Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declares gun violence in the US a public health crisis, not only for the tens of thousands who die each year from gun violence, but also as a result of far-reaching trauma affecting the broader population.
In his advisory, the first time a surgeon general has issued a public health advisory on gun violence, Murthy highlights recent statistics on gun violence in the U.S., which show a consistent increase in deaths from firearm-related injuries.
“In 2022, a total of 48,204 people died from firearm-related injuries, including suicides, homicides and unintentional deaths,” the advisory said. “This is more than 8,000 more lives lost than in 2019 and more than 16,000 more lives than in 2010.”
According to Murthy, it is not just gun deaths, which reached a record high in 2021, that have created a crisis, but also the “great reverberations” that result.
“For every person who loses their life to gun violence, we have two individuals who survive and are injured. We have people who witness the impact of these incidents, these episodes of violence, and then often suffer the mental health consequences in the form of depression, anxiety and PTSD,” Murthy told The Hill.
Results from a national survey included in the advisory show that 54 percent of adults have personally experienced a firearm-related incident or have a family member who has. About a fifth of respondents have been threatened by a firearm and the same percentage of respondents say they have a family member who has been killed by a firearm.
Murthy noted how gun violence disproportionately affects youth and children.
“Gun violence is now the leading cause of death among children. That wasn't true five years ago, it wasn't true 10 years ago, it's true now. And that, I think, should be alarming to all of us,” he said. .
The report notes that between 2012 and 2022, children and young people experienced a “staggering” increase in firearm-related suicides: 43 percent among people aged 25 to 24; 45 percent among those aged 15 to 24; and 68 percent among children between 10 and 14 years old.
These numbers also speak to the larger problem of a youth mental health crisis.
“There has been a disproportionate increase in gun violence, especially suicide among the younger population,” Murthy said. “This, I think, aligns with an issue that we started talking about in the very first year of my term in 2021, which is a broader youth mental health crisis that we're experiencing right now in our country.”
The purpose of the Surgeon General's guidance is to raise awareness and advance broad proposals for Congress to consider in future legislation to combat gun violence.
Murthy's opinion proposes expanding universal background checks on gun purchases to include private sales and gifted firearms; banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines for civilian use; and treating firearms as consumer products by requiring regulations regarding their safety and warning labels describing their risk.
“The public health approach to cigarette smoking and car accidents has achieved success through changes in policies, systems and environments, such as evidence-based laws (e.g. minimum tobacco purchasing ages, driver's licenses), evidence-based changes in the products themselves (air bags, seat belts ) and evidence-based public health education campaigns,” the advisory said.
While Democrats have largely supported the types of reforms recommended in Murthy's opinion, they have been roundly rejected by Republicans in Congress. And the conservative Supreme Court set back efforts to combat gun violence earlier this month when it struck down a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, devices used to make semi-automatic weapons fire rapidly.
The opinion recognized well-established gun violence disparities between the U.S. and other high-income countries such as Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom. In 2019, the US experienced 36.4 deaths per 1 million among children and adolescents between the ages of 1 and 2. 19. This was almost six times that of the next highest OECD country, Canada, with 6.2 deaths per 1 million people.
“And so we are a very distant outlier and not in a positive way. But I would like to see us turn that around and make the investments we need to make in addressing gun violence,” Murthy said.
“I believe that if we are at our best as a country, we can lead the world in healthcare. It's something we've done with HIV, which has been a big challenge in America and around the world,” he added.
“I would like to show similar leadership when it comes to addressing gun violence.”
