Guns: When even discussion is taboo

last updated 8 January 2015

The National Rifle Association just vetoed a presidential appointment, said Zoë Carpenter in The Nation. President Obama had nominated a widely respected Harvard Medical School physician, Dr. Vivek Murthy, for the U.S. surgeon general’s position. But after the NRA branded Murthy a “radically anti-gun nominee,” 10 Senate Democrats facing tough re-election campaigns said they might join 45 Republicans in opposing Murthy. Why? Murthy, who has seen the carnage caused by firearms while working in emergency rooms, has said that “guns are a health-care issue,” and has suggested that doctors talk to patients about gun safety in their homes. In his confirmation hearing, Murthy said he planned to use the office to campaign against obesity, not for gun control. But the NRA is now so extreme that it wants “to make discussion of gun violence taboo.” Murthy is clearly qualified, said The New York Times in an editorial. So why are Democrats “knuckling under to the gun lobby”?

Murthy was a poor choice for surgeon general, said The Washington Times. He’s “more political activist than physician,” with a long history of hostility toward the constitutional right to bear arms. He has advocated that doctors talk to patients about the dangers of gun ownership, and that’s “particularly worrisome” since the fact that they own a gun would be entered into their records. In opposing Murthy’s nomination, the NRA acted like any other lobbying group, said Charles C.W. Cooke in NationalReview.com. It just so happens that the right to keep and bear arms “is popular in the United States.” If Obama’s nominee goes down in flames, “there will be only one group to blame: The People.”

Actually, most Americans support reasonable gun control, said Michael Cohen in TheGuardian.com, and guns are a safety issue: Studies have found overwhelming evidence that owning a gun greatly increases the chance that someone in that home will die of suicide—especially teens. When people use guns in suicide attempts, 85 percent die, compared with 2 percent who try to overdose. In 2010, more than 19,000 people used guns to kill themselves. Thousands more were shot in accidents and in domestic homicides. The fact that the U.S. cannot have a surgeon general who could speak frankly about these grim facts only proves that “more than a year after Newtown, America’s sick relationship with guns is no closer to change.”