# Harvard Study: WOULD BANNING FIREARMS REDUCE MURDER AND SUICIDE ?



## Bob Hubbard (Aug 27, 2013)

> A Harvard study released in the spring   to virtually no media attention  focused on the prevalence of gun  ownership in the United States versus those strict gun-control countries  in Europe the left is so fond of talking about.
> It was called, with disarming bluntness, *Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide?*
> 
> Its answer was: No.



Let us read that again since one of the arguments for the increased push for gun control was to reduce murder and suicide.

*Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide?

NO.

*http://www.bizpacreview.com/2013/08/24/harvard-study-proves-gun-grabbers-argument-dead-wrong-82127

Well, must be some drunk bloggers right?

Oh, wait.  Harvard.

Gotta be some stoned interns right?

Oh, couple of PHD's.

Well, damn.

Now, since the link above goes to one of those "gun nut blog thingys", and sources need to be cited....

*Here is the Direct Link to the Source Study.
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf
*
See that?  Source Study?  It's up there.  ---^ ---^  ----^  I made it bigger for easy reading for the old folks surfing on their C-64's. 

Oh, and as to the 2 guys who did the study...
http://www.garymauser.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Kates

In case anyone wants to whip out their cv's and measure stock or something.
:wavey:


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## billc (Aug 27, 2013)

That must be Chuck Harvard's school of interpretive dance...Right?


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## granfire (Aug 27, 2013)

Bob Hubbard said:


> Let us read that again since one of the arguments for the increased push for gun control was to reduce murder and suicide.
> 
> *&#8220;Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide?&#8221;
> 
> ...



well, there is one little flaw in your analysis of the study tho:
You seem to believe that stoner and PHD/Doctor is mutually exclusive!


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## arnisador (Aug 27, 2013)

Pretty much everything said in there is wrong, *granfire*. It's from a conservative organization's journal that is edited by Harvard students.



> The _*Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy*_ is a student-edited law review of conservative and libertarian legal scholarship. It was established by Harvard Law School students Spencer Abraham and Stephen Eberhard in 1978, leading to the founding of the Federalist Society, for which it is the official journal.
> 
> Notable authors include [...]Ted Cruz[...]William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia[...]Clarence Thomas, Ron Paul



It was written by a retired business administration professor from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, and a retired lawyer (no PhD--in fact, not even a JD but rather the older 2-year LLB) from The Independent Institute, an American libertarian think tank. From the journal's own web page:



> The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy is published three times  annually by the Harvard Society for Law & Public Policy, Inc., an  organization of Harvard Law School students.  The Journal is one of the  most widely circulated student-edited law reviews and the nations  leading forum for conservative and libertarian legal scholarship.



So, a lawyer and a business professor wrote an article that was approved by a couple of Harvard students to go into their student-run journal that is a student org., not a Harvard activity, and which is the official publication of the conservative Federalist Society (note that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was the founding faculty advisor to this organization). To say, as the website linked does, that this is "A Harvard study released in the spring" is all wrong--it wasn't a study from Harvard but rather a law review article from Canada, and it wasn't released by anyone--it was simply published. (There's a difference.) Anyway, let's also look at the full title of this article: 



> WOULD BANNING FIREARMS REDUCE MURDER AND SUICIDE?
> A REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL AND SOME DOMESTIC EVIDENCE




How many times have we been told here that intl. evidence is not worthwhile? That's the key subject under review here. (The lack of a Methodology section is a clue to it being a review rather than a more formal study--plus the use of the word "review" in the title.) As to their conclusion:



> CONCLUSION
> 
> This Article has reviewed a significant
> amount of evidence from a wide variety of
> ...





This is hardly neutral language (calling an opposing view a "mantra"), but this not surprising for a journal that is a conservative mouthpiece; but in addition saying they have shifted the burden of proof is a far cry from a resounding "NO".

Once again, the gun-nut side presents Ted Nugent evidence as though it was produced by Albert Einstein and hopes that if they lie about it loudly enough then people won't check for themselves and find out. There may be value to be found within this piece, but it is not what it is described as being--not even close.

Once again, that those of us who understand and respect the scientific method and academic approaches do not bust every piece of conservative nonsense posted doesn't mean it's not nonsense--it means that the people who listen to Fox News have already made up their minds  that facts don't matter, so it's pointless.


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## Big Don (Aug 27, 2013)

arnisador said:


> Pretty much everything said in there is wrong, *granfire*. It's from a conservative organization's journal that is edited by Harvard students.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Scientifically conducted studies only matter when they meet your preconceived world view...


