If you’re like us, you follow Second Amendment politics closely. If so, you’re likely aware that large physician groups make up a substantial political force that comes down directly on the side of killing off the right of everyday Americans to keep and bear arms. But how are they doing when it comes to gun deaths vs medical malpractice?

Gun Deaths vs Medical Malpractice

In fact, the American Medical Association (AMA) is a major player in anti-2A politics. This, despite a dirty little secret that association members don’t want you to know about. Specifically, preventable deaths from medical errors account for many times more American deaths yearly than firearms fatalities of all kinds!

In fact, the more than 250,000 fatal medical errors each year make death by medical mistakes the third leading cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease and cancer.

Consequently, it’s frustrating every year when AMA holds its annual meeting. Because, instead of concentrating on medical care, they vote to support all sorts of new gun control schemes. This year the hot-button item was a call for banning “ghost guns,” which is actually a backdoor way to stop hobbyists from making their own firearms, as they have done since before this country was founded.

The AMA and Gun Control

In truth, over the years, AMA has supported just about every kind of gun control plan you could imagine. From bans on “assault weapons” to bans on handguns to waiting periods for gun purchasers, they support them all. It’s the height of hypocrisy, given the number of deaths doctors cause.

A little simple math reveals that doctors kill about six times more people each year through medical malpractice than those who die from gunshots of any kind. This includes accidental deaths, murder, self-defense, police shooting, etc.

It’s hard to understand how big of egos these physicians must have to concentrate on Second Amendment politics. Instead, they should be working on reducing the high number of deaths from medical errors.

In addition, the Journal of the American Medical Association has been a mouthpiece for anti-gun advocates since the 1990s. In 1992, George D. Lundberg, editor of the journal, advocated for a national “system of gun registration and licensing for gun owners and users.”

Later, in 1995, Lundberg took aim at the law-abiding gun owners who were members of the National Rifle Association, stating, “We, in the 1990s, have as our opposition the National Rifle Association, many gun owners, and many wife beaters who do not wish to change their behavior.”

The CDC and Gun Control

Another medical-oriented group, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), also pushes all kinds of gun control. They’ll warn you about COVID or monkeypox until you are tired of hearing about it. But they won’t make a peep about the true dangers of being treated by a physician.

In fact, the CDC has been pushing for gun control since all the way back in the 1980s. At the time, the head of the organization actually verbalized the group’s support for demonizing firearms ownership. 

“We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes,” Dr. Mark Rosenberg told the Washington Post. “It used to be that smoking was a glamour symbol—cool, sexy, macho. Now it is dirty, deadly—and banned.”

About the same time, another CDC official had this to say: “We’re going to systematically build a case that owning firearms causes deaths. We’re doing the most we can do, given the political realities.”

“Given the political realities,” of course, simply means, “With the current politics we can’t push for confiscation … yet.”

Such thinking is what lead the whole movement to try to reclassify so-called gun violence (actually, violent crime) as some kind of public health crisis.

The Misplaced Focus of Physician Groups

With all of the bad press from doctor’s groups and the so-called “mainstream media,” one might think that owning a firearm is an extremely dangerous proposition. In reality, that couldn’t be further from the truth, as firearms accidents kill very few Americans.

In fact, 34-times more Americans die each year from accidental falls than from accidental gun deaths. According to the latest figures, about 17,000 people die annually from such accidents. I haven’t noticed the AMA, CDC or any media outlets clamoring to try to reduce this number. But they’re plenty happy to lobby against your Second Amendment rights.

Ultimately, all lawful Americans would be better off if doctors’ organizations and medical groups would keep their noses out of 2A politics and concentrate more on policing their own ranks and improving patient safety.

Alas, that’s not likely to happen in today’s super-charged political atmosphere.