Chart Rounds-
As part of our 2015 initiative to grow PPGV- we are going West. We have an invitation to speak at a Grand Rounds with MSU Pediatrics late in the year. This is good for our organization that has been centered in Washtenaw Co. Drs. James Peggs (board member) and William Wadland, recent retired chair of family medicine at MSU will lead this move to become a statewide orgainization. This is great!
And in Washtenaw County there has been a huge outcry over the “open carry” of guns in schools with one advocate showing up “packing” to a school event and causing fear and concern for safety. The Ann Arbor School Board stepped up and insisted on no citizen guns. A lawsuit has been filed against the board by the Open Carry group. Meanwhile, the senate leader and NRA supporter, Mike Green, wants to have “special training” to allow some concealed carry guns, but not open carry. HB 4261 calls for no guns in the schools, hospitals and bars going back to a former “safe zones” position. Please go here http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/keep-guns-out-of-michigan-1?source=s.fwd&r_by=1466697. to support this bill. The organizers, local parents and a PPGV physician, are working to get state wide support for gun free schools.
Schools are among the safest places in the country according to David Hemenway, Harvard expert on. gun violence. Allowing any civilian gun makes no safety sense and will inspire fear. PPGV has filed a letter to the editor of the Detroit Free Press and now the Lansing State Journal that in May, national mental health awareness month, there should be freedom from fear- a basic need for mental health. Again go to the link http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/keep-guns-out-of-michigan-1?source=s.fwd&r_by=1466697 to support this as well as to our website ppgv.org to comment or donate to our work.
And June is National Gun Violence Awareness month. More about this later.
PPGVPhysicians for the Prevention of Gun Violence