In case you missed it in the mainstream media, news flash: Doctors Hate Guns. In case you missed your reality check afterward, that’s nothing more than yet another hyperbolic, unsubstantiated opinion the liberal-leaning media want you to believe.
See, the Associated Press and its journalistic cohorts just tells you part of the story—the part that the American Medical Association (AMA) wants you to believe. But here are some of the things they don’t tell you, probably because they don’t even consider it themselves.
OK, first, the AMA issued a media release proclaiming that the organization has approved a “sweeping set of actions aimed at reducing the toll of U.S. firearm deaths.” These include such anti-gunner favorites as banning so-called “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines, raising the age to purchase a gun to 21 and keeping schools gun-free, except for law enforcement.
Now we all know that those are just superficial talking points that on the surface sound like they’re going to reduce the incidence of gun-related deaths and injuries. We tried an “assault weapon” ban once before. It had little to no effect on crime involving firearms. So really, these ideas (and there isn’t a new one among them) merely infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners, leaving those with criminal intent the ability to wreak havoc easier and with less threat of someone stopping them from committing violence. Gun-free schools? Yeah, that works. The media blows successful shootings all out of proportion, but whenever someone stops a gunman during a school shooting, you hear little about that. For that matter, even when an armed citizen stops a shooting spree, it gets little notice.
But more important, the media propagates the notions that the AMA represents all doctors and that all doctors are of a single mind on the topic. But as Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership (DRGO) asserts, that isn’t the case at all. Less than 25 percent of the nation’s doctors are AMA members. So, while the AMA makes it sound like its stand had near unanimous support because the vote was 446 to 99, well, see, they’re overlooking all the docs who aren’t members. No mention of that in most reports.
So, if we can’t rely on mainstream media to give us both sides of story, it’s no wonder that faith in such outlets is at an abysmally low point.
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