If physicians are to establish any credibility on “gun issues,” as it appears CMAJ's editors would like to do,1 we'd better bring some facts and objectivity to the table. Otherwise we're toying with patients' lives just to flatter our own egos and to further political agendas that may be dangerously counterproductive.
Terrorism has replaced childhood accidents and criminal homicide as the newest justification for gun control laws, yet even combining these causes of death with suicide, the tally is dwarfed by the number of innocent lives lost to genocide, the murder of individuals by their own police and military forces.
Genocide kills 5 to 10 times more innocents than the criminal use of firearms,2 and genocides have always been preceded by the seemingly innocuous step of gun registration.3 Against all the carnage caused by genocide, no offsetting beneficial effect of gun control laws has been documented. In fact, Lott4 has pointed out some compelling evidence that gun control laws may actually increase domestic crime rates, and others support that conclusion.5
Andrew Johnstone Physician Indianapolis, Ind.
References
- 1.Reasonable control: gun registration in Canada [editorial]. CMAJ 2003;168(4):389. [PMC free article] [PubMed]
- 2.Rummel RJ. Freedom, democracy, peace; power, democide, and war [personal Web site]. Available: www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/welcome.html (accessed 2003 Apr 15).
- 3.Simkin J, Zelman AS, Rice AM. Lethal laws: “gun control” is the key to genocide. Hartford (WI): Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership; 1994.
- 4.Lott J Jr. More guns, less crime. Understanding crime and gun control laws. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 2000.
- 5.Kopel DB. Peril or protection? The risks and benefits of handgun prohibition. Saint Louis Univ Public Law Rev 1993;12:285. Available: www.constitution.org/2ll/2ndschol/63perilo.htm (accessed 2003 Apr 15).