Take It From Me: Gun-Hating Pediatricians Outside Their Lane Look Stupid
BY Herschel Smith
3 years, 9 months ago
Take it from pediatricians: open carry gun law will endanger SC children.
Multiple pediatricians, myself included, urged lawmakers to oppose H.3094, citing the wave of gun violence we have seen in our communities, including among our children.
Yet the bill passed easily in a 3-1 vote along party lines and could be approved by the full committee next week.
As a pediatrician, I find the fight against gun violence incredibly frustrating for one simple yet shocking fact: Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children in South Carolina and in the United States.
For me, this is not just a statistic. This is a reality that I have experienced throughout my career, and it only seems to be getting worse.
Who you’re calling children are really criminal teenagers, and you know it.
I’ve seen too many children who were innocent bystanders in shootings. Once you’ve cared for a 4-year-old girl who was shot in her own front yard, it’s hard to believe that more visible guns in public places is a good idea.
Because of politicization, this significant threat to children’s lives is not given the attention it deserves.
If this were any other cause — cancer, infection, genetic disease — it would be recognized as the public health threat that it is, and our resources would be focused on a cure. Instead, we find ourselves battling the Legislature on a bill that would allow for guns to be displayed openly in places that are normally safe havens for our children, like our parks, playgrounds and beaches.
H.3094 would be detrimental to the safety of our community, and therefore the safety of our children, for several reasons.
First, research has already shown that a visible gun makes people more aggressive. These findings suggest that simple disagreements would be more likely to turn violent if a gun were involved. An unfortunate example of this occurred this month when an employee at a downtown Charleston bar was shot when a patron became upset over the bar’s earlier closing time due to state-mandated COVID-19 restrictions.
Second, open carry is opposed by law enforcement, including Charleston Police Chief Luther Reynolds, as it makes their job more difficult during active-shooter situations.
Oh, so we’re back to this? An inanimate object can literally change the heart of mankind. A steel object can make you more violent.
So here’s what I think, Ms. pediatrician. “Anything that can be done with an openly carried firearm can be done with a concealed firearm. It’s an amazing thing that we actually have to cover this ground again, but the fact that someone cannot visually ascertain the presence of a firearm doesn’t mean it’s not there. Any confusion on this fact points to a second-grader level psychological problem.”
And I think you know it. Therefore, this is just a ruse with you. You’re not really anti-open carry. You’re anti-gun, and that makes you out to be a liar. You’re using bad statistics, unrelated anecdotes, and your “status” as a pediatrician to infringe on the right of a man to carry weapon in the manner he chooses.
And I think you know that the things you say happen don’t really happen because of open carry, and the fact that 46 other states have open carry proves my point. Blood doesn’t run in the streets because of open carry.
But again, you know all of this. You’re outside your lane, and badly so. I may as well say “Take it from a 180 pound man.” That makes me as much of an expert as you are.
I’ll file this one under gun control, because until South Carolina passes open carry, I put you in the same category as the controllers in New York.
On February 27, 2021 at 12:20 am, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ Herschel
I seem to recall reading here that your daughter is an advanced-practice nurse, and does first-assist in the OR on a lot of cases. If that is in fact true, she can verify what I am about to say, namely that medicine as a science/art and healthcare as a field – have been thoroughly penetrated by the Cultural Marxists.
The covid-19 outbreak and subsequent politicization of that event is just one more nail in the coffin containing the professional standards and decorum of a once-proud field.
Healthcare/medical people tend to segment ideologically along the lines of whether they are front-line workers or not. Acute care medicine, especially the kind practiced in the OR, ICU, ER and the like, do not lend themselves to flights of logical fancy. Hence, those prone to such things tend to have their attitudes adjusted rather quickly.
Bureaucratic physicians, nurses, etc. on the other hand, tend to be more-leftist in orientation. I’m speaking of the ones who spend their careers working for educational institutions, non-profits like the AMA, ANA, and Joint Commission, and journals like the NEJM and the ones for the various specialties. Certain medical career fields tend to be more “woke” than others, namely psychiatry and pediatrics, to name two.
Everyone is entitled to their own private politics. However, the problems begin when those views are allowed to seep into spaces which ought to be apolitical, and those which cannot function properly if made political. Medicine and the basic sciences have long been on the cultural left’s “target list.”
Now that they have made such successful inroads to them, they’ll be coming for the engineers and mathematicians next. Apparently, inventing medical devices and drug therapies which save and improve millions of lives all over the world isn’t enough to satisfy the insatiable appetite of the Marxists; if that doctor and nurse aren’t “woke,” they are a danger to society.
They’ll be coming for the engineers next. They’ll demand that 2=2 does not equal four, and that diversity is the only criterion which ought to matter in selecting engineering professionals to build that new bridge, road or tunnel. Actually, it is already happening.
Some years ago, there was a bridge collapse in Florida which cost the lives of six individuals at Florida International University on 15 March 2018. A one-hundred-seventy-five foot long section of the pedestrian walkway collapsed onto U.S Route 41. The head engineer of the project, much-touted as a success story since she was a Latin female, had overruled a number of her staff and subordinates – including engineers – who had expressed concerns about the safety and stability of her design. Which was build over their objections.
