In his reply to my article, Dr. Miguel Faria, a very fine neurosurgeon and writer, states that it is unethical for physicians “to intrusively ask patients about the presence of guns in the home” and that by so doing, physicians become “snitches” against their own patients.

I agree that if the purpose of asking about guns is solely to report the possession of guns, and that if the physician asks “intrusively” and reports without the patient’s permission and in the absence of an imminent threat, it would be wrong.

David Oedel is incorrect in his assertion (“A right to armed revolt?”, 1/27) that Justice Scalia’s opinion in D.C. vs. Heller limits the right to keep and bear arms to weapons “in common use at the time” the Second Amendment was ratified. In fact, in his decision Justice Scalia  characterizes such arguments as “bordering on the frivolous.”

Pediatrician asks 13-year-old girl whether her parents smoke or own a gun, how much alcohol they drink, whether they use drugs, and how her parents “get along.” Neither parent was present during the questioning, as would be required if the girl were accused of a crime.
− News Item

Abstract — Gun violence and, most recently, senseless shooting rampages continue to be sensitive and emotional points of debate in the American media and the political establishment. The United Nations is already set to commence discussing and approving its Small Arms Treaty in March 2013. And following the Newtown, Connecticut tragedy in the United States this past December, American legislators are working frantically to pass more stringent gun control laws in the U.S. Congress.

The latest shooting rampage of 26 people, including six adults and 20 children in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012, is a senseless tragedy, and words cannot convey the horror and the magnitude of the loss of innocent life. The second deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history was carried out by 20-year-old Adam Lanza (photo, left), a loner with a personality disorder — and in critical need of psychiatric evaluation and treatment.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then.

— Thomas Jefferson

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.

— Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles
of the Federal Constitution, 1787

DATELINE: Warsaw, Poland, 1943

In the wake of President Barack Obama's re-election on November 6, 2012, and the virtual demoralization of Republicans, it is important to recognize that the political mastery of the left does not last forever. Moreover, three new conservative, pro-Second Amendment senators and several freshmen representatives were elected. A solid Republican majority was preserved in the House of Representatives. So, the election did not mean complete defeat for the GOP.

Miguel Faria, MD, a neurosurgeon and Emeritus Editor of The Journal of The American Physicians and Surgeons, formerly the Medical Sentinel, and Associate Editor-in-Chief of Surgical Neurology International and its World Affairs Section, has written a two‑part Editorial on “America, Guns, and Freedom.” These essays address a very important topic to physicians everywhere, relate to the often, distorted media reports advocating the disarming of citizens, and the costs of health care of guns in the hands of citizens.

The role of gun violence and street crime in the United States and the world is currently a subject of great debate among national and international organizations, including the United Nations. Because the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the individual right of American citizens to own private firearms, availability of firearms is greater in the U.S. than the rest of the world, except perhaps in Israel and Switzerland.

Nominated by President Barack Obama (after Justice John Paul Stevens retired in April 2010), Elena Kagan has been the first U.S. Supreme Court Justice appointed without prior experience as a judge since the appointment of William Rehnquist in 1972. It now seems to me that her nomination by President Obama was payback for the fact that Kagan had legally represented him in stalling all court challenges attempting to ascertain Obama's citizenship.(1)  But what about her standing on the Second Amendment?

Abstract — The AMA Council on Scientific Affairs did not conduct a rigorous scientific evaluation before supporting a ban on assault weapons.  The Council appears to have unquestioningly accepted common misperceptions and even partisan misrepresentations regarding the nature and uses of assault weapons.  This article examines the pivotal issues and proposes a rational approach to gun control and more effectual measures to reduce violence in our society.

To read entire article, click the link below:

"Violence in America — Effective Soutions" by Suter EA, Waters WC, Murray GB, et al. was originally published in the Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia, Volume 85, June 1995, pp 253-263 while Dr. Miguel A. Faria served as Editor-in-Chief of that medical journal. The following link is provided for readers who wish to read the entire article: http://rkba.org/research/suter/violence.html.

Abstract — Errors of fact, design, and interpretation abound in the medical literature on guns and violence. The peer review process has failed to prevent publication of the errors of politicized, results-oriented research. Most of the data on guns and violence are available in the criminological, legal, and social sciences literature, yet escapes acknowledgment or analysis of the medical literature.

