Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 05:33:59 -0700 From: rineer@QUIXNET.NET (Kenneth Rineer) Subject: New AMA president is making gun safety major cause for action To: AZRKBA@asu.edu
The following is for you education/information purposes only:
Ken Rineer President, FACT
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Printed in the Arizona Daily Star Thursday, 21 June 2001
New AMA president is making gun safety major cause for action
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHICAGO - The new president of the American Medical Association is making gun safety his platform, prompting concern that the usually cautious doctors' group is straying too far into social activism.
"There is an epidemic and it's an American epidemic of handgun violence," Dr. Richard Corlin said Wednesday at the AMA's annual meeting in advance of his inauguration speech focusing on the issue.
To fight the problem, Corlin said, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "must have the budget and the authority to gather the detailed data we need."
Corlin, 60, a gastroenterologist from Santa Monica, Calif., said the AMA will lobby Congress to boost CDC funding. He also urged more research into whether gun trigger locks work, ways to reduce accidental shootings and how youngsters obtain weapons.
Gun-related violence has been a divisive issue for the AMA, which considers itself a leader on public health issues such as tobacco use but has been less willing to take a strong stand on more controversial issues, such as the death penalty.
While violence is easy to deplore, expanding the category to include gun safety has some doctors wondering whether the AMA will be seen as opposing the right to bear arms.
Others fear Corlin's position will put the AMA in the crosshairs of the National Rifle Association, whose influence helped prompt a $2.6 million cut in CDC funding for collection of detailed statistics on gun-related injuries and deaths.
NRA research coordinator Paul Blackman said Corlin's platform is a "smoke screen" and the AMA is delving into gun control.
Dr. Robert Woolley, a Minnesota physician who belongs to both the AMA and the NRA, fears Blackman is right and said he probably will not renew his AMA membership next year.