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CHICAGO -- As the AMA's House of Delegates was meeting in a downtown hotel here, .

At the hotel, delegates exchanged fire on the role of physicians in gun violence prevention.

At a reference committee considering a proposal to develop CME courses on gun violence prevention, retired surgeon, Robert McAfee, MD, opened the debate by stating, "I strongly support this resolution and hope it will pass."

McAfee, a former AMA president, is involved with a trigger lock give-away program in Maine.

A representative of the Council on Medical Education spoke for the opposition: "The myriad of potential mandates on the content of CME imposes a threat to the content developers."

Council on Medical Education chair-elect, William A. McDade, MD, of Chicago, suggested the proposal was overreaching. "The content proceeding in the program should be determined by the organizers and based on principles set forth by the AACME in hopes of reducing knowledge gaps in the intended physician audience. We remain skeptical that the physician-patient encounter is the appropriate and most effective setting."

The Albert M. Kwan, MD, of Clovis, NM, a delegate from the Society of General Surgeons, expressed concerns that adding gun violence to CME would push CME into granular territory, and set a precedent for tying time-consuming CME to any number of social issues like domestic violence or obesity opening it up as a political toy for government officials.

Left-of-center supporters maintained the resolution was to "encourage" inclusion of gun violence as a topic, not mandate. One independent cited high correlation between depression, firearms in the home, and suicide, as a pressing reason to encourage gun violence education for physicians.

Another staunchly supportive independent stated, "The NRA opposes us even discussing this issue, [and] is opposing even the government collecting statistics on this issue. We need to make a strong statement that the NRA doesn't rule this country."

From the Michigan caucus, the delegation proposing the resolution, Cheryl Gibson-Fountain, MD, of Grosse Pointe, addressed the "encourage vs. mandate" issue noting that the resolution didn't mandate gun violence as a CME curriculum.

She conceded that firearms are considered a controversial topic, but argued that from a health standpoint physicians need to be able make some sort of impact, and education on the issue might help them accomplish that goal.

The American Association of Public Health Physicians (AAPHS) and the Minority Affairs Section spoke in favor of the resolution.

The delegates will begin voting on these and other resolutions tomorrow afternoon.