Jennifer Carlson is a sociologist who has been looking a little differently, and more fairly than many, at guns and "gun culture" in America. Her op-ed in the LA Times highlights some themes of her recent book, Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline. In that, she recognizes the meaning to many men of having the ability to defend themselves and especially their loved ones. To her credit, too, she became an NRA Instructor as a way to immerse herself in her subje...

Many days it seems that in the struggle for gun rights we are slowly sliding downhill. Could we be losing the long-term campaign for our civil rights? My experience tells me that this is not the case. A look back to 1994 shows that gun owners faced a far greater threat to their rights then than they do today. Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership was only a few months old. As its leader I was invited to testify at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Cons...

California’s legislature quickly passed its response to the Isla Vista (California) mass murder perpetrated by 22 year old Elliot Rodger nearly a year ago. Even though Rodger killed fully half (3 out of 6) of his murder victims with a knife, and injured fully half (7 out of 14) of the other victims with his car, the legislature didn’t even consider taking cars or knives away from such dangerously unbalanced people. It was obvious that this law-making body’s special aversion to guns was in ov...

The terror of random deadly violence wreaks havoc with the public peace as well as the private. Most of us mercifully never have to know for ourselves the misery it brings to the lives of the surviving families. Common decency counsels giving a grieving family its privacy, a measure of regard for the tragedy of a young life lost to a madman’s murderous spree. But Los Angeles Times writer Robin Abcarian didn’t miss the recent opportunity to pick at the scabs of a father’s emotional wounds in ...

The public health community has long held itself out as the authority on how to reduce firearm injuries and deaths. Conveniently enough, its methods almost always align with the long-term incremental strategy of the gun prohibition movement. Among those methods is regulating to death the right to own a handgun, since an outright handgun ban is, to quote from page 64 of the U.S. Supreme Court decision District of Columbia v. Heller, “off the table.” A favorite nostrum of the public health ...

Every state has its own laws regulating gun ownership. These exist in addition to the complex and morphing web of federal laws and regulations gun owners must be aware of. As Americans become more familiar with firearms and more comfortable with their widespread ownership, they have relaxed some of the more onerous laws, state by state. Such deliberations are ongoing in many states, and one is North Carolina. (NOTE: Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership neither supports nor opposes any sp...

What if a cheap, reliable method of preventing a common but serious injury were available and ready for the market? As an ear surgeon who has seen hundreds of patients with irreversible noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL), I would welcome it with open arms. Too many people in our noisy world have suffered irreversible hearing loss. Only after experiencing it do they learn how socially isolating this entirely preventable injury can be. Their family members also bear the burden of impaired co...

In some thought-provoking discussion of the confluence of impulsive anger and gun possession, Jeffrey Swanson et al raise questions about the relevance of focusing on mental illnesses as risks in gun use. They point out that there may be more validity in looking for signs of previous impulsive angry behavior in assessing risks of gun ownership.  There is even some increased statistical risk of anger issues the more guns one owns. (more…)