BELLEVUE, WA – A pro-rights doctors’ organization has just released a “White Paper” to educate people about the proposed Hearing Protection Act of 2017, which would make firearms sound suppressors more available to the public, the Second Amendment Foundation noted today.
Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership is a project of SAF. Founded more than 20 years ago, DRGO is a nationwide advocacy and watchdog group of physicians and other health professionals who provide commentary and scrutiny of policy and medical literature dealing with firearms ownership, use and misuse. It serves as a guard against biased, policy-directed pseudoscience that would hinder gun ownership under the guise of legitimate science. The report explains that a “causal relationship between loud noise exposure and irreversible hearing loss and chronic tinnitus have long been recognized by medicine and the U.S. government.”
According to SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, information in the DRGO White Paper “underscores the importance of research in the decision-making process, as opposed to relying merely on emotional arguments.” The White Paper, titled “Position Paper in Favor of Firearm Suppressors to Prevent Hearing Loss,” may be read here.
“Our purpose at SAF is to educate rather than advocate,” Gottlieb noted. “The DRGO document corrects a lot of misinformation and explains a lot in a very short presentation. We think that the more people who read this report, the better they will understand the issue. Using suppressors on firearms to protect hearing is a common sense approach to a serious problem.”
“Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership strongly supports making firearm suppressors readily available to the public as a critical health intervention to prevent Americans’ hearing loss,” said DRGO Director, Dr. Arthur Przebinda. “Reducing barriers to firearms suppressor ownership and decreasing the likelihood of gunshot blast noise induced hearing loss and tinnitus in tens of millions of U.S. firearms owners will have no material impact on criminal firearms use.”
“It’s disappointing that, after years of trying to make guns a public health issue, the gun control crowd reflexively opposes an effort to protect the hearing of millions of firearms owners,” Gottlieb observed. “Perhaps with the release of the DRGO report, an important new perspective has been added to the debate.”