Doctors for America is a liberal advocacy group that was formed in 2008 to help promote the Affordable Care Act and now continues to push for all kinds of goody-goody medical things. One of their goody-goody’s is reducing gun violence for which they have produced a video which depicts a physician talking to a gun owner about how he stores his guns.

              The gun owner is a young married guy with a daughter in the home. The physician asks him where he stores the guns when he’s not hunting, and he claims he puts them on a high shelf which is out of his daughter’s reach. The doctor tells him that what he should really do is lock the guns up because they otherwise there’s a risk of suicide or accidental injury. The guy playing the role of the patient agrees.

              There is not one, single study ever produced which shows any direct connection between safely storing guns and eliminating or even reducing gun violence – not one. The idea that safe storage represents an effective response to gun injuries is an assumption promoted by physicians and medical advocacy groups who actually believe that they can gain the confidence of gun owners by pretending that it’s okay to own a gun.

              It’s not okay. The research by Art Kellerman, Fred Rivara and their colleagues published more than a quarter-century ago clearly proves that access to a gun in the home represents a medical risk, and this research did not qualify those guns in terms of whether they were stored safely or not.

              The Hippocratic Oath requires physicians to identify and then work to reduce medical risks. Simply put: Medical groups which promote the safe storage nonsense are violating the Hippocratic Oath. They get away with this crap because their members and their audiences know as much about guns as they know about guns – zilch.

              Want to see another example of how the medical community is completely and totally divorced from reality when it comes to talking about guns? There’s an organization called UpToDate that publishes an online reference database which physicians can use to read the latest studies on any medical problem, as well as print out simple summaries and advice for patients to read. The website is probably accessed by just ab out every primary-care doctor in the United States.

              Here is how UpToDate describes what it does: “a global community consisting of thousands of physician authors and editors who share a singular passion: writing and editing evidence-based information that helps clinicians everywhere practice the best medicine.”

              So now let’s look at the section on gun violence and, in particular, the handout that physicians can print and give to patients regarding the risk of their guns: Patient education: Gun safety for families (The Basics) – UpToDate. Scroll halfway down the page and you’ll see what UpToDate believes a parent should tell a child in order to teach the kid about gun safety: Do not touch the gun. Move away from the gun. Tell an adult. 

              Now take a look at what the National Rifle Association says is the proper way to teach your child gun safety. You can see it right here: Eddie Eagle | NRA Explore.  Scroll down slightly and guess what you’ll see? You’ll see the exact, same safety message for kids that you’ll see on the UpToDate page.  The NRA has been pushing this nonsense for years but now they have an ally in the medical community to help spread their message around.

              How can any doctor utilize any messaging about guns which was developed by the same organization which got a law passed in Florida that would have criminalized any physician who counseled patients about gun risk? Groups like Doctors for America should be ashamed of themselves for even thinking that there’s some kind of common ground which they can occupy with gun owners to reduce gun risk without getting rid of the guns.

              If any physician would like to explain to me how promoting ‘safe storage’ of guns isn’t a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, I’m all ears.