The people chanting slogans in front of the Health and Human Services building in Washington one morning in March looked mostly like standard-issue left-wing demonstrators — angry-faced women wearing backpacks and big earrings, slope-shouldered men with ponytails and workers-of-the-world boots – – in a sea of protest signs and class resentment. Yet one aspect of their appearance seemed amiss: Nearly every person present was wearing a lab coat and stethoscope. As it turned out, these weren’t your ordinary peaceniks, but doctors. They had gathered to lobby for the latest addition to America’s ever- expanding definition of health care: gun control.

“We don’t have to have one American die from bullets,” an emergency-room physician from the Midwest shouted to the crowd. “Every one of these deaths is preventable.” And who will prevent them? Doctors, of course. According to a new theory gaining currency in America’s medical establishment, deaths caused by firearms can no longer be classified simply as crimes or chronic and recurrent disease.” That disease is violence. The germs that cause it are guns, expecially handguns.