NRA Tells Doctors To 'Stay In Their Lane' When Talking About Gun Control

As doctors and medical professionals continue claiming gun violence as a public health issue, the National Rifle Association told the docs to stay in their own lane.

Several hours before 12 people were shot and killed at Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, Calif., on Thursday morning, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention produced more numbers that show gun deaths are on the rise. CDC also calls for doctors to continue helping protect patients from the dangers of firearms in America.

In its flagship publication, the American College of Physicians (ACP) introduced several new data about rising gun violence.

"We need to ask our patients about firearms, counsel them on safe firearm behaviors, and take further action when an imminent hazard is present," wrote Dr. Garen Wintemute, of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California Davis Medical Center.

The NRA sniped back with a tweet, telling the docs to "stay in their lane."

"Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control. Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves," The NRA tweeted.

The two powerful organizations went into a Twitter battle Thursday, with the NRA firing the first shot in response to the articles and editorials.

Esther Choo responded by saying, "We are not self-important: we are important to the care of others. We are not anti-gun: we are anti-bullet holes in our patients.
We consult with everyone but extremists.
Most upsetting, actually, is death and disability from gun violence that is unparalleled in the world."

Dr. Joseph Sakran is the director of emergency general surgery at Johns Hopkins Medicine who claimed to be a victim of gun violence. He dissected the NRA's statement as "divisive."

"We take care of these patients every day. Where are you when I'm having to tell all those families their loved one has died?," Dr. Sakran wrote.

Both sides seem to blame the other, as gun rights advocates call for better mental health procedures while the doctors and medical professionals don't want their patients to have access to guns, nor do they want to keep having to treat patients with bullet wounds.

A story from NBC last month says an average of 8,300 American children visit the hospital each year. The story reads that half of those children are shot on purpose, while the other half are accident.

"Firearm violence continues to be a public health crisis in the United States that requires the nation's immediate attention," the ACP wrote in the new guidelines, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.