More Gunshot Trauma Predicted for Post-Ban Era

[Harry Tuttle]

More Gunshot Trauma Predicted for Post-Ban Era
9/24/2004


Health officials say they are concerned that the demise of the assault-weapons ban will result in more gunshot victims and increased trauma costs, CBS.MarketWatch.Com reported Sept. 22.

Officials said that the ban helped to make injury prevention a national priority. But with the expiration of the ban, "we're going back to viewing this as a purely criminal-justice issue and not a public-health issue," said Dr. Katherine Kaufer Christoffel, a professor of pediatrics and preventive medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. "I think that's a mistake, a turn in the wrong direction."

Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said that allowing the ban to lapse was poor public policy. "We went to war over keeping weapons of mass destruction away from this country, and yet we leave wapons of mass destruction in the hands of kids and criminals. I just don't understand it."

Because the ban allowed the legal possession of banned firearms that people owned prior to passage of the law, a stock of "pre-ban"assault weapons has existed in the U.S. for 10 years. But according to Christopher Koper, a research associate for the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, 10 years is not enough time to diminish that stock.

"This law was written in a way that virtually guaranteed that the effects would only occur very gradually over time," he said, "and those effects were still unfolding and have not yet fully been felt."




This article is online at http://www.jointogether.org/z/0,2522,574723,00.html

 

[Standing Wolf]

Health officials say they are concerned...

That's the point at which I knew the purported "article" was a pack of leftist extremist lies.

 

[tyme]

Dr. Katherine Kaufer Christoffel can be found elsewhere complaining about handguns, and she has a long history of being anti-gun. Her agenda is obvious; she wants all guns banned, starting with handguns.

One gem from the first link is particularly amusing (written in 1999):

Polls show falling rates of private gun ownership.

I can't recall ever seeing statistics showing a decline in gun ownership anywhere in the U.S. I don't believe those sorts of polls, anyway.

 

[Art Eatman]

The problem is that none of the same media will publicize it, a year or so from now, when this prediction is proven wrong. Nor, of course, will there be any acknowledgement from the predictors...

Art

 

[Wildalaska]

Polls show falling rates of private gun ownership.

Not in my house

WildorinmystateAlaska

 

[Art Eatman]

Decrease? BATFE records indicate a growth in the gun population of some five million per year, all types. Given the publicity about women arming themselves, and the success of both CHL instructors and the various shooting schools of the "Gunsite" style, it's not just existing owners who add new guns to their collections. Lotsa newbies...

Lessee: A little datum that turned up during the first year or so of Texas' CHL law was that some 60% of applicants did not buy a new pistol for carry use. That means that 40% or so did, and I'd bet some notable number were "newbies" to pistol ownership. An instructor of my acquaintance comments from time to time about newbies, and for him the percentage is notable.

Art

 

[Nightfall]

Dumb article

"We went to war over keeping weapons of mass destruction away from this country, and yet we leave wapons of mass destruction in the hands of kids and criminals. I just don't understand it."

You heard it folks, the AWB was about removing WMD from the hands of kids and criminals. I really hate this new trend of people referring to "assault weapons" as WMD. The antis sure do control the language of this debate. Though, I guess that's easy to do when you have the media in your back pocket.

 

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm agnostic on the subject of whether the number of gun owners is growing or shrinking; Sure, there are a lot of new gun owners. There are a lot of old gun owners checking into cemetaries, too. How it nets out is the question... But you've got to think that efforts to make becoming a gun owner a big hassle have some impact. And what it's going to be like when the generation currently being conditioned by "zero tolerance" policies reaches gun owning age?

 

[jefnvk]

I'm agnostic on the subject of whether the number of gun owners is growing or shrinking; Sure, there are a lot of new gun owners. There are a lot of old gun owners checking into cemetaries, too. How it nets out is the question... But you've got to think that efforts to make becoming a gun owner a big hassle have some impact. And what it's going to be like when the generation currently being conditioned by "zero tolerance" policies reaches gun owning age?

Well, I went from 5 guns to 13, when I reached gun buying age, 8 months ago

What I would add to this too, is how is the percentage of legal gun owners to Americans holding?

 

[tcsd1236]

I can't recall ever seeing statistics showing a decline in gun ownership anywhere in the U.S. I don't believe those sorts of polls, anyway.

Yes, polls have been finding decreasing per centages of the population saying they own guns for years now.
I love how you first say that you don't recall seeing the polls, and then basically that if you DID see the polls, you wouldn't believe them.
I don't think the original article posted here has any validity; the numbers of military pattern rifles in private hands has been going up for years with no spike in shootings; the ban on cosmetic features going away isn't going to cause a jump in the numbers of victims.

 

[gigmike]

In a time where executives in the health care industry are earning record salaries and pharmaceutical companies are essentially printing their own money, we're supposed to balance their books and fix health care by not having certain firearms? Incredible!