I am always impressed by the sheer volume of discussion available on the internet on almost any subject. Politics, most specifically Second Amendment political discussion is particularly close to my heart and gets the majority of my attention.
When I discovered Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws, I was pretty darned happy. As a scientist and professional myself, I became involved with the public push for firearms rights simply because I felt I was part of a demographic that was not being seen by the public. I wanted to let people see a middle aged professional woman was also a gun owner and believer in the right to keep and bear arms, as our Founding Fathers intended the good citizens of our country to be.
I ran across an article on the DSL site and got quite a kick out of it.
In 1662 the Armarium Urguentum advised physicians on the treatment of gunshot and other wounds:
If the wound is large, the weapon with which the patient has been wounded should be anointed daily; otherwise, every two or three days. The weapon should be kept in pure linen and a warm place but not too hot, nor squalid, lest the patient suffer harm.[1]
Well, damn. I had to read it twice to be sure it said what I thought it said. This is where it all began, I guess. More than three hundred forty years ago, some idiot thought that treating the weapon was going to make a difference in the resultant recovery of an individual set upon and injured by someone using a weapon.
And it continues today. Fools and charlatans continue to blather on about “gun violence”, as if a gun has any inherent violent characteristic and was somehow able to behave in any many other than doing whatever its owner directs it to in his or her manner of use.
Read the article – these bright, dedicated, educated and articulate people have said it better than I ever could have.
With footnotes.
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