Doctors citing fake mass-shooting data to justify questioning patients about guns

If your doctor asks about your guns, it's time for a new doctor.

(Photo-illustration from licensed Shutterstock account.)

by Lee Williams

Fake mass-shooting data has infected the medical community for a long time, and the infection is spreading. As soon as one anti-gun doctor publishes flawed research, another like-minded physician will piggyback on the previous study. It’s almost like the children’s telephone game, because the final message is always indecipherable.

Too many health care professionals see their role as anti-gun advocates rather than primary care providers The want to gaslight the public into believing firearms constitute a public health crisis, so they can quiz their patents about gun ownership in the hopes they’ll relinquish their guns.  

The latest fake news, which was published by Advances in Pediatrics, was titled: “A Review of Community-Based Gun Violence Prevention Programs and the Physician’s Role.”

Paige J. DeBlieux, MD, was the lead author. It should be noted that Dr. DeBlieux graduated from the University of South Florida’s medical school just last year.

DeBlieux and her three coauthors let readers know right away that their report is based on fake data from a debunked source, and therefore not worth the pixels used to post it on the website.

“According to the Gun Violence Archive, an independent research and data collection organization established in 2013, injury and death by nonsuicide-related GV has nearly doubled since 2014,” the report states.

The Gun Violence Archive has been debunked more than a dozen times just on this site alone. Even some in the gun-ban industry have moved on from the GVA and are using other, less-notorious data sources. The GVA uses an overly broad definition of a mass shooting, which creates inflated statistics designed to hoodwink the public. For example, according to the GVA’s all-inclusive definition, there were 417 mass shootings in 2019. The FBI says there were 30, because it uses a much narrower and more realistic definition.

The highlight of DeBlieux’s research is that physicians should intrude in their patients’ lives by questioning them about firearms. This was music to the ears of Cameron Nereim, MD, who works at the University of South Florida — Dr. DeBlieux’s alma mater — as an adolescent and young adult medicine specialist.

Dr. Nereim used DeBlieux’s research to further his own personal agenda — that firearms constitute a “public health problem.”

“It’s increased over the past decade to two decades in particular. What we've seen is, since 2014, there's been this spike in the rates of non-suicide related firearm injuries, in particular, among children and adolescents,” Nereim is quoted as saying in a story published earlier this month by WUSF, the National Public Radio affiliate located on the USF campus.

Nereim told WUSF that DeBlieux’s report “encouraged physicians to incorporate discussions about firearm safety in routine patient visits, including talking about safe storage and usage.” However, Nereim didn’t stop there. He wants doctors to become anti-gun advocates.

“I think that there's a lot of really innovative and effective solutions that are out there and I think as clinicians we can be part of the advocacy, to bring these programs and these potential interventions, to break the cycle of violence within communities, and to also to effectively communicate that violence is not the answer,” he said.

Nereim’s CV mentions nothing about any firearm or firearm safety expertise. He did not return call or emails seeking his comments for this story.  

DRGO

“Gun safety” is the term public health activists use when they actually mean “gun control,” according to Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership. The DRGO was founded in 1994 in response to “a coordinated public health campaign against gun rights.”

Today, the DRGO is a nationwide network of doctors, health professionals and others who support the right to keep and bear arms.

John Edeen, MD, is a pediatric orthopedic surgeon who serves as DRGO’s membership director. He takes a dim view of physicians quizzing their patients about firearms.

“They have absolutely no qualification to do that,” Edeen said Tuesday. “They are trying to disarm their patients. All of this is coming from academia. It’s all politically motivated.”

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