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Some months back, four-year old Bryson Mees-Hernandez (that’s him, to the left) found a gun in his grandmother’s house in Houston and shot and killed himself. Bryson acted like a typical youngster. He found something new and interesting and played with it. What his grandmother did—allow a firearm to lay unlocked out in the open—was inexcusable, but her behavior is excused in that we don’t mandate gun safety.
Bryson’s story ...
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Hillary Clinton made clear in the first Democratic Party presidential debate that she’s ready to take on the NRA. “This has gone on too long, and it’s time the entire country stood up against the NRA,” she declared. If you believe the level of gun violence in America is unacceptable, this was music to your ears. Clinton is leading the charge against the NRA, and that’s a good thing, right?
Maybe not. Clinton erred by attacking the NRA when she should have ...
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Last month I wrote about kids being killed by guns. To give the issue a little more meaning, let’s look at three cases that were covered by the Columbus Dispatch and the Cincinnati Enquirer in the last three months.
June 5: a 14-year old boy in Hamilton, Ohio, died from a gunshot to the head. He and a 16-year old, who was holding the gun when it discharged, had been playing with the gun.
May 2: a 2-year old boy in ...
Continue Reading →Can a municipality ban assault rifles and high capacity magazines without running afoul of the Second Amendment? The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia says yes. What about registration requirements for hand guns and rifles and a mandatory safety course? Are they constitutional? The U.S. District Court (a trial court) for the District of Columbia says they are, but the issue is on appeal. How about trigger locks and bans on hollow point ammunition? The Court of Appeals ...
Continue Reading →Let’s have a quiz. Who is the U.S. Surgeon General? (a) Vivek Murthy, (b) Boris D. Lushniak, (c) Everett Koop, or (d) none of these people.
The answer is (d), though you should feel good if you selected Boris D. Lushniak, who is the “acting” Surgeon General. Vivek Murthy should be the Surgeon General, but the Senate won’t confirm his appointment. .
Who’s Murthy? The Boston Globe has high praise for him. He graduated from Harvard College, magna cum laude in 1997 with a degree ...
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Ever wonder why we study highway collisions, smoking and HIV/AIDS for the purpose of reducing risk but don’t do the same for gun-related fatalities? It’s because the National Rifle Association purposefully works to suppress such research. The NRA will likely lobby against the $10 million proposed by President Barack Obama in his 2014 budget to study gun violence prevention.
The NRA’s battle against research began when the New England Journal of Medicine published a study in 1993 about guns in the ...
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What do the Great Oz and the National Rifle Association have in common? Both make a lot of noise and try to intimidate anybody who questions them, but unlike the Great Oz, the NRA has real power.
State Rep. Terry Johnson, R-McDermott, articulated the NRA’s position in June 2012: “Our Second Amendment rights have been infringed countless times in the past. If we let someone come and take one right away from us … we diminish what it means ...
Continue Reading →Are gun advocates right when they say they have a constitutional right to carry assault weapons such as the AR-15 and large capacity clips? Recent court decisions suggest not.
Until the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed in 2008 a handgun ban in District of Columbia v. Heller, it was unclear whether the Second Amendment was a collective or personal right.
The court’s holding that the amendment conveys a personal right to own handguns was significant, but so too was how Justice Antonin Scalia ...
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On July 30, state Sen. Kris Jordan, R-Dist. 19, introduced Sen. Bill 165, which would prohibit physicians from asking patients questions about whether there are guns in their home. What do guns have to do with a person’s health, and why should physicians care whether their patients have guns?
Pediatricians ask these questions because guns are a leading killer of children. The Children’s Defense Fund reported that in 2008 and 2009, 5740 children and teens, including 299 children under age 10, ...
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