Physicians Should Play a New Role in Reducing Gun Violence

Julie Rosenbaum Matthew Ellman By MATTHEW S. ELLMAN, MD and JULIE R. ROSENBAUM, MD What if firearm deaths could be reduced by visits to the doctor? More than 35,000 Americans are killed annually by gunfire, about 60% of which are from suicide. The remaining deaths are mostly from accidental injury or homicide. Mass shootings represent only a tiny fraction of that number.  There’s a lot physicians can do to reduce these numbers. Typically, medical organizations such as the AMA recommend counseling patients on firearm safety.  But there is another way to use medical expertise to help reduce harm from firearms: physicians should evaluate patients interested in purchasing firearms. The idea would be to reduce the number of guns that get into the hands of people who might be a danger to themselves or others due to medical or psychiatric conditions.   This proposal has precedents: physicians currently perform comparable standardized evaluations for licensing when personal or public safety may be at risk, for example, for commercial truck drivers, airplane pilots, and adults planning to adopt a child.  Similar to these models, a subset of physicians would be certified to conduct standardized evaluations as a prerequisite for gun ownership.  As a primary care physicians with decades of practice experience, we have seen the ravages of gun violence in our patients too many times. A 50-year-old man shot in the spinal cord 30 years ago who i...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Medical Practice Physicians Gun Control gun violence Julie Rosenbaum Matthew Ellman Source Type: blogs