The recent multiple tragedies involving gun violence have rekindled the concerns Americans have over the public health hazard of easy availability of guns. “In 2020, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 45,222 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC. That figure includes gun murders and gun suicides, along with three other, less common types of gun-related deaths tracked by the CDC: those that were unintentional, those that involved law enforcement, and those whose circumstances could not be determined.”
But guns don’t just take their toll through citizen-against-citizen violence according to a editorial in Modern Healthcare. Slightly over half of the 38,364 who killed themselves used a gun. But very sadly, those committing suicide bring inexplicable mayhem and tragedy to those around them. Additionally, shooting victims received medical treatment with a direct cost of over two billion dollars.
On an average day in the United States guns are used to kill over eighty people and to wound about two hundred more. If any other consumer product had this sort of disastrous effect, the public outcry would be deafening; yet when it comes to guns, such facts are accepted as a natural consequence of supposedly high American rates of violence. These statistics are significant even when compared to smoking which causes one in five deaths in the United States.
Economic consequences from gun violence are significant and greatly underestimated when you consider the costs of prevention, managing risks, loss of quality of life and general stress. Gun Violence: the Real Costs, by Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, estimates the actual cost of gun violence is 100 billion dollars per year, when all of the consequences are considered.
However, the emotional misery caused by sudden and unforeseen death and/or injury from guns is immeasurable. The real point is that with time, numerous activities of daily life are affected. Parents are concerned about school safety, necessitating secret family passwords and “locked down” schools. Court buildings have protection like airports. Shopping patterns and night activities have become more guarded. Domestic violence has heated up as two thirds of shelters’ victims with home guns have had those guns used against them. Gun violence has changed our culture.
Having a gun is obviously necessary but not sufficient for gun-related violence. A 2008 New England Journal of Medicine article relates that “passive” gun owners share a risk similar to “passive” smokers in that just being near a gun or a smoker increases the risk of injury or death. Homicide risk increases from 40 to 170% while suicide risk increases from 90 to 460% in homes with newly acquired guns.
A public-health approach—which emphasizes prevention over punishment, and which has been so successful in reducing the rates of injury and death from infectious disease, car accidents, and tobacco consumption—can be applied to gun violence, according to noted fair-minded expert David Hemenway, a noted Professor of Public Policy at Harvard School of Public Health.
So much of what causes harm can be prevented. Why don’t we, as a country, concentrate on prevention? Eliminating gun violence would avoid untold misery for 100,000 victims and their families each year. We have essentially stopped polio, controlled tuberculosis, and have an on-going battle against tobacco use. Curbing gun violence should be added to our public health mission as a society. We are experiencing an epidemic which should be recognized, addressed, and controlled.
