Art Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center, joined "Boston Public Radio" Tuesday to discuss gun control, less than a week after a shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla. left 17 dead.
Caplan called out Congress for its inability to enact significant gun reform and said elected officials should be thrown out of office if they continue to do nothing.
“It is difficult to do anything without Congress playing ball, because they fight like crazy to fend off any regulation,” Caplan said, adding that other countries have successfully reduced gun violence by implementing training, mental evaluations and other requirements for gun owners.
"I mean, we are just out there in the wild, wild west, letting anyone buy anything of any sort,” he continued.
Caplan says that one of the first steps Congress should take to reduce the number of gun deaths in the country is to look at this crisis as a public health issue. This would mean lifting the 22-year ban on Center for Disease Control’s ability to study gun violence.
“I think it is an utter contemptible moral failure in the part of Congress to let these slaughters go on and not turn to a public health model,” Capan said. “To just go from mass murder to mass murder is culpable. We should throw them all out if they don’t do anything.”
Medical Ethicist Art Caplan is head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center ad the co-host of the Everyday Ethics podcast. To hear the entire interview, click on the audio link above.
