DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE, Rochester, NY: Saturday, October 24, 1992 DOCTORS URGE BULLET TAX TO SOLVE GUN VIOLENCE EPIDEMIC Gannet News Service WASHINGTON -- The American fascination with guns has created a public health crisis of epidemic proportions and a tax on bullets could pay for a national solution, doctors told a Senate panel yesterday. "It is time to bite the bullet back," said George Lundberg, editor in chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The AMA's spectrum of publications devoted June issues to gun deaths and injuries as health matters. Lundberg and other doctors testifying to a Senate panel on Social Security and family policy urged government to study gun violence the same way it examined traffic deaths in the 1950s and 1960s. Public health data collected about traffic deaths have helped craft laws and educational efforts that Lundberg said cut the number of those deaths 13 percent from 1980 to 1990. But deaths and injuries from guns, especially handguns, are escalating. AMA trustee Robert McAfee, a Portland, Maine, surgeon, noted that while the American population increased 26 percent between 1960 and 1990, the homicide rate from guns rose 160 percent. Violence is the No. 1 cause of injury among women, he said, and the leading cause of death for all teen-age boys is gunshot wounds. Noting that violent injuries add about $5.3 billion to the U.S. healthcare tab -- mainly to pay for high cost emergency care -- McAfee said, "Frankly, I'm a little sick and tired of being sent the bill for violence and then being criticized for the high cost of health care." Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., the panel's chairman, has proposed a federal tax on bullets, which would pay for a special center that would study, as a public health issue, the causes and effects of gun violence. The doctors who testified yesterday favored the legislation. But the National Rifle Association objects to the bill, as it does to any measure concerning guns, as unconstitutional. The Second Amendment says the citizenry has the right to keep and bear arms. X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X Another file downloaded from: The NIRVANAnet(tm) Seven & the Temple of the Screaming Electron Taipan Enigma 510/935-5845 Burn This Flag Zardoz 408/363-9766 realitycheck Poindexter Fortran 510/527-1662 Lies Unlimited Mick Freen 801/278-2699 The New Dork Sublime Biffnix 415/864-DORK The Shrine Rif Raf 206/794-6674 Planet Mirth Simon Jester 510/786-6560 "Raw Data for Raw Nerves" X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X