Prevention’s ‘Doctors Without Politics’ Still Have an Agenda

Doctors pushing gun control as a public health measure is nothing new, and within the medical community there are plenty of professionals who are actively pushing back on that idea, including groups like Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership. 

DRGO doesn’t get nearly as much attention as their pro-gun control counterparts, unfortunately. I don’t think the group has ever been written up in the magazine Prevention, for instance, even though the publication has a big spread this month touting “Doctors Without Politics”. According to the magazine, these doctors are “putting aside red and blue” and are just “teaching families how to protect themselves and others.”

The doctors emphasize that they respect the right to bear arms. 

“We are not anti-gun. We’re anti–bullet hole,” Dr. Dark says. This stance often makes gun owners receptive. “There’s not a gun owner I know of who wants to see people shot,” says Dr. Parsonnet. When Dr. Dark lectures in the community, some people approach him to quarrel about points such as whether gun safes are truly needed, but they agree on things like the benefits of universal background checks.

Do they really? Does Dr. Dark ever discuss how those universal background check laws are enforced (or not)? Does he ever talk about putting people in prison for selling a firearm to a trusted friend or neighbor without first going to an FFL to run a background check? If “some people” really do have a bigger problem with gun safes than universal background checks, my guess is that they don’t really understand the full implications of a universal background check law. 

With gun violence an ongoing public health crisis across the U.S. and the federal government’s recent closing of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention—which had already shown in its two years that homicide numbers were coming down significantly—thousands of medical professionals are stepping up to address the issue. Dr. Sathya became the director of Northwell’s Center for Gun Violence Prevention. Dr. Akbarnia serves on the board of directors for the 27,000-physician-and-medical-student organization Doctors for America (DFA), whose Gun Violence Prevention arm she formerly chaired. Cedric Dark, M.D., M.P.H., an ER doctor at a high-level trauma center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, wrote a book called Under the Gun: An ER Doctor’s Cure for America’s Gun Epidemic. “When you’re putting your hands inside people to bring them back to life from gun violence, it makes you want to do something to stop it,” he says.

These doctors’ goal: reframing gun violence as a health care issue rather than a political one. “We want to normalize conversations about gun safety like we’ve done with car safety and tobacco mitigation,” Dr. Sathya says. Their hope: that taking gun-safety steps will become as automatic for people as buckling their seat belts.

Now, would these doctors claim that they respect smoking tobacco? Of course not. So why do they get to get away with claiming they’re not anti-gun when, in fact, part of the behavior they want to change among gun owners is their gun ownership itself? 

The real issue for most Second Amendment supporters is a government-imposed mandate, whether it’s on storage, background checks, or any other restriction on our right to keep and bear arms. But I also take issue with the idea that these doctors aren’t anti-gun when later in the same article we get this:

What doctors want you to do to stay safe

Lock your guns.

Know that getting a gun for self-defense will not make you safer.

Take advantage of laws that remove guns during crises.

Remember that guns are a major driver of domestic violence deaths and suicide.

I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t exactly sound gun-neutral to me. It sounds like these doctors are actively discouraging people from owning a firearm, but if their patients insist on doing so, they at least want them locked up at all times. 

These doctors know if they just come out and tell patients “don’t own a gun” they’re likely to be ignored. But that really is their preferred outcome, and it’s insulting that they can’t be honest enough to admit it. Again, there are plenty of doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals out there who are advocating for responsible gun ownership without trying to shame or guilt patients into giving up their guns. They just don’t nearly enough attention or support from their colleagues or the medical community in general.