Can We Reduce Gun Violence With A Public Health Approach?
Our friends at the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) recently posted an editorial
that described gun violence as a ‘public health crisis’ because it has an “adverse
impact on community health.” The notion that we can reduce and ultimately
eliminate the 40,000 gun deaths suffered each year by taking a public health solution
to the problem has become the standard mantra in gun-control circles, not the
least of which because of the possibility
that CDC research money on gun violence may be coming back into play.
We love the notion of public health. Maybe we didn’t invent it, but we sure have used the public health approach to deal with serious threats to the human community, most notably and recently AIDS. And since gun violence is certainly widespread enough to be considered a threat to the human community, and since it also tends to impact most severely on certain identifiable groups within the community, obviously we can and should utilize the public health approach to this health threat as well. So say all the public health experts on gun violence.
I’m not
a physician. I’m not a public health researcher. I can, if I choose, ask to be
introduced as ‘Doctor Weisser,’ but that’s only because I earned a lowly Ph.D.
On the other hand, I know something about
guns. And based on what I know and what all these public health experts don’t
know, I disagree.
I
disagree with the ‘public health approach’ to gun violence because the information
that we need to evaluate in order to figure out a valid public health response
to this particular threat to the human community doesn’t exist. And it won’t
exist even if the CDC dumps not just 50 million into gun research, but 500
million or more.
I don’t
hear any of the public health experts talking about this problem at all. In
fact, these experts go out of their way to deny the importance of even
collecting such data, despite saying again and again that any public health
strategy must be ‘evidence-based.’
A public
health approach
requires that first you figure out why certain people get sick. Then you figure
out how the sickness spreads from victim to victim, then you figure out how to
prevent the spread of the illness either through immunization strategies,
public policies or both. In the case of gun violence, we know who gets sick.
But we have absolutely no idea how the illness spreads from one person to
another because we don’t know anything about the agent who spreads the disease –
the shooter – and we don’t know anything about the instrument whose presence
creates the disease – the gun.
We don’t
know anything about the agent because in the case of self-inflicted fatal
injuries the agent is dead. In the case of the agent spreading the disease, he
either isn’t identified or if he is, he’s locked up in jail. At which point we
aren’t dealing with a public health issue. We’re dealing with a crime. Finally,
both groups of agents use the same instrument, a gun, and we don’t know how
they got their hands on the gun.
Back in
March, three major public health scholars appeared
before a House committee and testified about the need to restore CDC gun
research funds. When asked, all three esteemed experts denied the necessity to
create a national gun registry – not needed at all. A national registry happens
to be the only way to figure out the
movement and use of the instrument which has to be present in every instance of
gun violence. Somehow, this never gets said.
I’m
saying it now. Either my friends in the public health community stop promoting
the nonsense that whatever they are doing won’t threaten the beloved 2nd
Amendment, or they can stop pretending that they can come up with any kind of
serious public health solution to the threat posed by guns. It’s simple. Either – Or.
