The NRA is the just the one to give advice to doctors, right? Certainly any doctor worth their salt would take guidance from the richest and most powerful manufacturers and lobbyists of killing machines super seriously, no?
No. Doctors — pediatricians and emergency room doctors in particular — and the NRA have a fairly adversarial relationship, lately, the former regarding the latter as a genuine threat to public health. Many pediatricians want the right to ask parents screening questions about whether or not there are guns in the household, seeing it as a real danger to their tiny patients. Florida went so far as to pass a law that forbade them from doing it. That law was overturned, but the NRA and the Dickey Amendment (passed by Congress) continues to have a stranglehold on even basic research: the Centers for Disease Control has not been allowed to conduct research on gun violence as a public health issue.
Doctors are getting bolder, though. According to NBC News,
Doctors and medical officials have increasingly taken on gun violence as a public health issue. Last month, the American College of Physicians issued new guidelines for doctors to follow in helping protect patients from firearms dangers, and published several reports on gun violence in its flagship publication, the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The NRA was not happy.
Oh, really? Let's hear from the doctors and health care workers.
Shall I go on? I could. I could go on and on. But I won't. You can, though. Go to Twitter and search the hashtag, #ThisISMyLane. Just be sure to have an empty stomach and a full box of tissues.
Oh and pro-tip to Ann Coulter: don't try to latch on to the NRA's already slammed tweet in a sad attempt to be relevant.
Because you're not smart enough to escape this level of burn.
