Gunquack Long on Hysteria, Short on Proof of Professional Competence

By David Codrea

Hippocrates_rubens
What ever happened to the medical oath to “utterly reject harm and mischief”? (Engraving of Hippocrates by Peter Paul Rubens, 1638) PD-US

USA – -(Ammoland.com)-  “Obtaining an assault rifle should be as difficult as becoming a doctor,” Monya De, MD MPH, ridiculously prescribes in Medical Economics. “Not everyone can treat patients legally, and not everyone can hold a person’s life and future in their hands. That’s why we have medical schools and licensure fees and exams and state medical boards—to keep quacks and charlatans from hanging out a shingle.”

I’m glad De’s the one bringing up quacks and charlatans, because that’s some serious irrelevant conflation she’s got going there. Unless one is in the business of selling guns, that is, licensed, they’re not hanging out shingles. And using her “logic,” every one of us with fists and feet needs to pay a fee and get sanctioned by some board. Not that doing so helps, with “medical errors now [the] third leading cause of death … ”

Just from her opening salvo alone, it’s fair to ask if De walks like a duck, because she sure is quacking like one. But wait, as late TV pitchman Billy Mays famously urged, there’s more.

“They are also a public health problem, like cholera, HIV, and meningitis,” she gasps, perhaps from throwing around such a masive non sequitur. “As with polio eradication, we need to get to the point at which they don’t kill or maim anyone.”

All by their own self?

And if that rationale can be used to ban a subclass of a category of firearm that’s been used in such a small number of violent crimes, De can’t possibly be OK with handguns remaining legal.  But one grab at a time.

‘Assault rifles—which didn’t exist at the time of the 2nd Amendment—amount to a license to kill,” she continues, not one to let a chance for misdirection go to waste.

The first bit of deception is the oft-repeated gungrabber lie that the Founders couldn’t have imagined modern guns.  The thing is, firearms technology from long before their time included Fourteenth Century multiple-barreled volley guns, and a design by Leonardo DaVinci for a rotating triple-barrel breech-loading cannon. The Founding Era had already seen pepperbox revolvers, Kentucky/Pennsylvania rifles, cartridges to combine shot and powder, the British breech-loading Ferguson rifle, the 11-cylinder crank-operated Puckle gun, and the Girandoni air rifle, capable of firing 22 .46 caliber balls, that had actually been in use by the Austrian army 11 years before the Bill of Rights was ratified.

Why doesn’t highly-qualified professional gun expert Monya De know that? That’s what she’s pretending to be, right?

As for ownership of any gun being a license to kill, that’s just a flat-out lie designed to spread prejudice, which ought to be a breach of medical ethics. That’s where the real problem arises with apparatchiks like De exploiting their medical credentials to pass their political opinions off as professionally qualified.

Years back, I teamed with the late Joe Horn, a retired Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputy who had become a risk management professional. Using his “Physicians, Don’t Borrow Trouble” article as a starting point, we developed a form for patients to present to doctors presuming to counsel them on guns.

The form asks them to attest they have reviewed applicable scientific literature pertaining to defensive gun use and beneficial results of private firearms ownership. Alternatively, it asks if they are knowingly engaging in home/firearms safety counseling without credentialing certification, license or formal training in risk management, and to admit if they have not reviewed applicable scientific literature. It asks them to disclose if they are engaged in an activity for which they are not certified, such as Firearms Safety Counseling, and if their medical malpractice insurance carrier will cover lawsuits resulting from neglect and lack of qualification. And it asks them to further warrant that — should a patient follow their advice and someone ends up hurt or killed as a result — their malpractice insurance / personal assets will cover damages resulting from lawsuits.

It’s fair to ask Dr. De why her opinions on guns would be more qualified than her opinion on what to do about that pinging noise from under the hood, or what the mix of mutual funds and high tech stocks in your retirement portfolio should be. Just because she’s (presumably) highly competent in one field doesn’t mean she knows diddly about others. But she’s trading in on her degrees and the forum in which her rant appears to make it look like this is the informed work product of a qualified professional. Unfortunately, those who don’t know any better will be inclined to give her opinions more credence than if she were Monya De, Licensed Cosmetologist.

That’s precisely the quackery/charlatanry she projected on gun owners in her opening flurry of accusations (and as we’ve seen time and again, for “progressives,” every day is Opposite Day). She shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it, at least not without putting her relevant credentialing up for examination and evaluation. That’s especially true because De’s media reach is extensive, and she’s in a position to influence a lot of voters.

