US gun violence is a health crisis with evidence-based solutions, experts plea

> This is "very much our lane," Dr. Bindi Naik-Mathuria, a pediatric surgeon at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told NBC.

Being a medical doctor doesn't give you any special "expertise" in understanding the causes of homicide, making policies in an effort to reduce homicides, and certainly not in balancing Constitutional rights of law-abiding gun owners against the restrictions that would accompany any such policies. "Science" can't give you answer to high-level questions like this.

The same people pointing to "the science" on gun control rarely would "defer to the experts" on other, similar questions: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-.... Most experts in economics agree that corporate and capital gains taxes are bad. And that is absolutely unpersuasive to nearly everyone on the left side of the aisle.

Every time "expertise" and "science" is invoked to override the lay public on an issue, the credibility of "science" as an institution is put on the line. Sometimes that's necessary because the science is undisputable and the issue is critical. But when expertise and science are invoked to make arguable points in what's ultimately a political disagreement, the credibility of the whole endeavor is undermined.

It's a mental health / crime crisis on which we have long since punted.

Also, by only talking about "assault weapons" and rifles, are we able to totally ignore Battlefield Chicago and the pistol related deaths/injuries that pile up every weekend?