Gun Control and a Doctor’s ‘Lane’

Like anyone else, a physician may speak his mind. But doctor groups are in no position to provide policy guidance to legislators.As a practicing physician, I am interested in limiting bad habits that undermine my patients’ health and lead to life-threatening events. This is why I am against fast-food bacon cheeseburgers and why I hate to see gas-guzzling cars pouring out blue smoke into the common sky. I have treated many patients who ate one too many hot dogs at a ball game only to arrive at the ER with a heart attack.

But imagine how you would feel if you found out I suddenly had the power to ban hot dogs or to control automobile emissions. I am not an expert on either. True, I can exercise my First Amendment rights by pointing a finger at these public-health risks — but that’s as far as it goes, and as far as it should go. I do not guide public policy or restrict my patients’ lives. Nor should I. I am no position to provide mandates. This is not my “lane.”

The same holds true for gun control. I believe a physician may indulge her or his First Amendment rights to decry the Second Amendment or to express an opinion on limiting gun ownership, but let’s face it, when it comes to gun policy, we doctors are not experts. That goes not just for individuals but also for groups like the American College of Physicians, which last month updated its firearms policy by offering restrictive strategies intended to “help reduce firearms-related injuries and deaths by keeping guns out of the hands of those at risk of harming themselves or others.” The ACP went on to suggest that physicians need to provide guidance to legislators.

When did the folks at ACP become experts on gun control? The answer is they aren’t. The fact that most ACP members favor stricter gun-control legislation does not automatically put them in a position to guide legislation; nor does the fact that physicians have to treat the devastating injuries that a gun can inflict. Certainly a forensic psychiatrist, say, is entitled to his or her professional opinion that those with a violent or significant mental-health history should be excluded from owning guns, but that’s as far as it goes.