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## arnisador (Aug 27, 2013)

Big Don said:


> Scientifically conducted studies only matter when they meet your preconceived world view...



Yes, that is the conservative position. This wasn't in any sense 'scientific' however. Neither author was a scientist, or even had the scientific law training that allegedly comes with a JD; the reviewers were students, not professionals; it wasn't conducted via the scientific method; and it wasn't published in a scientific journal. This article from a journal of "conservative and libertarian legal scholarship" may well have some value but not everything that is printed that fits your preconceived notions is therefore god-given truth.


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## Bob Hubbard (Aug 27, 2013)

Big Don said:


> Scientifically conducted studies only matter when they meet your preconceived world view...



That is the usual situation.

After all what would these guys possibly know about the topic?



> Gary A. Mauser is a Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Business Administration and the Institute  for Urban Canadian Research Studies at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.  Professor Mauser earned his Ph.D. from the University of California at Irvine.
> 
> His interest in firearms and &#8220;gun control&#8221; grew out of his research in political marketing.  He has published two books, Political Marketing, and Manipulating Public Opinion and more  than 20 articles. For the past 15 years, Professor Mauser has conducted research on the  politics of gun control, the effectiveness of gun control laws, and the use of firearms in  self defense.


http://www.garymauser.net/


> [h=1]Don Kates[/h] 			 								From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> 
> 
> *Don Kates* is a retired American professor of constitutional and criminal law, and a criminologist and research fellow with The Independent Institute in Oakland, California. His books include _Armed: New Perspectives On Gun Control_, _Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out_, _Firearms and Violence: Issues of Public Policy_, and _The Great American Gun Debate: Essays on Firearms and Violence_  (with Gary Kleck). As a civil liberties lawyer he has represented gun  owners attacking the constitutionality of certain firearms laws.
> ...


 A Business PHD and a Constitutional Law PHD.  2 types the anti-freedom libloonies fear.


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## Bob Hubbard (Aug 27, 2013)

arnisador said:


> Once again, that *those of us who understand and respect the scientific method and academic approaches* do not bust every piece of conservative nonsense posted doesn't mean it's not nonsense--it means that the people who listen to Fox News have already made up their minds  that facts don't matter, so it's pointless.



:roflmao:


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## Carol (Aug 27, 2013)

Bob Hubbard said:


> That is the usual situation.
> 
> After all what would these guys possibly know about the topic?
> 
> ...



Source for both please?  Gary Mauser's site says nothing about what his degree is in.  Also, the wikipedia page says nothing about Kates completing any degrees.  A doctorate in ConLaw in the US would be an S.J.D., not a Ph.D -- I'm a bit skeptical here.


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## arnisador (Aug 27, 2013)

In the article it states that Kates had an LLB as his highest degree--not even a JD, let alone a research doctorate like the SJD. He isn't doctorally educated.


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## Carol (Aug 27, 2013)

arnisador said:


> In the article it states that Kates had an LLB as his highest degree--not even a JD, let alone a research doctorate like the SJD. He isn't doctorally educated.



And Gary Mauser does not have a PhD in business.  He has a psych degree. 

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...ninstitute.org/index.php/team/116-gary-mauser


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## Bob Hubbard (Aug 27, 2013)

more information.
*Gary Mauser*
http://www.sfu.ca/~mauser/
Education
Ph. D., University of California, Irvine   (1970),   Psychology
B.A., University of California, Berkeley   (1964),   Psychology
From his CV http://www.sfu.ca/~mauser/cv/CV13.pdf


*Don B. Kates*
is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute.  He received his J.D. from Yale University Law School and has taught constitutional law and lectured on criminology at Stanford University,  Oxford University, Saint Louis University School of Law, and the  University of Melbourne.
http://www.independent.org/aboutus/person_detail.asp?id=739


Someone above who wrote "It was written by a retired business administration professor from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, and a retired lawyer (no PhD--in fact, not even a JD but rather the older 2-year LLB)" seems to be wrong. Again.  


> The Juris Doctor (J.D.) is a professional doctorate and first professional graduate degree in law. The degree is earned by completing law school in the United States or other common law countries...


Afraid on a quick search I can't find his CV listed.

From 1989




You can tell he's a college professor. Just look at the hair. 


