Page 6
December 16, 2015
O PINION
Who Put the NRA in Charge of National Security?
Gun violence is
a public health
epidemic
by m arian
W right e delman
With the echo
of gunshots from
the San Bernardino
massacre ricochet-
ing across the country and anoth-
er American community reeling
with new broken hearts our na-
tional discussion of gun violence
feels and sounds like a broken re-
cord stuck on one horrifying song
that never ends.
The President expresses his
outrage that these tragedies con-
tinue to happen and calls on the
public to push Congress and
state legislatures to do the right
thing. Members of Congress re-
lease proposals without a clear
timetable for a vote or a path to
passage. Public support for gun
safety measures swells. The gun
lobby pushes back, accusing
those who seek reform of politi-
cizing tragedy while continuing
their relentless work to loosen re-
strictions on the deadly weapons
that continue the carnage. Broken
families and communities strug-
gle to pick up the pieces after the
media leaves town. With too few
exceptions nothing gets done and
nothing seems to change and ev-
ery day Americans not living in
the immediately affected commu-
nities grow numb to the tragedy
and continue their normal lives
until the next mass shooting in-
evitably occurs and the cycle re-
peats itself.
These horrible mass shoot-
ings that destroy and shake up so
many lives with ever-increasing
frequency tell only part of the
tragic cost of gun violence that
pervades our cities and towns ev-
ery single day across our nation.
Violence romps through our chil-
dren’s playgrounds, terrifies them
in their schools and child care
centers, follows them down the
street, and shoots through their
bedroom windows. This should
be the chief public health issue in
America.
Data released by the Centers
for Disease Control and Preven-
tion’s National Center for Injury
Prevention and Control earlier
this year show there was a death
by a gun every 16 minutes and a
child or teen was killed or injured
by a gun every 30 minutes in
2013. More than 2,400 children
and teens died from guns, enough
to fill 122 classrooms of 20 chil-
dren.
Why in God’s name are we so
reticent to stand up to the pro-gun
lobby when American children
are 18 times more likely to die
by a gun than children in 25
other high income nations?
Are we so spiritually dead
that the killing of children
has become routine and
unimportant? Where is the
faith community?
Lessons from America’s
public health history points us to
what we can do now to stop the
carnage. The public health ap-
proach to problem solving has
been credited with a range of
achievements, including adding
25 years to the life expectancy of
people in the United States in the
20th century. One of the great-
est victories of this approach has
been a massive decline in auto-
mobile deaths. Few today can
imagine getting in a car without
an airbag, a seat belt, or a prop-
er child safety seat. These safety
devices and the laws we follow
while on the road were not al-
ways in place—and American
roadways were not always as
safe as they are today. It took a
concentrated effort by research-
ers, policymakers, and the public
to identify and address the root
causes of the epidemic of motor
vehicle deaths before the 1960s.
Recent gun violence preven-
tion research should help point
the way forward. A recent study
found that a Connecticut law that
expanded background checks to
all handgun purchases helped
achieve a 40 percent reduction
in gun homicides during the first
10 years following the law’s en-
actment. Another study reported
in the Journal of the American
Medical Association Internal
Medicine found states with back-
ground checks on private as well
as online gun sales had 16 per-
cent lower gun fatality rates.
Polling consistently shows
a vast majority of Americans,
including a large majority of
gun owners, support expanding
background checks to cover all
gun sales—yet Congress has not
yet demonstrated its capacity to
act on such a simple, life-saving
measure. As a result guns can be
purchased without background
checks from unlicensed private
sellers and over the internet with
no checks at all. It’s way past
time for citizens to retire mem-
bers of Congress and state legis-
lators who put gun manufacturer
profits ahead of child, family, and
human safety.
Some say that background
checks alone will not prevent ev-
ery gun tragedy and they won’t,
but they are a critically import-
ant step forward. We need more
research on laws, other policies,
and technologies that might save
more lives. Proposals to require
background checks for ammu-
nition sales, impose a tax on
ammunition, require liability in-
surance for guns, and smart gun
technologies all merit immediate
attention. Sadly, the National Ri-
fle Association, other members of
the gun lobby, and their cowardly
allies in Congress and in many
state legislatures have barred the
CDC from conducting research
and sharing the truth about the
impact of on gun violence on our
nation’s public health since the
mid-1990’s and imposed similar
restrictions on the National In-
stitutes of Health in 2011 due to
fears that research might show
concrete ways to reduce its dead-
ly impacts.
Why is the NRA afraid of
the truth? Is it because they fear
the research may show concrete
ways to reduce the impact of
guns which sapped 33,169 lives
in America in 2013 and injured
83,075 yet remain the only un-
regulated consumer product?
It makes no sense to regulate
toy guns which kill not a single
person and let real guns which
should only be in the hands of the
military kill tens of thousands an-
nually. We should protect human
beings rather than guns. Might
not the truth make us all safer?
It’s way past time for the
American people to retire the
NRA as our head of national
security and public health and
assure the safety of our chil-
dren and families everywhere
in America. Only then can we
reclaim our nation’s soul and
affirm our commitment to the
sanctity of life for all.
Marian Wright Edelman is
President of the Children’s De-
fense Fund.