Data collection system needed for gun injuries

Guns have been so tied up with the American myth of the cowboys doing justice with their six shooters and with rights laid down in the Constitution that it has been impossible to discuss the gun control issue in a rational way, a New York seminar was told last week.

Dr Robert Seltzer, executive director of Doctors Against Handgun Injury, said that the Supreme Court had ruled more than 60 years ago that the second amendment of the Constitution, which gives citizens the right to bear arms, applied to state militia, not to individuals. But gun supporters …