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Garen Wintemute, MD, MPH
Violence Prevention Research Program University of California, Davis Sacramento

JAMA. 1996;276(13):1035.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In Reply.

—I agree with Mr Feldman's point that a reactive, uninformed "gun control" policy may have unintended negative consequences. I disagree with his contention (not a surprising one, coming as it does from an industry representative) that we should therefore abandon the product-oriented approach. Mr Feldman sets up a straw man by arguing that any attention given to firearms per se ignores the "user factors" he cites. I am not aware that anyone, whatever their position on firearms policy may be, suggests that these human factors should be ignored: I certainly do not.

Rather, we have largely ignored any possible effect on firearm violence that is attributable to firearms themselves—a head-in-the-sand approach that we have forsworn in recent decades, with highly beneficial results, in the case of both motor vehicles and cigarettes.

Consider, as just 1 example, the hundreds of thousands of inexpensive handguns produced each year by the southern California . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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