According to Chicago Business, under its president-elect, Richard F. Corlin, the AMA is primed to call for increased funding to study data on firearms injuries at its June 20 annual meeting – a ploy, Second Amendment advocates warn, that puts the national medical association squarely on the side of anti-gun radicals.
Gun control lobbyists have long demanded expanded research into the facts surrounding firearms injuries such as the types of guns involved, what led up to the incidents and the kinds of wounds suffered by the victims – information certain to be used in anti-gun propaganda.
"We don't have that kind of information about gun injuries. It makes it difficult to develop policies," Robert Seltzer, executive director of New York-based Doctors Against Handgun Injury, a consortium of medical groups, told Chicago Business. "If we knew more about the relationship between the victim and the suspect, we could develop policing strategies."
Because such data is easily manipulated the National Rifle Association and other Second Amendment defenders such as Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws and Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership warn that the research could be twisted to serve the purposes of the anti-gun lobby.
Said
Brown told Chicago Business that he viewed the issue as a city vs. country fight. "The doctors that go into medical politics like this are almost always the urban liberal-type folks."
"They are not scientists; these are social planners," said John A. Bennett, an AMA member and a member of Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws, referring to the doctors who undertake research on firearms issues.
Speaking to Chicago Business, Bennett, a family-practice physician in Sequim, Wash., said that while he was skeptical of Corlin's objectivity, he would reserve judgment. "I am free to quit," he said.
Corlin, who will take over as AMA president at the June meeting, insists he is not expanding AMA policy or advocating gun control.
"We are doing what we have always done, and that is advocate on a variety of issues [that are part of] our mission statement, which is the advancement of science and medicine and the betterment of public health.
"We did it with polio. We did it with tobacco. We did it with AIDS awareness and health insurance, and any other issue that we think is a public health epidemic," Corlin said.
He failed to specify when firearms injuries suddenly became epidemic.
The planned call for more research funding will not be universally welcomed at the annual meeting, however. There have been objections, notes Chicago Business. "The dissension reportedly extends into the AMA's boardroom, where, one source says, 'there wasn't unanimity.'"
Explained Susan Adelman, a Southfield, Mich., pediatric surgeon and AMA trustee: "There was worry that the position would be misinterpreted. Dr. Corlin is trying to walk a very careful line. He is trying to take a mature position within AMA policy, to gather information that allows players to formulate proposals."