by I would trust the band The Who on any topic more than I trust the World Health Organization.
What brought the World Health Organization to my attention was something in Bloomberg’s The Trace’s daily newsletter from February 11th. It seems that a coalition of gun prohibitionists have asked WHO to take on gun violence (sic).
On Tuesday, a coalition launched a campaign to change that, asking the World Health Organization to address gun violence.
Coalition members say U.S. efforts to combat gun violence — forged in the absence of federal gun control laws — could inspire new global health policies to reduce violence abroad. State violence intervention offices, surgeon general guidance, and evidence-based programs could serve as models for other countries, said Daniel Semenza, a gun violence researcher at Rutgers University who’s part of the coalition. “We’re trying to take that model of success and move it to a much broader scale,” he said.
Public health programs to address gun violence, like hospital-based violence intervention, aren’t well known outside the U.S., said Dean Peacock, a co-founder of the Global Coalition for WHO Action on Firearm Violence and a public health expert at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. WHO support, Peacock said, could help spread similar efforts worldwide….
WHO action on gun violence, including public health guidance or a resolution, would mark a significant shift for the agency. The United Nations health agency has essentially ignored gun violence for decades, despite firearms being a leading cause of death in many countries, especially for young people in the Americas. The coalition’s research shows that the WHO has passed zero resolutions specifically addressing gun violence out of more than 3,200 resolutions since 1948. While WHO publications in the 1990s and early 2000s emphasized guns as a key driver of violence, that attention faded by 2010.
One of the things this “coalition” is seeking is digital locks for firearms. Their thinking is based upon pharmaceuticals and its regulation by the EU. Thus, if the EU required digital locks on firearms, European firearms companies would not make a separate version minus the locks for sale in the United States. Frankly, I see this as wishful thinking as why would a firearms company want to anger their biggest customers.
Insofar as trusting the World Health Organization, I would point out their response to COVD-19. They caved to pressure from the Chinese Communists and helped cover up the origins of the virus.
In the end it really doesn’t matter what WHO says or does regarding gun violence (sic). The United States has withdrawn from the organization even though WHO refused to accept our withdrawal. In the end, we had to send in the Marines to retake possession of our national flag as WHO refused to return it.