Of course, to understand what a PHD is we can refer to wikipedia:


> A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that, in most countries, qualifies the holder to teach at the university level in the specific field of his or her degree, or to work in a specific profession. The research doctorate, or the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) and its equivalent titles, represents the highest academic qualification. While the structure of U.S. doctoral programs is more formal and complex than in some other systems, it is important to note that the research doctorate is not awarded for the preliminary advanced study that leads to doctoral candidacy, but rather for successfully completing and defending the independent research presented in the form of the doctoral dissertation (thesis). Several first-professional degrees use the term &#8220;doctor&#8221; in their title, such as the Juris Doctor and the US version of the Doctor of Medicine, but these degrees do not contain an independent research component or require a dissertation (thesis) and should not be confused with PhD degrees or other research doctorates



Or Mel Brooks, who holds a PHD in Stand Up Philosophy.


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## Carol (Aug 27, 2013)

Yale didn't offer the JD until 1971.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juris_Doctor


> The change from LL.B. to J.D. was intended to end this discriminatory practice of conferring what is normally a first degree upon persons who have already their primary degree.[SUP][64][/SUP] The J.D. was proposed as the equivalent of the J.U.D. in Germany to reflect the advanced study required to be an effective lawyer. The University of Chicago Law School was the first to offer it.[SUP][65][/SUP] While approval was still pending at Harvard, the degree was introduced at many other law schools including at the law schools at NYU, Berkeley, Michigan and Stanford. Because of tradition, and concerns about less famous universities implementing a J.D. program, prominent eastern law schools like those of Harvard, Yale and Columbia refused to implement the degree. Indeed, pressure from them led almost every law school (except at the University of Chicago and other law schools in Illinois) to abandon the J.D. and readopt the LL.B. as the first law degree by the 1930s.[SUP][66][/SUP]
> It was only after 1962 that a new push&#8212;this time begun at less-prominent law schools&#8212;successfully led to the universal adoption of the J.D. as the first law degree. Student and alumni support were key in the LL.B.-to-J.D. change, and even the most prominent schools were convinced to make the change: Columbia and Harvard in 1969, and *Yale, last, in 1971*.


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## Bob Hubbard (Aug 28, 2013)

Carol said:


> Yale didn't offer the JD until 1971.



ok? So?


Don B. Kates (LL.B., Yale, 1966) is an American criminologist and  constitutional lawyer associated with the Pacific Research Institute,  San Francisco.  Gary Mauser (Ph.D., University of California, Irvine,  1970) is a Canadian criminologist and university professor at Simon  Fraser University, Burnaby, BC Canada.
http://thebullelephant.com/harvard-law-gun-control-is-counterproductive/

So the LL.B is a Bachelors of Laws.  He got it in 1966, from Yale.  

Maybe he went back to school? Maybe it's honorary? Don't know, and since I can't find some big expose on him, don't care.

I see numerous sites listing him as having a JD from Yale.  A search including the word "fake" turns up nothing. Considering he's been doing this for decades, has papers and books published, is considered an expert by authorities.... If there were an issue with his credentials, some one should have noticed it by now.  Certainly if there were a problem major universities wouldn't keep including his work in their journals? I mean, certainly there has to be some level of review to get in.  I mean, if I could get a math article in the same journal as Arni, I think he'd go off his pizza.

Then again, maybe this is a first, and the rabid desire to discredit an opposing view has Scoobyed out something that no one else ever has. 


hmm... dejavu
http://forums.motortrend.com/70/937...unteers-with-guns-at-every-school/page15.html


In any event, the research is there, people can read it, or not.


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## Carol (Aug 28, 2013)

I don't think his credentials themselves are fake, I just don't see how they are a B-school PHD and a ConLaw PHD...the kind that teh lib'ruls fear.  Of course teh lib'ruls might fear 'em anyway _


_


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## Bob Hubbard (Aug 28, 2013)

Well Carol, you know I'm just too stupid to understand that.  

But...you know the diference between a liberal and a puppy?  A puppy stops whining when it grows up.


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## granfire (Aug 28, 2013)

Bob Hubbard said:


> Well Carol, you know I'm just too stupid to understand that.
> 
> But...you know the diference between a liberal and a puppy?  A puppy stops whining when it grows up.




By your definition every guy would be liberal....
:angel:


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## granfire (Aug 28, 2013)

arnisador said:


> Pretty much everything said in there is wrong, *granfire*. It's from a conservative organization's journal that is edited by Harvard students.



Uh, what?
What are you picking on me for?


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## Bob Hubbard (Aug 28, 2013)

granfire said:


> Uh, what?
> What are you picking on me for?



It's his way of round about shooting at me without having to actually read the study which might hurt his hard-coded mindset.  You get used to it. 

Arnisidor "poo poos" this as being something students published in a student run magazine.
Seems that most of these major universities have similar. Requirements are 'student, alumni, or expert'. (I'm summarizing there of course).



