"Gun ownership . . . an infectious disease"

[Marnoot]

Article by AP is up on numerous sites:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/08/11/doctors-target-gun-violence-as-social-disease/

Features public health "professionals" saying things like:

Gun ownership — a precursor to gun violence — can spread "much like an infectious disease circulates," said Daniel Webster, a health policy expert and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Baltimore. "There's sort of a contagion phenomenon" after a shooting, where people feel they need to have a gun for protection or retaliation, he said.

I've thought for awhile that "public health" was going to be the next attack vector on gun ownership.

[MillCreek]

Speaking as someone who works in healthcare, it has been for quite a while.

[MechAg94]

I notice that "retaliation" was mentioned.  Other than terrorist attacks, when has this come up?  I think it is one of those things you notice sometimes that gun-haters seem to have a lot of violence in their own mind assume all gun owners are just as violent or more.

[longeyes]

Not just gun ownership, self-defense itself.

[Tallpine]

I notice that "retaliation" was mentioned.  Other than terrorist attacks, when has this come up?  I think it is one of those things you notice sometimes that gun-haters seem to have a lot of violence in their own mind assume all gun owners are just as violent or more.

And yet people take off all their clothes, lie down on a table, and let these gun-haters come after them with a knife 

[lee n. field]

And yet people take off all their clothes, lie down on a table, and let these gun-haters come after them with a knife 

Drugs are wonderful things.

[MillCreek]

http://www.king5.com/news/Doctors-target-gun-violence-as-a-social-disease-165866826.html

A good article describing the approach.  The former King County Medical Examiner, Dr. Donald Reay, was very big on this.  Interestingly enough, Dr. Reay also was instrumental in establishing how police choke holds killed people, leading to most police departments abandoning the practice.

[Marnoot]

That's the same article.

[MillCreek]

That's the same article.

Oops.  Clearly gun ownership has infected me and my brain is starting to melt.  If only the public health system had been able to step in in time!

[Perd Hapley]

Gun fever infectious? I certainly hope so.


I love the "precursor to gun violence" part. Poor old James Holmes. He had no idea when he bought those guns that they would influence him to be a full-contact film critic. And look what those planes made the terrorists do, after they hijacked them on 11 Sept. Box-cutters; they're a gateway weapon.

[Angel Eyes]

Poor old James Holmes. He had no idea when he bought those guns that they would influence him to be a full-contact film critic.

Good thing he wasn't watching John Carter.

[MechAg94]

Good thing he wasn't watching John Carter.

Would anyone else be in the theater? 

[longeyes]

There's a contagion loose in the land, all right, but it's not for gun ownership.  It's about suppressing individuality, reason, integrity, and honor.  The zombie phenomenon is a good metaphor.

[longeyes]

The medical profession is not comprised of philosophers, it is comprised of people charged with keeping the people of a society--whatever that society is--physically viable.  If that means good workers, good serfs, so be it.

[SADShooter]

I'm not convinced that the Hippocratic oath in itself absolves physicians of any obligation to be thinking individuals. MechAg94 has it right. This is a symptom of a deeper cultural movement toward a collectivist/hive mindset.

[AZRedhawk44]

If gun ownership is a disease, then we need voluntary childhood inoculation for all children, kinda like Chicken Pox.

[longeyes]

Health is the last refuge of scoundrels.  It's been said.

"Health" is not a replacement for honor, virtue, and morality, though many would have it so.

[MrsSmith]

"Health" is not a replacement for honor, virtue, and morality, though many would have it so.

Neither is "security."

This article is yet ANOTHER example of my growing belief that this country is overrun with idiots.

[Tallpine]

This article is yet ANOTHER example of my growing belief that this country is overrun with idiots.

You noticed that too, huh ?   

[Jamie B]

Neither is "security."

This article is yet ANOTHER example of my growing belief that this country is overrun with idiots.

With the speed of communication to the masses via the Interwebz, those idiots reach audiences much faster, and more of them, than the old days.

[longeyes]

The obsession with health is symptomatic of the belief that life is about nothing but nerve-endings and that the source of our well-being is not The Divine but a shot or a pill.  Just as psychology has replaced morality as our matrix of social guidance, health has replaced honor and virtue as our most cherished goal.