The Doctor Is Armed

For Surgeon General, Bush picks a SWAT team veteran. Can he marshal the health-care troops?

On a September evening in 1999, Dr. Richard Carmona was driving to a University of Arizona football game in Tucson when he came across a traffic accident. A pickup truck had rear-ended a car. Carmona, a trauma surgeon and deputy sheriff on the local SWAT team, started to approach the truck when bystanders shouted that the driver had a gun. Carmona, who was off duty but carrying a pistol, called for backup and moved in, asking the driver to put down his weapon. The man was a mentally ill ex-convict who had murdered his father that day. He looked at Carmona,...

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