Physicians for Social Responsibility has posted "Counseling Patients on Gun Violence Prevention: A Pocket Guide for Nurses and Physicians" on its Web site.

Doctors and nurses: This publication could be hazardous to your professional license because it advocates what could be construed as professional misconduct. It encourages you to promote gun control as "medical advice." Like anyone else, you are certainly free to promote gun control as a private citizen or join gun control organizations. You might not be free to push gun control under the color of medical advice. DSGL (see below) uses the term "boundary violations."

Excellent links from Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws at http://www.keepandbeararms.com/dsgl/
Boundary violating doctors http://www.keepandbeararms.com/dsgl/BVD.htm What can you do if your doctor acts inappropriately?
"Boundary Violation: Gun politics in the doctor's office"http://www.claremont.org/publications/wheeler7.cfm by Timothy Wheeler, MD

The PSR publication furthermore contains material that is arguably junk science, such as statements to the effect that gun ownership makes you more likely to commit suicide. This is an example of confusing cause and effect. For example, people once noticed that healthy people had lice and sick people didn't. They concluded that having lice promotes good health. What actually happened was that, when a person got sick, fever made his or her skin uncomfortably hot for the lice, and they departed. PSR is touting similar pseudoscience: the desire to commit suicide (cause) might cause someone to buy a gun (effect) but owning a gun does not make you want to commit suicide. The Japanese, who are not allowed to own guns, are quite good at committing suicide. The acceptability of suicide in their culture, not availablity of a convenient method, is a major cause.
The statement, "guns kept in the home are far more likely to result in the death of a family member, friend, or neighbor [than that of an intruder]" is a long-discredited fraudulent and deceptive statement from Handgun Control Incorporated. HCI, in fact, had to "revise" its own figures (i.e. HCI was caught lying once so it had to invent a new lie). The crime statistics upon which this statement rests rely on the definition of "family, friends, and neighbors," or "people you know." If your occupation brings you into frequent contact with drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes, fences, and rival gang members you are quite likely to shoot, or be shot by, someone you know. Very few law-abiding citizens (except police officers, defense attorneys, prison guards, and so on) associate with such individuals. [Page 1 of 2]

Here are some examples of "shooting someone you know"

A drug dealer attacks a police officer who once arrested him, and the cop shoots the dealer in self-defense. He has shot "someone he knows."
A prostitute shoots a pimp who is trying to beat her to death.
A woman shoots her abusive ex-spouse when he breaks into her home, waves a knife, and says, "If I can't have you and the kids no one else will!" (PSR and its friends in HCI and the discredited Million Mom March would apparently rather see her lying dead in a pool of her own blood with multiple stab wounds in her body than alive with a gun in her hand.)
A drug dealer (or loan shark) shoots a customer who can't pay, or vice versa.
Al Capone's hoods gun down Bugs Moran's hoods in a garage.

If you don't associate with people like this you are very unlikely to shoot or be shot by "someone you know."
Patients: your state medical board, department of professional licensing services, or similar organization can tell you whether a licensed medical professional has committed unprofessional conduct by asking intrusive questions about gun ownership in your family, or by couching antigun propaganda as medical advice.
On another note, if an HMO administrator tells your physician how to treat you, that HMO administrator may be practicing medicine without a license. This is also something about which you could inquire to your state medical board.

Warning to medical professional organizations
Lobbying, excessive attempts to influence legislation, and especially electioneering can endanger your 501(c)(3) tax exemption. Your members who favor gun control (and Ban the Bomb, and Stop Global Warming) can do these things on their own time and with their own money.
Don't let radical ideologues hurt your organization's credibility or alienate your members. You may lose a lot of members who don't want to associate their names or dues money with junk science and left-wing political ideology.

Doctors Against Handgun Injury (is there anyone who's for handgun injury, except to violent criminal aggressors?), http://www.doctorsagainsthandguninjury.org/position.html includes advocacy of the Brady Bill, gun purchase restrictions, and other legislative activities. (DAHI says it't for research, but it's written its prescription before completing its diagnosis.) It also advocates conduct similar to that already discussed (introducing gun control into the doctor-patient relationship). DAHI lists the following organizations as members and some are probably 501(c)(3) tax-exempt:

American Academy of Pediatrics http://www.aap.org/
American Association for the Surgery of Trauma http://www.aast.org/
American College of Emergency Physicians http://www.acep.org/
American College of Physicians – American Society of Internal Medicine http://www.acponline.org/
American College of Preventive Medicine http://www.acpm.org/ American College of Surgeons http://www.facs.org/
American Medical Women’s Association http://www.amwa-doc.org/
Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma http://www.east.org/
National Medical Association http://www.nma.org/
Physicians for Social Responsibility (not tax-exempt, they have much more latitude than a 501(c)(3).)
Society of Critical Care Medicine http://www.sccm.org/

Read what the Internal Revenue Service has to say at http://www.irs.gov/plain/bus_info/eo/exempt-req.html "A § 501(c)(3) organization may not engage in carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities." (Limited legislative action may be permitted; see a tax professional or the IRS for official advice. I would personally construe much of the material in the PSR publication as propaganda, not education or scientific fact.) Also, a "§ 501(c)(3) organization may not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office." Misconduct may result in revocation of 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. [Page 2 of 2]