In their report on the incident, the NTSB blamed FIGG Bridge Engineers, Inc. as a whole for the collapse, and failing to single out the female/Latin diversity hire and head engineer on the project – and instead blamed a male subordinate.
The New York Times and other leftist propaganda organs, quite predictably, white-washed the incident as well, wrung their hands, and then memory-holed the whole episode.
It is often hard to quantify the costs of diversity on such public works projects, but not this one: We now know that the human cost of putting an under-qualified and inexperienced ‘diversity’ hire into the position of chief engineer instead of someone who actually knew what he was doing – was six innocent human lives.
That female engineer, skated from the official investigation, as far as I am aware. What do you bet she gets a raise and a promotion in her next job?
On February 27, 2021 at 12:31 am, Herschel Smith said:
Great questions.
Yea, bridge collapse. Big deal. I monitor and have a log of engineering catastrophes. I study them.
My daughter is an NP (Nurse Practitioner). She’s a health care provider, surgery (diagnostics and first assist) and ER. At least I can go to her for prescription medications from time to time (maybe all that money was worth it, huh?).
She’s not the prog type. Some of the docs around her aren’t. She traffics mostly in other health care providers, IDK about nurses.
But you’re right. Most are progs. I think Nurses are even more bent towards the prog way of seeing things. Isn’t that interesting?
On February 27, 2021 at 7:55 am, Arthur Sido said:
This is only going to get worse. Having watched the way the process works for medical school admissions, it is clear that many med schools and all of the once “elite” schools are more concerned with their student body having the proper number of non-White/non-Asian students and sexual degenerates as possible. The medical profession is moving inexorably away from practicing to medicine to social engineering.
On February 27, 2021 at 8:00 am, richard creed said:
I believe your daughter still cannot prescribe hydroxychloroquine according to the SCLLR letter ( over the Govenor’s name) of 25 March 2020.
This idea of politicians practicing medicine – or restraining the practice of medicine – blows my mind.
Here we are discussing Second Amendment rights and the Law – but to me there is some connection to the right of a medical profesional to practice according to their judgement.
On February 27, 2021 at 9:30 am, Ned2 said:
Doctors dropped the Hippocratic oath decades ago, about the same time they started advertising and pushing drugs in their reception areas.
They really are nothing more than paid salesmen for the pharmaceutical companies, and that being the case, will never be able to objectively treat what ails you.
On February 27, 2021 at 10:01 am, matthew w said:
100% of gun crimes are committed by criminals.
Not a gun violence epidemic, a criminal epidemic.
On February 27, 2021 at 10:10 am, Bill Buppert said:
Herschel,
I, too, am an engineer. Would love to see the list of engineering catastrophes you have or maybe a clearinghouse that digitally lists them. The NTSB is highly political and will not truthfully divine fault tree analyses nor fault the wrong pigmentation or groin tackle.
For instance, for maritime accidents and disasters, you can go here:
https://safety4sea.com/
On February 27, 2021 at 10:15 am, George 1 said:
Amazing isn’t it, that the party of science really doesn’t want to ascertain the correct science. This pediatrician spouts off her assertions, none of which are provable, and is held in high regard. Her lunacy assumed to be a valid point of view.
The bottom line, in my opinion, is the left does not care about “gun Violence.” They just want to disarm their opposition and thereby be able to choose the victims of it.
On February 27, 2021 at 10:44 am, Herschel Smith said:
@richard,
That’s correct. In fact, most doctors cannot prescribe HCQ, which is just absurd in my opinion. There is a single doctor at the hospital where she works who is “allowed” to prescribe HCQ.
@Bill,
Yes, so many, so many. Bhopal, Space Shuttle Challenger, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, Texas A&M bonfire collapse, Chernobyl.
I’m not including Fukushima in that list (which is a very short list, could be expanded so much) because I don’t consider it to be an engineering disaster.
Fukushima was well designed. For the flood for which it was designed. When you superimpose a tsunami like they had, nothing could survive it. Death toll from the tsunami > 15,000 souls. Death toll from radiation = 0 (zero).
And ask the Japanese today if they’re willing to impoverish their progeny to build sea walls to handle the next 1000 year tsunami, and they’ll tell you no. As they should.
On February 27, 2021 at 10:46 am, Herschel Smith said:
I should add TMI because the operators didn’t understand thermodynamics. Still, radiation dose to the public = 0 (zero) Rem. The disaster was in the loss of company assets.
On February 28, 2021 at 2:50 pm, John said:
Pediatricians have been targeted by the gun haters for many years. Back in the 90’s I saw
mailed in anti-gun propaganda hung on the multi-doctor bulletin board in my daughter’s doc’s office saying the same thing.
I wrote him a letter advising him of the gang issues as they relate to youth crime and violence but never heard a word back.
Same old same old. They never stop.
Do anypro 2A orginizations contact doctors on firearms? The Left sure does.
On March 6, 2021 at 9:21 am, Sanders said:
Well, I recently took my daughter to the pediatrician, and while I was filling out paperwork, unbeknownst to me, the doctor took her aside and asked if we had any guns in the house.
My daughter, being quite young and not knowing that such questions are an invasion of privacy and not to answer them, truthfully told him we did.
The doctor has called the house 4 times now, asking if I knew where he could find any ammo.
(Stolen from Gab)