Philadelphia Medicine Summer 2019 - 8

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FEATURE

To the Editor:
I

feel as though the Letter to the Editor in the Spring 2019 Philadelphia
Medicine magazine was published without some necessary clarification for
the readers. I am concerned with the piece's misrepresentation of opinions
and facts.

One such claim is that increasing the police force will 'absolutely' have a
positive effect on gun violence, yet there is no evidence provided to back this
up. On the contrary, there have been numerous studies that say it is inconclusive whether increasing police decreases crime. Here is one such article: http://
pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUsingElectoralCycles2002.pdf.

I think we should be talking to the members of the communities most
affected by gun violence and asking them why they think the violence is happening and what would help stop it. I cannot guarantee success because I do
not have a study to back me up on this. Based on personal experiences, I feel
the people within a community are the best equipped to develop solutions for
a problem, especially compared to just telling someone what will work best
for them. Essentially, we should be coming up with solutions together.
The piece also alludes to the fact that Israel has numerous armed security
guards stationed at various location throughout the country. There seems
to be a suggestion that those security guards prevent violent crime in Israel.
There is no mention, however, that Israel previously had some of the strictest
gun control laws in the world. They only recently changed them, but they are
still much stricter than the ones we have in the US. So, if Israel has less violent crime than the US, we cannot definitively conclude that is because there
are armed security guards everywhere in Israel. Correlation does not equal
causation. I would love to see some data on the matter.
I hope we can do a better job moving forward separating fact from opinion and appropriately utilizing evidence to support claims. I look forward to
more discussions on this topic and others, as they are critical to the wellbeing
of our communities. *

Evan Gooberman, DO, MPH
Family Medicine Resident
Abington-Jefferson Health

Philadelphia Medicine : Summer 2019

http://philamedsoc.org http://http:// http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUsingElectoralCycles2002.pdf

Philadelphia Medicine Summer 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Philadelphia Medicine Summer 2019