Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has declared gun violence in the United States a public health crisis, not only because of the tens of thousands of lives lost to gun violence each year, but also because of the widespread trauma it causes that affects the broader population.
In his advisory, the first time a Surgeon General has issued a public health advisory on gun violence, Murthy highlighted recent statistics on gun violence in the United States that show a consistent increase in the number of deaths from firearm-related injuries.
“In 2022, a total of 48,204 people will die from firearm-related injuries, including suicide, homicide, and unintentional deaths,” the recommendation states. “This represents more than 8,000 more lives lost than in 2019 and more than 16,000 more lives lost than in 2010.”
Murthy said it’s not just the number of gun deaths, which reached a record high in 2021, that’s creating a crisis, but also the “huge repercussions” that stem from it.
“For every person who is killed by gun violence, two others are injured but survive, and some suffer from mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety and PTSD as a result of witnessing these incidents and the trauma of the violence,” Murthy told The Hill.
According to national survey results included in the recommendation, 54 percent of adults have personally experienced or had a family member experience a firearm-related incident. Nearly one-fifth of those surveyed have been threatened with a firearm, and the same proportion of respondents said they had a family member killed by a firearm.
Murthy noted that gun violence disproportionately affects young people and children.
“Gun violence is now the No. 1 cause of death among children. That wasn’t true five years ago, that wasn’t true 10 years ago, but it’s true now. And I think that should be concerning to all of us,” he said.
The report noted an “alarming” increase in gun-related suicides among children and young people between 2012 and 2022, including 43% among 25-24 year-olds, 45% among 15-24 year-olds and 68% among 10-14 year-olds.
These indicators also speak to a larger issue: a youth mental health crisis.
“We’ve seen a disproportionate increase in gun violence, particularly youth suicide,” Murthy said. “I think this dovetails with an issue that we’ve been talking about since the first year of my term in 2021, which is the youth mental health crisis that our country is experiencing right now.”
The purpose of the Surgeon General’s recommendations is to raise awareness and put forward a broad range of suggestions for Congress to consider in future legislation to address gun violence.
Governor Murthy’s recommendations include expanding universal background checks for gun purchases to include private sales and gifts, banning civilians from owning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and treating guns like consumer products by requiring gun safety regulations and warning labels detailing the dangers of guns.
“Public health approaches to smoking and motor vehicle crashes have been successful through policy, systems, and environmental changes, including evidence-based legislation (e.g., minimum age for tobacco purchase, driver’s licenses), evidence-based changes to the products themselves (e.g., airbags, seat belts), and evidence-based public health education campaigns,” the recommendation states.
Democrats largely support the reforms recommended in Murthy’s advisory, but Republicans in Congress have rejected them outright, and the conservative Supreme Court earlier this month struck down a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, a device that allows semi-automatic rifles to fire rapidly, dealing a setback to efforts to combat gun violence.
The recommendations acknowledged the stark disparities in gun violence between the United States and other high-income countries, including Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK. In 2019, the United States had 36.4 deaths per million among children and adolescents aged 1 to 19. This is nearly six times higher than Canada, which had the second-highest rate among OECD countries, at 6.2 per million.
“So we are a very remote exception, and not in a good way. But we want to turn that around and make the investments that are necessary to address gun violence,” Murthy said.
“I believe that if we do our best as a country, we can lead the world on health issues, and we did that with HIV, which was a serious challenge in America and around the world,” he added.
“I want to provide that same leadership on addressing gun violence.”
