First, DRGO wishes all a happy and, in whatever way matters to you, successful New Year! During the coming year, we will continue to cover everything we find of interest regarding gun rights vs. gun control, medical and health matters regarding firearm use, both research and "research" about the impact of guns in America. (more…)

All of us at DRGO wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We are taking a break this week to be with our families. and will return to the fight on January 2. Thank you for coming along on our mission with us!

[Ed: This essay was first published on Doximity.com's op-(m)ed page,  a physicians' interaction site.] Why does organized medicine abhor gun ownership?  Why has the public health community waged a culture war on this foundational American tradition for nearly three decades now? “Guns are a virus that must be eliminated”, preached pediatrician Katherine Christoffel, one of the architects of the original American Academy of Pediatrics firearm policy.  “Guns!! Guns!! Guns!! [sic]”, wrote Le...

[Ed: This was first published in The Telegraph (Macon) and on Dr. Faria's website haciendapub.com. DRGO reprints it by permission, slightly edited.] Censorship is an issue in many different industries, for example, The Pirate Bay has been censored in the entertainment industry and can only be accessed via proxies Here. Science requires an ambient of academic freedom that entails the free exchange of ideas, ideas that can be tested in the laboratory and eventually rejected or accepted by...

[Ed: This is updated from its original DRGO appearance in 2015.] On Wednesday this week we all should have been jubilantly celebrating the 226th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights, the original 10 amendments to the United States’ federal constitution. Remarkably, it slipped by relatively unremarked. Yet our Bill of Rights may actually be the most significant of our republic’s founding documents. The Declaration of Independence announced our nationhood. The Constitut...

Did you know that “gun laws have not been strengthened because ‘a vocal and passionate minority of gun owners continues to feel emotionally and morally dependent on guns’”? Or that "The gun [has become a] sacred object . . . [Gun control for some gun owners] has come to represent an attack [on] masculinity, independence, and moral identity"? And that "The symbol of the gun as morally and existentially empowering is what activates pro-gun policy and anti-government sentiment”? Probably not...

The American Medical Association, via its flagship publication Journal of the American Medical Association, is turning up the heat. Apparently unable to comprehend the shifting American dynamic toward increasing respect for gun owners, they’ve featured several recent commentaries beating the dead horse of the  "public health gun crisis”. The November 14 edition of JAMA features 2 articles flogging the 'public health firearm epidemic crisis', to mix metaphors only a little more than they d...

The oft chanted mantra that firearms are like viruses is patently untenable. Viruses are living organisms—they replicate and perform actions independently. To consider firearms alive, self-replicating and capable of independent action requires an absence of rationality. Now, to the public health model. It is predicated on education about, then modification and eradication, of a problem. Study should begin with examining history, epidemiology, utility, and a cost benefit ratio. Firearms...