For almost twenty years I’ve been writing about health matters that directly affect you. I started out writing snarky and frankly abrasive pieces on the harms of much of fake medical treatments and the antivaccine movement. I wrote extensively during each flu season to keep the community updated. During the measles outbreak in our community I wrote, took calls, messages, and texts several times a day, in addition to the work at the office. And during covid I’ve tried to keep the community updated with the latest usable facts—not political rants, but facts you can use to protect you and your family. I like to think that by this point, I’m a trusted source of information. One of the keys to earning that trust is correcting myself when I’m wrong.
Unfortunately what I’m about to tell you isn’t wrong at all.
Guns are the leading cause of death in Americans under 25 years of age.
That fact alone should, to be frank, scare the shit out of you. If you’re a parent you can probably relate to this:
When we were looking at schools for our youngest, the teachers all showed us the device that they can place in the floor that prevents the door from being forced open by someone. It’s in every room, in every school. It was sickening.
A few years ago while talking to a patient my oldest daughter’s ring tone called out from the pocket of my lab coat. It was the middle of a school day so I answered it. She was breathing hard, running. Someone had set off the “blue light” alarm at school, the one used for things like active shooters. She and her friends took off and were headed…somewhere. Then I couldn’t get back in touch. She finally called me about twenty minutes later from the bagel store. A friend’s dad was picking them up. It turned out the whole thing had been some sort of prank or accident.
Then there was last night. My daughter texted me from the bathroom of her dorm room. She and her roommates had locked and blockaded their door and were hiding in the bathroom listening to police scanners. She had heard people were dead, reports were coming in from everywhere of shots fired, people injured. There was nothing concrete other than “shelter in place”. She spent five terrifying hours in her bathroom, as did thousands of other kids. And we parents sat at home texting, praying, helpless.
We aren’t really helpless.
It’s no secret that we are a nation of contradictions, whose actions don’t always reflect our stated ideals. But dealing with the number 1 public health threat to our kids should be something that transcends politics. We can argue about our individual values regarding guns, but we can’t deny the facts. Guns kill more of our kids than cancer, infectious diseases, or even car accidents. This is, by any measure, a public health crisis. This doesn’t even count the long-term toll of gun injuries.
Most gun owners cite self-protection as the reason they have a firearm, but statistics show that firearm ownership doesn’t protect you—having a firearm in the home actually increases the risk of death by firearm in that home. There is also a generally perception that firearm violence is an urban problem. Rates of firearm deaths are actually higher in rural than in urban areas (with suicide being higher in rural areas, and homicide in urban areas). Guns in the home increase the risk of death by domestic violence and of death by suicide. And states with stricter gun laws have lower rates of gun violence.
This is a horrible problem with clear, evidence-based solutions. Given our culture, it’s unlikely that we will ever have the severe restrictions of most other democracies, but between where we are now and outright banning guns lives a lot of policies that can save literally tens of thousands of our kids every year.
As the saying goes, all politics is local. I’m all for writing and calling our national congressional representatives and senators, but we need to also focus right here at home. Email, call, text your representatives. Use your connections. Go to their offices, set up meetings. Make sure your representatives know that the status quo isn’t acceptable and that there are rational, evidence-based ways to reduce gun violence. The radical gun lobby is powerful, but not that powerful. They cannot control the narrative if we all use our voices. You can find your state representative here, and your state senator here.
I know it’s time consuming and hard to come up with the words yourself, but even one sentence written or spoken in your own words helps. Do it today, tomorrow, the next day, and don’t stop until we get a real response from our elected officials.
-pal
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Some links to firearms facts discussed above:
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/sites/default/files/2022-05/2020-gun-deaths-in-the-us-4-28-2022-b.pdf
https://efsgv.org/wp-content/uploads/2019CDCdata.pdf
https://www.thetrace.org/2022/06/defensive-gun-use-data-good-guys-with-guns/
https://missouriindependent.com/2022/11/17/rural-gun-deaths-exceed-urban-rates-by-28-because-of-increased-suicide-rates/