The American Marxist Association

Back in the day I remember my dad, a small town family doctor, getting the JAMA or Journal of the American Medical Association. It often had some gross picture of a tumor or a seeping wound or something. I also recall my dad even back then grumbling about the direction of the AMA or American Medical Association. The AMA touts itself as THE representative organization representing physicians but as even leftist Mother Jones pointed out in 2016, that is not at all true:

The AMA Represents Only About One-Sixth of All Doctors

It included this graph….

What is amusing is that Mother Jones published this when Trump nominated Dr. Tom Price to be Secretary of Health and Human Services but in reality it seems that the AMA has far more in common ideologically with Mother Jones than it does with rank and file physicians.

What is worth pointing out is that 5 out of 6 doctors or over 83% of physicians actively reject membership in the AMA for a variety of reason. It is not like the AMA isn’t advertising, our daughter in medical school gets an endless parade of solicitations to join the AMA. The hope obviously is that she will join while in medical school and then just keep paying dues throughout her career. Those letters from the AMA end up in the trash.

Another factor to point out, and this one is critical to understand, is that the American Medical Association is not a medical organization nor a scientific one. It is a political advocacy organization and a decidedly left-wing one at that. Just as the National “Education” Association has nothing to do with actual education, the AMA is not really concerned with medicine as such. The publications about medical research are cover for an agenda that is not representative of the vast majority of physicians.

With that in mind I draw your attention to a decidedly dishonest recent post from Dr. Jack Resneck Jr.. M.D. who serves as the current president of the AMA. Resnick is a dermatologist from San Francisco and recently published this:

Recent mass shootings create new urgency for gun reform

As is always the case, the response to “gun violence” never seems to focus on the people who are actually committing the gun violence. Rather the “solution” invariably seems to be disarming people that Dr. Resneck would admit, were he an honest man, are not actually committing the gun violence.

The “solutions” he demands are the same tired laundry list of actions that a thinking person would understand would do almost nothing to reduce incidents of gun violence in America.

We continue to urge Congress to advance policies outlined by the AMA, including banning the sale and possession of assault-style rifles like those used in Colorado Springs and Uvalde and so many other places. We need lawmakers to heed our call for background checks and waiting periods for all firearm purchases, ban the manufacture and sale of 3D-printed guns, and develop enhanced safety education programs to promote greater responsibility in the use and storage of firearms.

Physicians witness the devastating effects of firearm violence every day. We do our best to save the lives of those whose bodies have been torn apart by high-velocity rounds fired from weapons developed for military use, weapons that should never be present on our streets and in our schools. We seek to comfort the families of gunshot victims as they grieve senseless loss.

It is important to notice that Dr. Resneck speaks of both the new sale of “assault-style rifles” as well as the possession. In other words, there wouldn’t be a grandfather provision so presumably you would either have to turn in your AR-15 or become a felon.

While it is true that physicians (although not dermatologists generally) do see gunshot victims every day, the reality of gun violence in America is that very few of those admitted to emergency rooms are the result of being shot by an “assault-style”, “developed for military use” rifle. This is common knowledge that even a busy dermatologist should have time to find with a modicum of effort. From the FBI in 2019….

Rifles are very rarely identified as the weapon used in homicides, never more than 389 times in a year from 2015-2019. That same year, 2017, we see that handguns were used in over 7,000 homicides. There are thousands of “type not stated” homicides but it is fair to assume very few of those were rifles of any sort. Then from Statista….

The pattern holds true in 2021. More people are murdered in an average year by being punched or kicked than killed by rifles, and according to the FBI report knives are used around 4 times more often in homicide than rifles. Even blunt objects like hammers and clubs are used more often to kill people than rifles.

His other demands are similarly moronic. Ban the manufacture of 3-D printed guns? How exactly would he propose doing that as the files for 3-D frames are widely available and easily downloaded (mostly) anonymously via torrents? Does this guy think that someone who is not discouraged by laws against….killing people….will be turned from a life of crime by making it illegal to 3-D print a Glock frame? GTFOH. Autosears for those same Glocks, or “dey switches”, that convert a semi-auto pistol into a fully automatic pistol are also easily manufactured at home. That is illegal of course but the ease of Da’nanana obtaining those “switches” is at least in part of blame for the increased number of mass shootings. Spraying into a crowd with a fully automatic Glock and emptying your 27 round mag isn’t a recipe for accurate shooting, especially when holding the Glock sideways.

Or “expanded background checks”. Does he think that Ja’Dbag is going to submit to a background check when buying a stolen Glock from the trunk of a car in Baltimore? In my admittedly amateurish research it seems to me that most mass shootings are committed with guns that were illegally obtained several times along the way, either because they were stolen or were purchased via a straw purchase, and are bought by people already legally prohibited from buying and possessing a handgun in the first place.

Dr. Resneck isn’t dumb, you don’t get through medical school, a dermatology residency and become the President of the AMA if you are unintelligent. However you can do all of those things and still be a combination of ignorant and dishonest. I cut some slack to genuinely stupid people who make stupid statements but when someone intelligent enough to know better says something that is more dishonest than anything else? I have very little tolerance for that.

Dr. Resneck won’t say the things that would actually reduce gun violence because mostly it revolves around some version of “lock up violent black and brown criminals, and leave them there to rot instead of putting them back on the street to commit more crimes”. I suspect that like most of the elites in America Jack Resneck Jr. shares their near pathological craving to be accepted by the other elites, especially those further up the elite chain than their current perch. It is remarkable how insecure the upper echelon of America truly is. I would guess that many of them are terrified of losing their perch and falling back into the ranks of the average and mediocre. As Billy Valentine quipped:

To maintain their position, they will do and say whatever they are told by their betters.

If Jack Resnack Jr. really gave a shit about reducing gun violence he might consider taking off a few days from treating petulant pimple-faced rich kids in San Francisco and crossing over into majority black & brown Oakland to engage in “violence interruption”, and not with bodyguards and cameras snapping promotional pics. But he doesn’t and you know he doesn’t because his self-congratulatory and pretentious essay avoids any mention of the source of actual gun violence and instead keys on things that he has to know won’t do a damn thing to cut down on the bloodshed.

Bottom line, feel free and indeed highly encouraged to ignore any and all advice from the American Medical Association.