HK G3
Member
So I subscribe to the NEJM solely for the medical information included within, and usually skip right past their editorials/law and ethics debates since they can usually be summed up as follows: "individual freedom is bad as it allows patients to do potentially stupid things and hurt themselves, and we, as all-knowing physicians, should lobby the Congress to restrict such freedoms, for the good of our patients. This is still ethical, of course, because bad things are bad."
But today, they had yet another pro-gun-control article that practically seemed to come verbatim from the Brady Bunch (except far more anti than even they want to come across as) in their Health Law, Ethics, and Human Rights section:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/360/22/2360
Unfortunately, I can't copy and paste the content of the article, as they have decided to restrict it to subscribers only. It's odd, as they most often open anything that they view as important to the public, so obviously they don't want the public to read this article.
I would have thought that the Heller decision would have stopped the whole "2A is for militias only" nonsense, but apparently they're still clinging to it, and the authors really hammer that point throughout the article. They further go on to make ridiculous claims that the National Guard = militia, and that in spite of Heller, the militia-only argument is mostly valid. They also state that machine guns and destructive devices are illegal for private citizens to own (which is obviously false), and therefore, private citizens cannot be a military, and should just give up their more dangerous weapons. The authors also argue that nothing in the Second Amendment protects the right to self-defense, and that therefore, the Supreme Court is filled by a bunch of idiots and that Heller should be reversible. They single out the following phrase in the SCOTUS' majority opinion on Heller:
and then proceed to whine about how the majority justices failed in their duties for not pronouncing the Second Amendment extinct. The authors claim that Scalia et al. are intellectually dishonest for claiming to be strict constructionists, while ignoring the "well-regulated militia." They then praise the dissenting opinion penned by Justice Stevens, calling it "scholarly" (as opposed to the majority opinion, which they called dishonest), and said that it would appear as if almost half the SCOTUS felt that there was no individual right to bear arms. They then go on to say that the "true meaning" of the Second Amendment will remain a mystery, as the Court botched its ruling horrendously. They also explicitly state that the Second Amendment is outdated and useless in the modern era, and should be stricken from the Constitution.
The rest of the article goes on to discuss how to do everything short of banning guns, as that option is inconveniently no longer available after the Heller ruling, such as passing laws restricting the number of guns an individual is allowed to own, requiring competency exams to be considered eligible to purchase a firearm, and requiring all guns to be disassembled when the owner is out of the house.
Methinks that these epidemiologists first need to prove that gun control actually reduces death and violence to provide their work with any scholarly merit, which, of course, they did not do, as seems to be the case with just about every anti-gun medical article I've ever read. The whole article just discussed the challenges to gun control, and how it must be further pushed and expanded upon, and how all doctors and health care professionals need to get involved in dismantling the RKBA.
But today, they had yet another pro-gun-control article that practically seemed to come verbatim from the Brady Bunch (except far more anti than even they want to come across as) in their Health Law, Ethics, and Human Rights section:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/360/22/2360
Unfortunately, I can't copy and paste the content of the article, as they have decided to restrict it to subscribers only. It's odd, as they most often open anything that they view as important to the public, so obviously they don't want the public to read this article.
I would have thought that the Heller decision would have stopped the whole "2A is for militias only" nonsense, but apparently they're still clinging to it, and the authors really hammer that point throughout the article. They further go on to make ridiculous claims that the National Guard = militia, and that in spite of Heller, the militia-only argument is mostly valid. They also state that machine guns and destructive devices are illegal for private citizens to own (which is obviously false), and therefore, private citizens cannot be a military, and should just give up their more dangerous weapons. The authors also argue that nothing in the Second Amendment protects the right to self-defense, and that therefore, the Supreme Court is filled by a bunch of idiots and that Heller should be reversible. They single out the following phrase in the SCOTUS' majority opinion on Heller:
and then proceed to whine about how the majority justices failed in their duties for not pronouncing the Second Amendment extinct. The authors claim that Scalia et al. are intellectually dishonest for claiming to be strict constructionists, while ignoring the "well-regulated militia." They then praise the dissenting opinion penned by Justice Stevens, calling it "scholarly" (as opposed to the majority opinion, which they called dishonest), and said that it would appear as if almost half the SCOTUS felt that there was no individual right to bear arms. They then go on to say that the "true meaning" of the Second Amendment will remain a mystery, as the Court botched its ruling horrendously. They also explicitly state that the Second Amendment is outdated and useless in the modern era, and should be stricken from the Constitution.
The rest of the article goes on to discuss how to do everything short of banning guns, as that option is inconveniently no longer available after the Heller ruling, such as passing laws restricting the number of guns an individual is allowed to own, requiring competency exams to be considered eligible to purchase a firearm, and requiring all guns to be disassembled when the owner is out of the house.
Methinks that these epidemiologists first need to prove that gun control actually reduces death and violence to provide their work with any scholarly merit, which, of course, they did not do, as seems to be the case with just about every anti-gun medical article I've ever read. The whole article just discussed the challenges to gun control, and how it must be further pushed and expanded upon, and how all doctors and health care professionals need to get involved in dismantling the RKBA.
I have no $ for the journal when I can get it free through school (I'm a MSII)
