These statistics matter.
The president has declared the opioid crisis a national emergency. We encourage women to get mammograms regularly, and spend over $3 billion annually in our efforts to treat and cure the disease. Millions more are spent to administer flu vaccines and research the latest strains to ensure that deaths are minimized.
How are we doing with our efforts to decrease mortality from gun violence? Like with all issues of public health, we need to know what systematic interventions will prove most effective, but this requires research. Funding for this research, however, is nearly non-existent. In 1996, by way of the Dickey Amendment and heavy lobbying from the National Rifle Association, Congress banned the Center for Disease Control from using funds for any research that may ultimately be used to promote gun control. Moreover, we are still paying the price.
Physicians should care. Our country should care.
Why do we fall silent when it comes to death from gun violence? Only if we, as responsible citizens, can begin to acknowledge that deaths from guns are a problem, can we begin efforts to prevent these needless deaths.
We cannot blame all deaths from gun violence as a product of mental illness. This has become a defense for inaction, a gross simplification of a multifaceted epidemic. There will always be those who seek to harm, and use whatever means possible to achieve that goal. However, guns make it a whole lot easier. Guns do not just wound people and hurt them; they kill right away. There is no second chance, those lives cannot be returned, be it a suicide or homicide. The argument is often brought up that if not for guns, the killer would have used knives, but knives do not take life as a gun can.
The U.S.
