The nation’s top doctor declared last week that the skyrocketing number of deaths and injuries due to firearms has made gun violence an American public health crisis that needs urgent attention.
In a first-of-its-kind advisory, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy sounded the alarm about this significant public health challenge “…that require[s] the nation’s immediate awareness and action,” the advisory says.
“It is now time for us to take this issue out of the realm of politics and put it in the realm of public health, the way we did with smoking more than a half century ago,” Murthy told the Associated Press.
But a crisis for America in general is a full-blown catastrophe in Black communities.
Despite making up roughly 14% of the U.S. population, data shows Black people accounted for 60% of firearm deaths each year between 2017 and 2021. Black people were 11.5 times more likely to be victims of firearm homicide than their white peers, and gunfire has been the leading killer of Black children since 2009.
In 2022, more than 48,000 people in the U.S. — 132 people every single day — died because of a firearm, according to the CDC. More than half of these deaths were suicides and around 4 in 10 were homicides. These numbers put firearm injuries in the top 5 categories for causes of death for people under age 45.
Murthy’s public declaration is the first time gun violence has been identified as a national crisis. It goes further than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has identified gun homicides as an important public health issue.
Murthy’s 40-page declaration outlined several major health threats connected to firearms, including racial and gender disparities in firearm-related deaths along with the impact gun violence has on families, children and communities.
A recent national survey found that “the majority of U.S. adults or their family members (54%) have experienced a firearm‐related incident,” according to the advisory’s introduction. That includes “21% who have personally been threatened with a firearm, 19% have a family member who was killed by a firearm (including by suicide), 17% have witnessed someone being shot, 4% have shot a firearm in self‐defense, and 4% have been injured by a firearm.”
“Such high levels of exposure to firearm violence for both children and adults give rise to a cycle of trauma and fear within our communities, contributing to the nation’s mental health crisis,” according to the advisory.
The advisory recommends several steps to confront the crisis, such as implementing community violence reduction programs, requiring safe storage of firearms, having universal background checks for all firearm purchases, and protection orders in cases of domestic violence and threats of self-harm—also called “red flag” laws.
Since 2020, firearms have been the number one cause of death among children and teens in the U.S. Firearm injuries, including homicides, suicides, and unintentional injuries, were the leading cause of death among children and teens ages 1 to 19 in 2020 and 2021.
Among Black and Hispanic children and adolescents, deaths by gunshot have increased sharply since the COVID pandemic began in 2020. In 2022, the rate of firearm deaths among Black youth was significantly higher than any other racial and ethnic group and six times higher than white youth.
Between 2018 and 2022, the rate of firearm deaths doubled among Black youth.
While gun control advocates hailed Murthy’s advisory, they believe he could have gone further. They want a full-fledged surgeon general’s report on guns similar to the one issued on cigarette smoking in 1964. That report, directly linking smoking to cancer, was a major catalyst in reversing smoking rates in the U.S. That report led to requiring tobacco companies to print warning label on cigarette packages, and was key to groundbreaking lawsuits against the tobacco industry.
“Surgeon General reports are renowned publications that take an evidence-based approach to our nation’s most urgent public health issues,” said Dr. Joseph V Sakran, Board Chair and Chief Medical Officer at Brady United, a gun safety nonprofit. “Seeing as firearms are now the leading cause of death for children and teens in the U.S., there’s arguably no public health issue that’s more urgent or that warrants the commission of a Surgeon General report more than gun violence.”
Historically, “we have seen how the release of Surgeon General reports on public health issues such as the dangers of smoking ignited a wave of policy, legal, and public health initiatives that saved countless American lives and, in this case, led to deprogramming our nation from the tobacco industry’s lies,” Sakran said. “We hope this report will have the same resounding impact on the gun violence epidemic.”