Yes, she has an absolute right to put any damn fool lying opinion out there and stump for any edicts that she wants — as a private citizen. But to do so under the imprimatur of her professional licenses is an abuse of why they were approved and issued, and ought to rise to the level of an actionable ethics violation.

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For those interested in authoritative information about firearms from medical professionals, check out Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership. Make it a matter of routine activism to refer journalists to DRGO so they can correct the record whenever you see politically-motivated disinformation about firearms being spread by the establishment medical community.

UPDATE per DRGO:

De demonstrates no qualifications on the subject other than ignorant contempt for gun owners and a gift for self-promotion.  She has a checkered past as an actual doctor, having failed to complete her residency training program for the documented reason of incompetence.  [See the complete smackdown.]

David Codrea in his natural habitat.

About David Codrea:

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.

In addition to being a field editor/columnist at GUNS Magazine and associate editor for Oath Keepers, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.

David Codrea
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David B Erickson

I’d love to see the “form for patient” that you developed. Care to post it?

Ed Simon

Knowing many in the medical community, I would apportion blame to the MPH degree rather than the MD. You get a Masters of Public Health in order to become an administrator. You exist to tell others what to do because you think only you know best.

Kurt Francis, MD

Unfortunately, there is increasing bias toward the left in the medical profession just as it is mirrored in our entire culture. This moronic rant displays her liberal slant and exposes her ignorance of the subject. I applaud Dr. Wheeler for his words and appreciate David Codrea for his expertise and wisdom in his writings. There is movement within my profession to inquire about gun ownership as a “health issue.” Ridiculous to think that anything is accomplished other than to make the anti-gun bigots feel they have accomplished something…. not all feel physicians are willing to comply.

Timothy Wheeler, MD

Thanks Dr. Francis. Please be aware there is also a movement within our profession to drive the public health gun grabbers out of the temple and restore awareness of the RKBA. It’s called Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a project of the Second Amendment Foundation. Hope to see you soon.

Tim Wheeler, MD

Irontiger65

Oh my what a steaming pile. I know when somebody is trying to blow smoke up my backside and the clown is puffing away. All this is just gibberish. The car analogy is classic misdirection. Yes, doctors aren’t going to fix your car but no, mechanics aren’t going to be able to make the kind of judgment medical professionals can make about a person’s mental state to drive the frigging thing! Just as goddamn cops and gun range instructors are not in any way qualified to make decisions regarding the mental health of the person using the gun. Your the… Read more »

Terry

You both commence and conclude your childish rant with name calling, however, you really tagged yourself with the “goddamn cops” line. You couldn’t have just said “cops” could you? Go back to your Black Lives Matter rally and see how many more Law Enforcement personnel you can get killed. OBTW – I just can’t resist – ‘TinPussy69’.

TRUTH BE TOLD

Ahh but the firearm is to defend against a tyrant government and of course you need at minimum the same or better….. liberals are so stupid and that’s why people like this women are so well received……

Shaking your head with a bunch of rocks in it doesn’t make you a liberal, you got to take a few rocks out first…

Gregory DuPont

Physician,Heal Thyself!

marc disabled vet

he can’t !!!
he left a sponge and swab in his own self-Laboadamy

herb

From statistics I have seen, more people die at the hands of educated, certified doctors than from guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens and gangs combined – Chicago and Detroit excepted. Maybe the MD training didn’t take? The MD certification was bogus?

trumped

Excellent smack down of this clown. The dr gun form also needs to go viral. GOA, are you reading this?

Elmo

I wonder if Dr. De also believes obtaining an abortion should be as difficult as becoming a doctor.
After all, pregnant women also hold a person’s life and future in their hands

Mack

“Gunquack”

It seems you’ve created a new word. I like it.

Now be sure an own it before it’s stolen.

Timothy Wheeler, MD

David and Ammoland, thanks for your dissection of the ridiculously ignorant Medical Economics article by Monya De. The dicey Dr. De has her own, uh, issues. We explore those and destroy her emotional rant in my own rebuttal, which Medical Economics editors realized they had to publish when they saw the scathing comments on Dr. De’s article from their own readers. It’s all taken care of in my Tuesday blog entry here https://drgo.us/?p=3967 .

Timothy Wheeler, MD
Director
Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership
A Project of the Second Amendment Foundation