Katie Pavlich hosts a 45 minute documentary, “Safe Haven: Gun Free Zones in America”, which explores the failure of gun free zones. The mass murder at the Sandy Hook School in Newtown, CT is analyzed by Edward Monk and J. Eric Dietz, PhD as representing a problem of response time. These events continue until someone acts to stop the killing. They point out that mass murderers seek out gun free zones in preference to places where people might be armed. The shooters are looking for the highest sco...

Much ink has been spilled exploring the psychology of humor and of comedians in particular. One theme recurs—successful comedy springs from a dark repository of fears and prejudice. Just as well recognized is the long-honored role of comedy in political affairs, i.e. satire. I was recently invited to appear as a guest (a victim, really) on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, just before Stewart announced his retirement from the show. The topic of the day was to be Florida’s Docs...

A little over a week ago we blogged about the history of how right to carry laws were adopted in a stepwise fashion across the nation. Then just last week Kansas became the sixth state to take the next and final step toward affirming the Second Amendment’s true spirit—codifying the right to carry a concealed firearm for self-protection without first having to ask permission from the government. The first wave of right to carry legislation ended just two years ago, when Illinois won the dubio...

That is, "Should kids play with toy guns?" This topic sometimes arises as a professional question and almost always in raising children (especially boys). It's a widespread conundrum in the United States, where we not only have readier access to real guns than elsewhere but also spend a lot of energy critiquing our motivations and decisions. A thoughtful article with that title by Rachel Grumman Bender was posted April 4 at Yahoo! Parenting. She poses a number of good questions, about the...

One enduring propaganda technique of the gun prohibition lobby has been to use images of guns, or any mention of guns, only in negative contexts. Are homicides up? It’s because of guns. School shootings? Those evil guns again. And most mainstream media outlets are only too happy to assist their ideological soulmates by making the theme of the “evil” gun the focal point of any story remotely connected to guns. Any mention of guns in a beneficial context for children—NRA youth shooting prog...

The discussion continues within health care and the law about what to do in cases of suspected dangerousness in possibly mentally ill people. Balancing individual civil rights to liberty (including gun possession) with trying to ensure public safety will always be imprecise. A review on March 25 in Psychiatric Times by Jonathan Metzl, MD, PhD, “Gun Violence, Stigma, and Mental Illness: Clinical Implications” fairly describes current thinking on the subject in my medical specialty of psychiat...

The American system of government has been compared to a policy laboratory. In this view the state governments, within the framework of the federal government, can put to practical test different ways of solving problems faced by all Americans. In this laboratory, best policies will prove themselves over time. One such problem has been decisively solved in the last three decades—whether the right to discreetly carry firearms for self defense is a public benefit or not. Today, in 2015, the...

DRGO’s position regarding doctors expounding on guns as a public health problem is simple—they shouldn’t. Nowhere in medical school, residency, or continuing medical education are the subjects of firearm mechanics, safety, or tactics discussed. Obviously this doesn’t stop some doctors from believing they are expert enough on the subject to counsel their patients about firearms in their homes. Such “counseling” generally consists of the doctor parroting the anti-gun rights propaganda of th...