[Update] Interestingly, the article now requires a subscription to read.  It didn’t earlier…I wonder what changed over the course of a few hours? [Update to the update] I figured it out…the article was published online on July 9…it was published in their print version due out tomorrow (July 31).  Apparently, when the article went to print, they changed its status from free to subscription required.[/Update to the update]  Anyway, the reason I went back is because my friend reminded me that I didn’t include the search terms that people may be looking for in reference to this editorial, so…the title is “Guns and Health”, published online on July 9, 2008 and the authors were Jeffrey M. Drazen, Stephen Morrissey and Gregory D. Curfman.

Since they found it necessary to require a subscription to read it from their site, I redirected the below link to a pdf copy that I downloaded when it was still provided for free. [/Update]

It was actually published a couple of weeks ago and is very similar to an article that several bloggers hit on that was put out a week or so before the Heller decision.

It’s nothing really new:  Lamentations about the fact that SCOTUS has acknowledged that the Second Amendment actually means what it says, rather than what they wish it meant.

The Supreme Court has launched the country on a risky epidemiologic experiment. The announcement by the Court last month of its decision in District of Columbia v. Heller,1 which struck down a ban on handgun ownership in the nation’s capital, has set the stage for legal challenges to gun regulation in other major American cities.

The mandatory predictions of impending disaster.

Out of context statistics…

In 2005, the last year with complete data, there were more than 30,000 deaths and 70,000 nonfatal injuries from firearms.3 About one quarter of the nonfatal injuries and a tenth of the deaths were in children and adolescents. To place these numbers in perspective, 10 times as many Americans die each year from firearms as have died in the Iraq war during the past 5 years.

…used to draw unsupported conclusions.

Citing studies that have been thoroughly debunked.

For example, a careful study demonstrated that the 1976 restrictive handgun law in the District of Columbia, which was the focus of the Heller case, resulted in an immediate decline of approximately 25% in homicides and suicides by firearms, but there was no such decline in adjacent areas that did not have restrictive laws.

And, of course, the Jekyll and Hyde shift from supporting federal regulation to advocating local control when it happens to be convenient to them.

Given the diversity of geography and population in the United States, lawmakers throughout the country need the freedom and flexibility to apply gun regulations that are appropriate to their jurisdictions.

Basically, just your standard issue PSH coming from a dedicated anti-gun lobby group.  

It is a shame to see such manifestly intelligent people going through these mental gymnastics in an effort to support an unsupportable position.  Surely they realize how ridiculous they look.