[Ed: Dr. Faria provided DRGO his response to another case of misinterpreted statistics. This was published as an Opinion Column in  The Telegraph (Macon, Georgia) on October 17, slightly edited here.]  In a recent letter to the editor in The Telegraph, Mr. Colin Frayne began his letter pointing out the need for “factual information” about guns.  He cites the statistic that for 2016, “36,861 total annual deaths [were] from guns, of which 58 deaths were from terrorism.” And compares it to ...

[Ed: Today we are happy to welcome new contributor Christopher Eckert.] Legal gun owners do not want people who should not have a gun to get one. Unfortunately, if one is opposed to liberal "common sense" gun control, you are painted as a gun nut who wants anyone to be able to get a gun so that children will die. (more…)

Firearms are misused a minute fraction of the time; that is vastly exceeded by the good uses they overwhelmingly have, at times uniquely life-saving. Most studies never adequately consider the contribution of increased legal gun access to preventing criminal violence (which is far the greatest cause of shootings). When there is enough ambiguity to claim an anti-gun conclusion, there is also enough evidence to discount it. (more…)

B. L. Brown is a police officer who wrote Rules of Engagement about trying to understand and improve police-citizen interactions. The book has several notable successes and some shortfalls. There are several references to Georgia law, reflecting the author’s base, but she is careful to point out that other states may employ different terms, and in fact may have different legislation. The introduction explains that this will be a conversational text. She then begins with a very useful glos...

I had a chance to offer my Mom a little advice recently.  She was upset with someone.  She told me what had occurred, and asked what I thought she should say. I suggested that rather than simply trying to decide what to say, she needed to first determine what she wanted to accomplish.  Without doing that, there would be no rational basis for assessing possible courses of action and deciding which provided the highest likelihood of accomplishing her goal.  (more…)

I personally am getting heartsick over reading stories like this. "Accidents" such as this one are not really accidents. They are more like negligence. Unintentional negligence to be sure, but negligence nonetheless. But what drives the negligence? Ignorance? Stubbornness? Denial? Surely no one gets out of bed in the morning announcing that they intend to have a mental lapse that day which will lead to the death of someone they love. Yet it still happens. (more…)

As predictable as hurricanes in September, hoplophobic media outlets have jumped on the Las Vegas mass shooting as an excuse to wheel out their favorite gun control nostrums.  For its October 3rd article, “Calls Grow for CDC to Resume Gun Violence Research”, New York City-based MedPage Today interviewed eleven anti-gun rights advocacy researchers and organized medicine spokespersons.  For an appearance of balance, the lead author interviewed one pro-gun rights doctor—me. (more…)

[Ed: Back from Dallas, we’re posting our presentations this week. You can also watch us in living color at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmyEJ7KJMIs] As many of you know, I abhor gun free zones, in general and in hospitals, in particular. Over the past year we have seen more violence against health care workers both in and out of hospitals: Terrorist attack in Kabul (more…)