This study is pretty interesting… Researchers in Washington State took hospital records from 2006 and 2007 and found all the firearm-related hospitalizations (FRH) through diagnosis codes. They then matched those cases with hospitalized patients who were not hospitalized for FRH. They used frequency matching, which is one of the various types of matching you do when conducting a case-control or retrospective cohort…
This is going to be about suicide. Please click here to be taken to something lighter if you don’t feel like reading this today. It will always be here for you to read. I won’t get offended if you go check out puppies. I’m not really surprised when I hear that firearms are the preferred method of suicide in the…
One of the most common counter-arguments from people who oppose any form of gun control is that people will kill people with other “tools” if guns are not around. They’ll say that guns are just “tools” and that it’s the “bad” person holding the gun who has a say in whether or not someone will get killed with a gun.…
The US Representative (Scott Perry) for my district had a “town hall” over Facebook the other night. He was sitting in his Washington office and took questions from people watching the live feed. On the one hand, I’d like to give him credit for taking questions from his critics (like myself). On the other, he answered a question about gun…
I’ll be one of the first people to admit that I wish things were like they were 20 years ago. I was a teenager, and the world was mine for the taking. I was in college, and I had a ton of places that I would go “conquer.” My friends and I played soccer once or twice a week, and…
Quick, what’s the difference between a gun and a swimming pool? Don’t answer that. It’s a stupid question. Anyone with a grade school education — or even no education — should be able to tell the difference between the two. However, there continues to be this comparison between guns and swimming pools in trying to justify the refusal of any…
NOTE: Before you read any further, please consider bidding on an 8×10 print of a palace building in Korea. All proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders. Click here to check it out. Thank you. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were 39,518 suicides in the United States in 2011 (the year for which there are the…
My thing is public health, and there is an enormous public health problem in Baltimore, where I work and will be going to school in September. This past weekend, a total of 20 people were shot. Eight of them died. Here is a story from the Baltimore Sun about the shootings. As of today, there have been 110 homicides in…
[row][span size=’5′]A lot of bad things have come together in Pakistan to produce an outbreak of measles that is incredible in its scope and size. According to news reports, there have been almost 12,000 cases reported in the Punjab region of Pakistan over the last 5 months. That’s 2,400 cases per month, or about 80 cases per day. It’s just…
The town council in Nelson, Georgia, has passed a law requiring every household to have a gun and ammunition. I’m not kidding. And they’re not alone: “Despite the skepticism surrounding it, Nelson’s “Family Protection Ordinance” is actually the latest in a series of toothless, symbolic measures proposed around the country. Spring City, Utah, approved a resolution in February that recommended…
