Published Thursday, June 21, 2001

New head of AMA will focus on guns

Doctor calls for more research into 'epidemic' of handgun violence

By Lindsey Tanner
ASSOCIATED PRESS

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHICAGO -- The new president of the American Medical Association is making gun safety his platform, prompting concern that the usually cautious doctors' group is straying too far into social activism.

"There is an epidemic and it's an American epidemic of handgun violence," Dr. Richard Corlin said Wednesday at the AMA's annual meeting in advance of his inauguration speech focusing on the issue.

To fight the problem, Corlin said, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "must have the budget and the authority to gather the detailed data we need."

Corlin, 60, a gastroenterologist from Santa Monica, said the AMA will lobby Congress to boost CDC funding. He also urged more research into whether gun trigger locks work, ways to reduce accidental shootings and how youngsters obtain weapons.

Gun-related violence has been a divisive issue for the AMA, which considers itself a leader on public health issues such as tobacco use but has been less willing to take a strong stand on more controversial issues, such as the death penalty.

While violence is easy to deplore, expanding the category to include gun safety has some doctors wondering whether the AMA will be seen as opposing the right to bear arms.

Others fear Corlin's position will put the AMA in the crosshairs of the National Rifle Association, whose influence helped prompt a $2.6 million cut in CDC funding for collection of detailed statistics on gun-related injuries and deaths.

NRA research coordinator Paul Blackman said Corlin's platform is a "smokescreen" and the AMA is delving into gun control.

Dr. Robert Woolley, a Minnesota physician who belongs to both the AMA and the NRA, fears Blackman is right and said he probably will not renew his AMA membership next year.

"Nobody disputes that people dying and being injured from gunshot wounds is a terrible problem," Woolley said. "The dilemma is that groups such as the AMA ... are making very simplistic assumptions that the solution is more gun control."

The AMA already is struggling to stem a membership decline. It lost more than 3,000 members last year and more than $4 million in membership dues.

The latest national figures, from 1998, show 30,708 gun-related deaths and 64,484 gun-related injuries. Guns were the second-leading cause of injury-related deaths in the United States, trailing only auto accidents.

Corlin contends the AMA isn't seeking gun control and that solutions might include such things as anti-graffiti campaigns to reduce gang activity and violence.

But Dr. John Bennett, a member of a pro-gun group called Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws, said he suspects that the AMA is going to seek "lopsided research."

"If they similarly put the same kind of effort into tracking crimes that are prevented by guns, I think that's fine," said Bennett, an AMA member from Sequim, Wash. Not doing so would be "like looking at a medicine to see if it's got any side effects and not considering" its benefits.

Quoted:
Uh, suck my left nut.?.

Quoted:
Uh, suck my left nut.?.