In an interview, Dr. Geoffrey Jackman says, with a straight face, that the study he conducted with three other doctors was simply about "common sense and education" more than anything else. But his study is junk science at its worst whose conclusions are designed to give the gun-grabbers more supposedly "scientific evidence" to argue for banning the private ownership of firearms.
The study in question -- titled Seeing Is Believing: What Do Boys Do When They Find A Real Gun? -- was published in the June, 2001, issue of Pediatrics magazine. What these doctors, who obviously have too much free time on their hands, did was put together, in an outpatient center, 64 boys -- in groups of two and three -- ages 8 to 12-years-old. Two water pistols and a real .380 caliber handgun were concealed in separate drawers. These boys were observed for up to 15 minutes through a one-way mirror.
Well, guess what? As Dr. Jackman told us, "the obvious" happened. Seventy-six percent of the boys handled the real gun, 48 percent pulled its trigger. More than 90 percent of those who did this reported they had received "some sort of gun safety instruction." The conclusion: "Many 8-12-year-old boys will handle a handgun if they find one. Guns that are kept in homes should be stored in a manner that renders them inaccessible to children..."
But this phony study proves no such thing about "homes." As one correspondent wrote to Pediatrics magazine, a correct conclusion would have been: "Guns that are kept in hospitals should not be stored in a context that suggests they are playthings, such as in a cabinet with toys that test subjects have been encouraged to investigate." Amen! Bull's eye!
So, what's this study really about? Well, another correspondent wrote to Pediatrics, in part: "I suspect it is published more to further a political agenda than to offer discovery to the scientific community or the people in general." Again, amen! Another bull's eye!
Commenting on this study on the Cable News Network (6/5/2001), reporter Rhonda Rowland said: "These latest findings support the American Academy Of Pediatrics' recommendations that the best way to prevent gun-related deaths and injuries to children is to get rid of firearms in homes and communities"(emphasis mine).
And in an interview on ABC's Good Morning America (6/5/2001), Dr. Harold Simon, one of the doctors conducting the study, said, explicitly, in part: "So, the best thing to do to prevent these injuries (to children) is to remove the guns from the home" (emphasis mine).
So much for Dr. Jackman's assertion that his study is simply about "common sense and education." In fact, when we pressed him, and asked if he agreed with Dr. Simon -- that guns should be grabbed and removed from the home -- he said: "Yes, if you own a child that would be our recommendation." Why? "Because they are going to play with it. Why not try to prevent something that is absolutely one of the easiest things to prevent and that is the death of a child?"
Is he aware that more children are killed by drowning in water buckets every year than are killed accidentally by guns? "Certainly. I get that argument all the time." Still, he says, guns are "the one item I picked."
Should all water buckets be removed from the home, too? "I think that more than anything else your children need to be kinda watched especially around places where there is water, swimming pools for instance."
But should all water buckets be removed from the home? "I think that is a little bit extreme." Even though they kill more kids than guns? "You could argue anything. Children die from all kinds of things. They die in more numbers from other things." Indeed. So, why pick on guns?
How about self-defense? Studies show that every year as many as 2-3 million people use guns in self-defense. So, why would Dr. Jackman want to take all guns out of all homes where there are kids when among these 2-3 million there had to be kids whose safety was preserved by using guns? "Well, that's your argument. My situation is that I see the kids shot and killed."
But you don't see the kids defended by guns, right? "I haven't heard of a child that was defended by a gun, for a while. I have not heard of or seen a child defended by a gun, in my line of work, nor have my colleagues for quite some time I'm sure." Right. And I'm sure this is true, too. Because gun-grabbers like Dr. Jackman and his colleagues don't care about self-defense.
No doubt it has not occurred to Dr. Jackman, but most of the children who were defended by people with guns did not need a doctor!
Dr. Jackman says more than once that there's "a very good chance" a child will play with a gun if a gun is in the house. OK, so what, exactly, is this chance? What percent of homes with guns have kids in the home, and in what percent of those homes do kids play with guns and shoot selves or others? He ignores this question. Instead, he says that in Georgia, between 20 and 30 percent of homes with guns have kids and 23 percent of these gun-owners said they could trust their child with a loaded gun. Dr. Jackman says that he considers someone a child up to the age of 18.
Does he believe the Second Amendment protects right of private citizens to keep and bear arms? "It's more of a privilege," he says, but "you can do what you want." But is there a right to keep and bear arms? "That's not part of my debate and that's not part of my study." His study "is all about the kids who come in to see me in the emergency department dead... I'm pro-child."
Evading questions about his view on the Second Amendment and gun control, Dr. Jackman says his study is "more about common sense and education than anything else." When asked what, precisely, was the kind of firearms instruction these kids had received?, he replies, incredibly: "That was the one thing I did not specifically ask them" (!).
Finally, a few facts that render this absurd study even more ridiculous and unnecessary. First, according to the Centers For Disease Control, gun deaths for Americans under the age of 20 have fallen 35 percent in America from 1994 to 1998.
Secondly, according to the National Safety Council (NSC), as of 1996, the odds of dying, unintentionally, over a lifetime from a "firearm missile" is number 12 behind dying, unintentionally, from accidents involving: motor vehicles; falls; poisoning by solids, liquids, gases, vapors; pedestrians; drowning; fire and flames; drowning by submersion (excluding water transport drownings previously mentioned); choking; complications, misadventures of surgical, medical care; and inhalation and ingestion of other objects.
Did you notice that medical category ahead of firearms? According to the NSC, the odds of dying unintentionally, during a lifetime, from medical mishaps, is one in 1,194. Whereas the odds of dying unintentionally, during a lifetime, from a firearm missile is one in 3,096.
In addition, on this last point, which is particularly ironic and relevant, a 1999 study by the National Academy Of Science's Institute Of Medicine revealed that as many as 98,000 people are killed annually, just in hospitals, by medical mistakes. In 1996, 200 children under the age of five died accidentally from guns.
So, while it's true that guns in a doctor's office might be dangerous to those in the doctor's office, a far greater danger -- many times over -- would be the doctor! -- especially if he treated you. Nothing, of course, is said about this deadly possibility in the study by Dr. Jackman and his fellow gun-grabbers.
Quite obviously, a child is safer in a gun store than in a doctor's office.