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Dr. Richard F. Corlin hails from Santa Monica, where politics lean left and gun owners are cordially hated. As a top official of the gun-loathing California Medical Association in the 1980s and '90s, Corlin oversaw that organization's first big push for gun control. Now as the new president of the American Medical Association (AMA), the good doctor is going nationwide with his crusade.
In his inaugural speech on June 20, Corlin called on Congress to restore funding for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to create a massive tracking system for firearm injuries. Such a system, long favored by gun control activists, would generate mountains of data on the types of guns used in "gun violence" (gun control code for gun crime). The research data, AMA officials insist, would be useful in crafting interventions (more gun control laws) to stop such violence.
But recent history shows that these projects are likely to be abused by the gun-control activists who promote them. For example, in 1996 Congress caught the CDC using tax money to wage a political war against gun owners. Congress had to cut off the CDC's funding to stop the flow of anti-gun rights advocacy research churned out by that agency.
It's no accident that CDC officials had been fond of just the kind of tracking system the AMA now touts. Factoids and misrepresented data from CDC-bankrolled research fill the pro-gun-control literature of the AMA and other medical organizations. This literature is designed to tar responsible gun owners with the stigma of the few gun-wielding criminals.
Such arcane details as what type of gun the criminal used, the relationship of perpetrator to victim, and how the gun was bought have always been the province of criminology research. In fact, many government and private organizations already gather voluminous data — the FBI, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the National Safety Council, and various universities.
So why, puzzled readers might ask, is the AMA asking to pile on even more research now? After all, fatal gun accidents have been on the wane for 70 years and gun homicides are at their lowest in 35 years. Do we really need more gun control laws? Why are doctors interested in doing crime research?
It all begins to make sense when we look at the long history of the AMA's gun-control activism. Years ago, the AMA adopted a policy calling for bans on so-called assault weapons — guns with scary-looking plastic parts or with a military look — even though they are functionally identical to more conventional firearms. The AMA joined the Chicago-based Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan Network, a doctor's gun-control organization that excludes from its meetings any doctors who don't agree with its radical gun-ban agenda.
Corlin, as did the CDC before him, nurtures the myth that our scientific knowledge of gun crimes is limited. He ignores 25 years of accumulated criminology research that describes in great detail the demographics of gun crime. He pretends it doesn't exist because most of that research does not support his agenda.
Corlin, as did CDC-funded activists before him, trashes the Second Amendment and shows contempt for what he calls the "gun lobby."
The AMA's gun-control wish list goes far beyond a simple desire to gather facts about gun crimes. The association urges doctors to interrogate their patients about guns in their homes and to advise patients to get rid of their guns. By telling doctors to carry its political anti-gun message into the doctor's exam room, the AMA is promoting unethical physician conduct.
More evidence of the AMA's mendacity is its 1998 "Physician Firearm Safety Guide." Read past the title page and you will find a sermon against self-protection and a page of handy advice on how to dispose of your guns.
One doctor appointment at a time, the AMA wants to reshape the American mind so we will view guns as "a virus that must be eradicated," to quote one of the booklet's contributors.
Congress cut off funding of the CDC's gun research not because the "gun lobby" wants crime to flourish, as Corlin unctuously implies. That decision followed from the House Appropriations Committee's opinion that it is "not…the role of the CDC to advocate or promote policies to advance gun-control initiatives, or to discourage responsible private gun ownership."
Dr. Corlin insists his plan to revive the CDC's gun research is not about gun control. But the AMA's long record of gun control advocacy proves that he suffers from an acute deficiency of honesty.