Dear Editor,

I was appalled at the naïveté and ignorance expressed by several commentators on the topic of firearms and the Second Amendment in the October 1996 AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) News.

Dear Physicians,
For years, organized medicine has been misusing its authority to turn the public against firearms owners. Prestigious medical journals have abandoned their usually strict peer review standards to publish junk science articles written by anti-gun activists with medical degrees. Their purpose? As one pediatrician put it, to convince Americans that 64 guns are a virus to be eradicated."

In public pronouncements, Attorney General Janet Reno's Justice Department and other administration officials have implied erroneously that the Second Amendment refers to a collective right rather than an individual right.

In view of the devastating aerial terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by Islamic fanatic followers of Osama bin Laden on September 11, 2001, we have put together a special issue of the Medical Sentinel on the threat of bioterrorism in our own backyard. I am referring to communist Cuba under tyrant Fidel Castro only ninety miles from our shores.

Dear Dr. Faria,

"There is a worrying trend in academic medicine which equates
statistics with science, and sophistication in quantitative procedure
with research excellence.
The corollary of this trend is a tendency to look for answers
to medical problems from people with expertise in mathematical manipulation
and information technology, rather than from people
with an understanding of disease and its causes.

It is becoming abundantly clear that the mainstream liberal media and the entrenched political medical establishment support draconian gun control measures that would ultimately lead to the confiscation and banning of firearms.

A prominent member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons has refuted key details of a study published recently by the Violence Policy Center, in which researchers concluded that women were not safer if they used a handgun for self-defense.

Writer's note: Difficult as it is to be critical of a friend and ally on the war on terror, Great Britain has instituted a cruel and unjust gun-control policy, a worsening evil, upon her law-abiding citizens that needs correcting. The title of this essay comes from the seemingly paradoxical unrelenting tide of thievery and burglaries that has swept Great Britain, and was so dubbed by the London Sunday Times in 1998.

Ken Jones’ “Tunes for Gun Buyback” offer may be noble but there may be more “feel good” and publicity intentions than meets the eye. And Rick Hutto, as a public servant, you should at least know better. This is a “feel good” proposal intended to be more beneficent to the giver (Jones) than the recipients (i.e., gun donors and sundry criminals and street gang members).

For starters, here are three detrimental consequences of this proposal:

If the intent is to prevent mass shootings and other deadly acts, then gun control laws need to be eased not strengthened.

During the early 1970s, the PLO waged a nefarious war of terrorism against Israel that included attacking schoolchildren on playgrounds. A rampage of terrorist attacks culminated in the Maalot massacre, in which Arab terrorists, who had taken about 100 schoolchildren hostage, responded to an assault by Israeli rescue forces by blowing up explosives and firing upon their hapless victims, killing 25 people and wounding 66 others.

A major engagement in the war over the right to keep and bear arms was fought in the House of Representatives this past July. The House voted to shift $2.6 million away from the National Centers for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) - a research unit of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) - and earmark the funds for other health research projects. The funding was equivalent to the amount spent by the NCIPC in its campaign to redefine guns as "first and foremost, a public health menace."

Great Britain, which gave birth to the great political philosophy of classic liberalism and to America, the flowering of Western civilization, is in moral decline.

Not content with holding General Agusto Pinochet hostage, Britain now holds her own citizens hostage like an authoritarian nation that distrusts its own citizens with firearms.

Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Russell Feingold (D-WI) and the media have promoted their campaign finance "reform" bill (McCain-Feingold [S. 27] and Shays-Meehan [H.R. 2356]) as the solution to a "broken system" riddled with "too much money in politics." They also say that big, powerful, moneyed interests have a pervasive, vested interest in government that is detrimental to the public good.

You may not agree with every expression or thought written by Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist and syndicated journalist Vin Suprynowicz, but if you are a libertarian or a true conservative (and/or constitutionalist), you will cheer and applaud his astonishing, eye-opening new book, "The Ballad of Carl Drega: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1994 to 2001."

But I warn you, if you are a bed-wetting, bleeding-heart liberal with a penchant for statism, socialism, collectivism, authoritarianism, welfarism or any of the associated modern "isms" --- beware!

In a new book, Gun Violence: The Real Costs (Oxford University Press, 2000), to be released next month, economists Philip J. Cook of Duke University and Jens Ludwig of Georgetown University have upgraded the health costs of gun violence from the previously erroneous figure of $20 billion to $100 billion.