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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, June 26, 2008

“A Fraud on the American People”

Dr. Bill Durston Responds to Supreme Court Second Amendment Ruling

Sacramento, June 26, 2008: Dr. Bill Durston, Democratic candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in California's 3 rd Congressional District, issued the following statement regarding today's Supreme Court decision striking down the Washington DC ban on new acquisition of handguns:

Gun related deaths and injuries are epidemic in our country. Children in the United States are killed by guns at a rate that is 12 times higher than in the other 25 leading industrialized countries of the world. More U.S. civilians are killed by guns every year in our country than all the U.S. soldiers killed in the entire 11-year Vietnam War. Ten times more U.S. civilians are killed every year by guns than were killed in the September 11 terrorist attacks. The most important factor distinguishing the United States from other democratic countries that have one tenth or less the rate of gun-related deaths is the widespread availability of guns, and particularly handguns, in our country.

One of the myths perpetrated by the gun lobby is that honest citizens should keep guns for protection. The truth is, guns in the home of honest citizens are much more likely to be used to kill or injure someone in the home than to protect against an attacker. In one of the best studies on this subject, published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, it was shown that for every one time that a gun in the home was used to kill an attacker, there were 43 gun-related deaths of a household member.

Another myth perpetrated by the gun lobby has been the misrepresentation of the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment states, “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state , the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” In two previous cases, U.S. v. Miller (1939) and Lewis v. United States (1980), the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment guarantees a collective right of “the people” to keep armed militias, such as the current day National Guard, not an unfettered right of each and every citizen to own guns. The late Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger called the gun lobby's misrepresentation of the Second Amendment “one of the greatest pieces of fraud on the American public by special interests that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

Today, a five-member majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, including recent Bush appointees, Justices Alito and Roberts, became a party to this fraud in striking down the Washington DC ban on new acquisition of handguns on the basis that it violated the Second Amendment. The Washington DC handgun ban, enacted in 1976, led to a 25% drop in homicides and a 23% drop in suicides in that city. The homicide and suicide rates in Washington DC will undoubtedly go back up as a result of today's Supreme Court ruling, and the ruling also threatens other firearm laws across the country.

The United States has been criticized as a country that loves its guns more than its children. The epidemic of gun-related deaths and injuries will continue in our country until we adopt the same kind of sensible firearm regulations that are in place in other civilized nations which still allow legitimate hunters and target shooters to practice their sports but which have far lower rates of gun violence. Today's Supreme Court decision is a step in the wrong direction.

Dr. Bill Durston is an emergency physician who has practiced in the Sacramento area for over 25 years. He is a decorated Marine combat veteran of Vietnam and a former expert marksman. He is the past president of the Sacramento Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and former Injury Prevention Chair of the California Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians.

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