LETTER
Preventing Firearm Violence
William C. Waters IV, MD
15 November 1995 | Volume 123 Issue 10 | Page 813
TO THE EDITOR:
In reviewing the College's position paper on preventing firearm violence [1], we are struck by the fact that although it is written by persons with careers in science, it lacks the attributes of a scientific approach to problem solving. The most basic strategy in science is to collect and analyze all available facts and data. This was simply not done; for every controversial assertion in the position paper, there is an egregious lack of balancing argument.
In their haste to link guns causally to the deaths of young black males, the authors did not mention that the groups in the United States for whom firearms ownership is the highest have the lowest homicide rate [2]. The data showing that firearms, including handguns, can save lives [3], prevent the completion of crime, and limit personal injury [2] were not reviewed. Instead, the authors cite flawed and criticized [4] public health research and an essay written by an employee of Handgun Control, Inc. In depicting firearm owners as unsafe, the position paper omitted the facts that the death rate from firearms-related accidents continues to decrease [5] and that hunting—a sport that requires all participants to be armed—was the safest outdoor participant sport in the last year for which data are available.
We would expect the true scientist, wishing more than anything to know the truth, to be delighted by disparate facts or data; it is the reconciliation of these data that constitutes discovery. Such a scientist should be eager to bring these data out and share them with colleagues, because shared views result in a splendid intellectual quality that we know as insight. Unfortunately, the treatment in the medical literature of the subject of firearms and violence, as typified by the position paper, lacks these qualities; brought to the fore are only those data that support a particular agenda.
The marriage of scholarship and objectivity is that which separates the sciences from less progressive endeavors. When neither is present, we are simply a group with a political opinion.
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Author and Article Information
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Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research; Atlanta, GA 30339
1. American College of Physicians. Preventing firearm violence: a public health imperative. Ann Intern Med. 1995; 122:311-3.
2. Kleck G. Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter; 1993.
3. Kleck G, Gertz M. Armed resistance to crime: the prevalence and nature of self-defense with a gun. Journal of Criminology and Criminal Law. 1995; 86:[In press].
4. Kates DB, Schaffler HE, Lattimer JK, Murray GB, Cassem EH. Guns and public health: epidemic of violence or pandemic of propaganda? University of Tennessee Law Review. Summer 1995.
5. Accident Facts: 1992 edition. Chicago: National Safety Council; 1992.
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