> The _Southwestern Law Review_ is a student-edited quarterly  journal that publishes scholarly articles and commentary on the law contributed  by prominent jurists, practitioners, law professors, and student members of the Law Review staff.





> The _Harvard Law Review_ is a student-run organization whose primary purpose is to  publish a journal of legal scholarship.
> 
> Aside from serving as an important academic forum for legal scholarship, the _Review_   has two other goals. First, the journal is designed to be an effective  research tool for  practicing lawyers and students of the law. Second,  it provides opportunities for _Review_  members to develop their  own editing and writing skills. Accordingly, each issue contains  pieces  by student editors as well as outside authors.
> 
> The _Review_ publishes articles by professors, judges, and  practitioners and  solicits reviews of important recent books from  recognized experts. All articles&#8212;even  those by the most respected  authorities&#8212;are subjected to a rigorous editorial process  designed to  sharpen and strengthen substance and tone.





> The _Stanford Law Review_ was organized in 1948 (see Warren Christopher's 1948 President's Page from Volume 1 of the _Review_). Each year the _Law Review_ publishes one volume, comprised of six separate issues. Each issue contains material written by student members of the _Law Review_, other Stanford law students, and outside contributors, such as law professors, judges, and practicing lawyers.&#65279;


Since students run these, and not anointed PHDs, it of course must be crap. /sarcasm.
I'm probably just showing how woefully ignorant and clueless I am, but these seem to be of a higher standard and quality than the local free-news paper or jr. high zine. 

Of course, rather than attempt to refute the data, research or conclusions, the usual 'discredit the authors and poster' method is used. 
Kates holds a degree from one of the hardest universities to get into in the US. He's had that degree years before most of the people here were out of grade school. He's a respected expert in the field, who has over 30 years experience in the subject.  Mauser likewise.  I can be forgiven for not taking 3 hours to track down everything mentioned in an authors bio blurb and factchecked it down to tracking down the dean of the U who signed their sheepskins.   

Unless someone has evidence that they have falsified their credentials, I think we can move on from attacking them and focus on the -actual content- of the study/review/article.


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## billc (Aug 28, 2013)

Well, obviously it isn't officially discredited until Breitbart.com covers it...so here is Breitbart.com's A.W.R. Hawkins commenting on the study...for those who are afraid of Breitbart...please refer to the beginning of this thread, the first post, so that you can read about the study there...

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/27/Harvard-Study-Shows-No-Correlation-Between-Strict-Gun-Control-And-Less-Crime-Violence



> For example, when the study shows numbers for Eastern European gun  ownership and corresponding murder rates, it is readily apparent that  less guns to do not mean less death. In Russia, where the rate of gun  ownership is 4,000 per 100,000 inhabitants, the murder rate was 20.52  per 100,000 in 2002. That same year in Finland, where the rater of gun  ownership is exceedingly higher--39,000 per 100,000--the murder rate was  almost nill, at 1.98 per 100,000.


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## arnisador (Aug 28, 2013)

Carol said:


> Yale didn't offer the JD until 1971.



Yup. Some schools offered to let older grads. refer to it as a J.D., if memory serves, because of complaints. He earned the two-year Bachelor of Laws degree common in most common-law countries but may have been granted permission from Yale to call it a JD. 

When the lawyers chose to upgrade their credentials via the "professionalization" process that had turned bachelors degrees in medicine etc. into doctorates like the MD--you can still find just a few people who earned a BVM and became veterinarians or a BPM and became podiatrists, but not many--they chose to make it a 3-year J.D. that was intended to be the "scientific study of the law". You can see its legacy in the fact that for physicians, dentists, and lawyers, the next degree in sequence is a master's degree. You don't often see the medical versions but many JDs will get a LLM--Master of Laws, in thinks like tax law esp. After the JD and a LLM they can apply for a SJD (Doctor of Juridical Science) program, which is a research doctorate like the PhD. If you look at the Wikipedia article on the JD you'll see that it is explicitly _not _considered the equivalent of a research doctorate. It's in line with other 2-3 year masters degrees like the MPH, MFA, and until recently the MPT.

Anyway, this guy earned a bachelor's degree--probably two of them, actually--but not a doctorate, and certainly not a research doctorate. He has the qualifications necessary for writing on the law but wouldn't have had even the minimal research education that comes with a JD.


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## arnisador (Aug 28, 2013)

granfire said:


> Uh, what?
> What are you picking on me for?



