Fishing for gun news this morning

Other countries must think America is nucking futs with the crazy that is in the news these days. We must be modern day Sodom and Gomorrah with all the Slut Walks, Shania Twain Love Triangles, The Price of a Suitcase of Cocaine in DC - it looks pretty awful.

I did pick up on this article warning America of the obvious dangers of barring doctors from counciling you on having guns in the home where your children are. It's so full of the same ignorant anti-gun rhetoric that has been going on for decades that it could have been written in 1971 and just reposted. It's that bad.

I'm too lazy to fisk the whole thing, but here's a little bit of fun anyways:

Florida is set to become the first state to pass a law that would limit doctors' ability to council parents about gun safety in the home. Pediatricians decry the law as wrongheaded, and they're backed by statistics that suggest the law will kill kids.

This is the part that I'm going to attack most viciously - "backed by statistics." So if all of these studies that you claim really do back your story with statistics and all, then where the fuck are they? The first link you have in the article, in the paragraph where you say that the Florida Pediatric Society "expects" an increase in injury and death from having guns in the home with children, links to "The Top 10 Leading Causes of Death." Wanna guess what's not on that list? Yeah, anything at all to do with guns. Bummer.

I caution doctors and journalists from hanging too much of their hope on expectations, as reality can be a real drag. Expectations are also not solid conclusions to draw from a study.

Next up you cite the infamous Kellerman study from 1986 (and I notice that you don't link to that one. I don't blame you) where Dr. Kellerman found that having a gun in the home makes you 43 times more likely to be killed by some shit or something. It's been years since I read that piece, but I recall his statistics also came to the conclusion that innocuous stuff like having a garage or PeeWee Herman doll makes you about certain to be killed by something. That study has been so thoroughly debunked that it's almost laughable that the author even mentions it.

The next link about doctors "decrying" not being able to warn incompetent parents about guns in the home - the one hyperlinking over the words "injury and death in children" - links to a health article talking about running related injuries in active kids. Do doctors warn parents about the dangers of their kids running? If it's so dangerous and all, maybe it's a good idea for doctors to council all of us dumbass parents about the hazards of life. Do doctors even get training on how to council people? Are they like Chaplains, but with medical skills? I can identify so many dangers to kids from where I sit right now that maybe I should sign up for my pediatrician to council me every single day, that my kids might live longer than I did. . . . .oh, wait.

"For pediatricians, prevention is the name of the game," St. Petery said.

Huh. To think that this whole time I've been taking my tribe of ankle biters to the doctor for vaccines and illness related stuff, when it's now quite obvious I should be bombarding him with questions regarding the dangers of running, septicemia, and Alzheimer's. Aggghhhh, I feel so silly right now.

More than one-third of American homes have at least one gun at home, but a 2007 study found 70 percent of guns are not stored safely.

Oooooh. . . .another study. Check that one out for details of how a survey about how guns were stored in homes was construed by one pediatrician to mean that 70 percent of those guns were stored improperly. Doctor DuRant knows this shit for real Yo, because of that huge block of training he went through in medical school that covered how to properly store firearms in the home in every situation; you know, that instruction you get in your third year right in between lessons on how to council people and the one on how to conduct years long studies about such things like gun violence and autoerotic asphyxiation. Doctors are like Jack Bauer, but with stethoscopes and latex gloves instead of Sigs and H&Ks.

"I would think there should be a law that says if you don’t [council parents about gun safety], that should be malpractice," said David Hemenway, a professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health who studies injury prevention.

Cool! I'm down with that, because if parents have a claim that you didn't council them about the dangers of guns in the home with their children and they got hurt, then they will also have remedy when their kids impail themselves on a pair of scissors, tumble down the stairs and bust their dome-piece, choke to death on a hermit crab, or wash their intestines out with peroxide. Does your doctor council you about every danger your kid could encounter in the home? Cause what your sayin is that you consider a doctor to be at fault for not giving parents fair warning about common hazards.

Children in the United States are 11 times more likely to die accidentally from a gun injury compared with children in other developed countries, he said.

Oh come on! You know that's bullshit right there; you don't even offer a link or the name of a study. But while we're on it, did you know that MyHealthNewsDaily writers and AAP doctors in the United States are 43 times more likely to die from a rare venereal disease they caught from licking their stamp collection than are MyHealthNewsDaily writers and AAP doctors from Botswana? Honest Abe!

The writer goes on to try and link child suicides using firearms to a study about the dangers of the internet - no guns mentioned in there. Here's the gist of the entire article summed up for you:

The best way to keep children safe from gun injury is not to own one, Hemenway said. This is also the position of the AAP.

Yup. We got that from you, boss. But I have to ask you: in your professional experience, what's the best way keep children safe from violent scumbags, home intruders, or dangerous animals? Counciling?

***Update: Ricky the doctor chips in to say that counciling you about everything imaginable because he thinks it's dangerous is "within the scope of his practice." Hey Ricky, does that include medical malpractice? Last I heard, doctors kill far more people every year from negligence than every firearm death combined. Is it absurd to suggest a law making it so doctors start their counciling with a disclaimer to stay the hell away from doctors because they are known to be extremely hazardous to your health?