Watching “GunLobbyWatch” Watching Us

Even more exciting, GLW apparently categorizes DRGO alongside their rogues’ gallery that includes Alan Gottlieb (SAF), Wayne LaPierre (National Rifle Association), Larry Pratt (Gun Owners of America) and, probably most dangerous, Annette Wachter, the “.30 Cal Gal”. Perhaps we’ll get our own “Dossier” in that section of its website someday.

More interesting, and worth more attention, is GLW’s contention that “none of them are the kind of doctors who really have a clue about gun violence… no trauma surgeons, no ER doctors, no public health experts.” They must know, right?

Maybe they should have asked.

The greatest spite seems directed at “Timothy Wheeler, current Director of DRGO, [who GLW accuses of being] at least partially responsible for the current ban on the CDC researching gun violence.” Dr. Wheeler is an ear, nose and throat surgeon who is also proficient in marksmanship and tactical shooting. He saw the fallacies of gun control as a supposed public health intervention in the early 1990s. He was in fact partly responsible for Congress stopping the explicit gun ban agenda (not its research funding) of the Centers for Disease Control, for which we are grateful.

He first confronted the California Medical Association and then testified before Congress with other experts from medicine, sociology, economics and criminology. They exposed the anti-gun agenda of the CDC and other public health leaders, who were saying things like “guns are a virus that must be eradicated”, “data on [assault weapons’] risks are not needed, because they have no redeeming social value”, and “I hate guns and I cannot imagine why anyone would want to own one”.

Need further evidence? The CDC Division of Injury Control head in 1989 announced “We’re going to systematically build a case that owning firearms causes deaths.” His successor said that firearms should be seen as “dirty, deadly—and banned.” The CDC also underwrote an Injury Prevention Newsletter in 1995 that encouraged readers to “organize a picket at gun manufacturing sites” and to “work for campaign finance reform to weaken the gun lobby’s political clout.”

Besides Dr. Wheeler, we are fortunate to have many other dedicated truth-tellers on our team. GLW seems quite disappointed in John Edeen, MD, who does spend “a significant portion of his time lobbying hospitals to allow certain staff members to carry guns while working.” They aren’t sure why that “would be even a sort of a good idea”.

Evidently they haven’t been listening to him, and have missed other stories like this and this. Dr. Edeen specializes in pediatric orthopedic surgery, which includes patching up the youngest and most innocent victims of “gun violence” or, should we say, hand to child violence, hands that sometimes hold guns. The imperative to protect one’s family and, in the physician’s case, one’s patients is a powerful driver of Dr. Edeen’s good work (and for all of us).

Sean Brodale, DO is a family practitioner, who GLW may not realize spends many weekends as his community’s ER physician. He doesn’t just treat colds and upset stomachs. He sees and treats the effects of trauma, dead or, as best he can ensure, alive. That is why he and we are committed to the fight for responsible firearm use and against the fantasies of gun prohibitionists who would make us defenseless.

Arthur Przebinda, MD is an imaging specialist with intimate knowledge of the damage that occurs to the human body from gunshots. He trains at Front Sight Firearms Training Institute in firearms safety and defensive tactics. He advocates for the Second Amendment in his state and nationally because of his commitment to diminishing unwarranted gunshot deaths and injuries. He (and DRGO) know that the fundamental right to keep and bear arms is not subject to compromise, but must be carried out responsibly.

John Wipfler, III, MD wrote the book on Keeping Your Family Safe: The Responsibilities of Gun Ownership with Dr. Wheeler. He is a board-certified emergency physician with a long list of publications and books in that field, as well as a highly trained tactical firearms expert and an auxiliary deputy in his county sheriff’s department. But we forget; we are just “radical extremists” who are not really “expert in the fields [we] claim to be experts in (but aren’t actually experts in)”. Sorry.

Miguel A. Faria, MD contributes to DRGO. He is a highly regarded neurosurgeon, the former editor of the Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia and an editor of Surgical Neurology International. He has written extensively—over 200 medical and scientific articles and 4 books, and has co-authored or contributed to a number of other texts. He served on a research grant committee of the CDC in the early 2000s.

Robert Margulies, MD, MPH is on board, too. He has been lauded by the American College of Emergency Physicians for years of leadership. He is a retired Navy Captain with special operations training and combat experience, and a highly skilled civilian firearms instructor. For reasons both unfortunate and moving, he is an expert on blunt force head and body trauma and on gunshot injuries.

Michael Brown, OD has worked for firearms civil rights since the 1990s, in Washington state and nationally. He has competed in IPSC, graduated from the Lethal Force Institute, achieved Handgun Master at The Firearms Academy of Seattle, and was certified as an NRA pistol instructor.

Andrew Crisologo, DPM pursues firearms training along with his medical education. Treating gunshot wounds during residency has made advocacy for the Second Amendment all the more important to him, especially with younger Americans.

Me, I’m a psychiatrist. My first medical role was as an emergency responder on an ambulance service along with hospital duties. That inspired a lifelong commitment to saving lives rather than watch them too often helplessly extinguished.

Practicing psychiatry also fulfills a deep interest in human motivation, judgment, and emotional and cognitive capacity. These underpinnings of behavior bear strongly on the ability to handle firearms wisely. They also help to comprehend the pressures that lead academics to self-reinforcing career paths, publications and group-think, and to defend their theses no matter what, once they’re established.

There are more of us, too, all well-educated from college to professional school through post-graduate training to evaluate the validity and objectivity of scientific, medical and health-related research. That is a critical and constantly used skill for all physicians in deciding what can benefit our patients.

It’s not hard to distinguish quality research from twaddle. There is much more of the latter than the former in the anti-gun “public health” literature as far as we see, along with others who have eyes.

Oh—back to Gun Lobby Watch. Its domain was only registered in March 2015. According to WhoIs, the registrar chose to remain anonymous via WhoIs Guard, which has a Panamanian address. But it appears to be hosted in Kirkland, Washington, which makes some sense as it seems more focused on the gun rights battles in that state, or it could be an issue with the domain registrar service, although it’s more likely to be the former.

We have to wonder who GLW is, who funds it and why. There is no smoking gun here, but GLW may be associated with Right Wing Watch (motto: “working hard every day to expose the Far-Right’s extreme and intolerant agenda”). RWW is “a project of People For the American Way“, that paragon of partisan neutrality.

For the record, DRGO is inclusive and non-partisan. We want you to know who we are, where we stand and why, despite the slings and arrows of outrageous critics. We don’t cover our tracks with anything but reason. This matters when others can have concealed agendas or act as mouthpieces for special interests.

We know there are no such things as “the gun lobby”, civilian “assault rifles”, or many truly “common-sense gun laws” (except perhaps as Virginia is currently working out). But there certainly is an anti-civil rights, anti-Second Amendment, anti-gun lobby.

We know that defending our natural rights and upholding our constitutional rights are vital for the protection of America and Americans. We are part of the Anti-Gun Lobby Watch.

 

— DRGO editor Robert B. Young, MD is a psychiatrist practicing in Pittsford, NY, an associate clinical professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

All DRGO articles by Robert B. Young, MD.