I wasn't--I was just referring to what you had quoted being wrong. It hyped the alleged qualifications of these men--wrong--and said it was a Harvard study--simply false--and misstated their conclusion by taking it from some random website, which is why I went to the journal and quoted the actual Conclusion section of their article in my reply, rather than the conclusion as filtered through the conservative/libertarian/they're-coming-to-get-my-guns mind. I was only pointing out that what you were responding to was nonsense and falsehoods.

It only required going to the actual article to see that these were not both PhDs and it wasn't a Harvard study (first page) and that their conclusion was waffling (last page before refs.). But the Breitbart-style reporting was being posted here again, and that's what I was deconstructing. Since it was apparently important enough that these were highly-qualified PhDs and no students were involved to shout it in the announcement, I assume the falsity of these will cause the credulous to reconsider and read the article that they are claiming supports their side. I know I'd be embarrassed to be so very wrong so very often.


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## Bob Hubbard (Aug 28, 2013)

arnisador said:


> Anyway, this guy earned a bachelor's degree--probably two of them, actually--but not a doctorate, and certainly not a research doctorate. He has the qualifications necessary for writing on the law but wouldn't have had even the minimal research education that comes with a JD.



Opinion. Speculation. Not fact.


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## Bob Hubbard (Aug 28, 2013)

arnisador said:


> I know I'd be embarrassed to be so very wrong so very often.



Ah, so you're finally admitting you've been repeatedly embarrassed by getting debunked regularly here.  Good. Good.  That's progress.


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## granfire (Aug 28, 2013)

arnisador said:


> I wasn't--I was just referring to what you had quoted being wrong. It hyped the alleged qualifications of these men--wrong--and said it was a Harvard study--simply false--and misstated their conclusion by taking it from some random website, which is why I went to the journal and quoted the actual Conclusion section of their article in my reply, rather than the conclusion as filtered through the conservative/libertarian/they're-coming-to-get-my-guns mind. I was only pointing out that what you were responding to was nonsense and falsehoods.
> 
> It only required going to the actual article to see that these were not both PhDs and it wasn't a Harvard study (first page) and that their conclusion was waffling (last page before refs.). But the Breitbart-style reporting was being posted here again, and that's what I was deconstructing. Since it was apparently important enough that these were highly-qualified PhDs and no students were involved to shout it in the announcement, I assume the falsity of these will cause the credulous to reconsider and read the article that they are claiming supports their side. I know I'd be embarrassed to be so very wrong so very often.



I just said that stoner and PhD is not necessarily mutually exclusive.....


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## arnisador (Aug 28, 2013)

granfire said:


> I just said that stoner and PhD is not necessarily mutually exclusive.....



Well, no argument there! Heck, there are PhDs that don't believe in evolution--I work with one.


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## Carol (Aug 28, 2013)

I found the differences in degrees (or lack therof) to be interesting!  I thought seriously about becoming a lawyer myself -- I did well on the LSAT but not quite well enough for a good school to "show me the money".  I decided I didn't love the law enough to go that far in to debt :lol:

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/09/28/why-did-law-schools-switch-from-llbs-to-jds/


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## arnisador (Aug 28, 2013)

I think NH still allowed one to become a lawyer by apprenticing for 7 or so years--no degree needed--as late as the 90s, but I'm not sure if it's still so. It would have been wildly impractical, but possible!

It used to be possible to still get a LL.B. in some LA colleges (because of the French influence on their civil laws), but again I'm not sure if that's still so. The trend in many places (Canada, Australia) is toward more schools offering a JD as a second degree, though the majority are still first-entry LLBs (you start law or med. school as a freshman, in essence).

But the point remains that if the PhD degree is so important to this article, as was claimed, then it's worth noting that JD isn't the same type of degree (a research doctorate) and the LLB isn't even close, and that anyone who had even glanced at the article would have seen that Kates identifies himself as having an LLB as his highest degree. That's a (second-entry, most likely) bachelor's degree.


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## arnisador (Oct 27, 2013)

[h=1]PA Medical Society Says Gun Violence Is A Health Problem[/h]



> The Pennsylvania Medical Society has joined the ranks of physician and scientist groups calling gun violence a public health problem.
> 
> The declaration came out of the Society&#8217;s annual meeting over the weekend.
> 
> ...


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## billc (Oct 27, 2013)

Actually, criminals are a health problem...not the guns.  Drunk drivers are a health problem, not the cars...

Keep in mind, gun violence is decreasing, not increasing...with no help from these doctors...


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## Big Don (Oct 27, 2013)

arnisador said:


> *PA Medical Society Says Gun Violence Is A Health Problem*


The only cure is an injection of lead, at high speeds...


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