Hoping the needle moves on gun violence

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/06/2024 (530 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

At first glance, it makes perfect sense — that a nation’s top health official would declare a public-health crisis in response to an accelerating epidemic that kills tens of thousands of citizens each year and has become the leading cause of death for children and adolescents.

But here’s where it gets complicated: the country in question is the United States, and the deadly scourge being addressed by the surgeon general is firearms violence. And as even the most casual observer of American culture can attest, gun violence and suggestions of gun control are among the most divisive and controversial topics in an irreconcilably polarized nation.

Nonetheless, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy on Tuesday declared gun violence a public-health crisis and called on the nation to confront it with the same determination employed to reduce the death tolls related to tobacco and motor-vehicle accidents.

“I want people to understand the full impact of firearm violence in our country, and I want them to see it as a public health issue,” Murthy explained. “I know it’s been polarizing, and I know it’s been politicized, but if we can see it as a public health issue, we can come together and implement a public health solution.”

The numbers are chilling: in 2023 alone, 42,967 people in the U.S. died as a result of gun-related injuries — an increase of more than a 40 per cent in firearm-related deaths in the past decade. As gun ownership has surged, so have so-called mass shootings; there have already been more than 235 such incidents in 2024.

As of 2020, gun-related injuries are the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the U.S., outpacing motor-vehicle accidents, cancer and heart disease. And in cases in which young people died of accidental gunshot wounds, roughly three-quarters of the weapons involved had been stored loaded and unlocked.

“We have to look at this now for what it is, which is a kids’ issue,” said Murthy. His advisory calls for increased funding for violence-prevention research; in addition to familiar calls for such common-sense measures as an assault-weapon ban, safe-storage laws, universal background checks and “red flag” laws to temporarily restrict firearm access for people judged to be a danger to themselves or others, the advisory advises health-care professionals to discuss firearm storage with patients during routine medical visits.

Also recommended are a public health approach that includes interventions and mental health supports in schools and communities, and that gun regulations should be treated in the same way the U.S. handles other consumer products such as motor vehicles, pesticides and prescription medications.

That this latest attempt to address a uniquely American tragedy will be met with immediate opposition goes without saying. A spokesman for the resolutely obstructionist National Rifle Association characterized Murthy’s advisory as an “extension of the Biden administration’s war on law abiding gun owners.”

But if nothing else, reframing America’s gun-violence situation as a public-health crisis that inordinately impacts children and adolescents represents an opportunity to approach a difficult conversation from a different direction.

A groundbreaking 1964 report by the surgeon general directly inspired the decades-long effort that has greatly reduced the harms caused by smoking. It might be wishful thinking to suggest Murthy’s gun-violence advisory will have equally fruitful long-term effects, but even if it moves the needle even slightly, it will have been more effective than the tiresomely futile “thoughts and prayers” strategy currently favoured by U.S. lawmakers whenever the latest firearms-related calamity has been unleashed.