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Great News! We have a brand old Public Health Crisis! [1]

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Date: 2024-06-25  

www.statnews.com/…

Stat News is reporting that the Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, has released a new advisory declaring that the health toll from gun violence is a public health crisis and describing the size of the crisis while laying out a roadmap of research and policy interventions to curb its effects.

“My hope is that framing just the profound impact and pervasive impact of gun violence in our country … can firmly take it out of the realm of politics and put it into the realm of public health, which is where it belongs,” Murthy told STAT.

Of course, gun violence is an ongoing threat in a nation that seems to shrug its shoulders whenever a new mass shooting raises its ugly face once again.

“Gun violence has now become the leading cause of death among kids and teens,” said Murthy. According to the report, more than 4,600 deaths under the age of 19 were caused by gun violence in 2022, and 54% of all American adults say they or a relative have experienced a firearm-related incident.

The effects of gun violence are immense. There are the immediate victims, who get shot and survive, leaving them with life-long injuries and the psychological scars from their ordeal; not to mention the witnesses, the victims that don’t survive the attack, the families affected and “The mental health reverberations are really quite profound”, said Murthy. In 2022 more than half of the deaths by firearm were suicides.

Specifically, the advisory notes how firearm deaths don’t impact everyone in the same way. Boys and men are five times more likely to die from firearm injury than their female counterparts, though half of the homicides in cases of intimate partner violence are committed with guns. Black people had the highest firearm-related homicide rate, while white people over 45 had the highest rate of suicide through firearm.

The Surgeon’s General advisory calls for investment in research and data to add to the body of evidence and inform policy responses to the public health crisis. In addition, the advisory discusses proven intervention strategies, including education on safe storage, violence prevention programs, and addressing the social determinants that increase the risk of gun violence.

Beyond partisan criticism, public health experts may debate over the advisory’s stance, said Morral. “There’s some disagreement in our society about whether you should focus on firearms themselves and firearms violence, or violence. Whether you should focus on firearm suicide or suicide,” he said. “Some people are going to have that question about this report: Why are we focusing on the tool rather than the problem?” Morral says there is strong evidence to address this criticism — specifically, research demonstrating that the ease of killing with a firearm brings up the death toll, and that many homicides and suicides simply would not happen without a gun — that could be incorporated into the advisory.

The report walks around the issue of law enforcement, which contributes to the toll, but is also a potential avenue that could lead to a reduction in the violence.

His hope, Murthy said, is that the strategies laid out in the advisory start a conversation that expands into other areas, including the role of law enforcement in reducing firearm fatalities.

www.hhs.gov/… (Content Warning: This page contains references to self harm and suicide.)

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