Albert Bender is a journalist and Cherokee activist taking
the position that you can blame guns for most problems that face Americans
today. From slavery to Native Americans,
it is a gun culture in the U.S. fostered by white Americans that has created the
dilemma that we are in. Bender, as many
others are beginning to do, is bringing the crisis with gun violence closer and
closer to the health care system, particularly mental health. Mr. Bender takes aim at what he calls a “monolithic”
weapons industry that is “opting for profit over humanity.”
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| Gun control pieces missing in health care |
And now public health experts are saying a gun is like a virus, a car, tobacco or alcohol. It is a social disease that needs to be
treated, and they liken it to reducing car crashes and deaths years ago with
safety measures, product changes and driving laws that improved automobile
safety dramatically. When you compare
this with the firearms industry, they have resisted safety changes due to cost and
the NRA has prevented any research on gun deaths as well as stopped all gun
control legislation in its tracks. All accomplished
through buying off Congress and spreading fear among its membership.
Although mass shootings don’t account for most of the gun
deaths, they are the most visible in the media, and even more so when the
victims are 20 little children ages 6 and 7.
Unfortunately, police reporting of these incidents often lags by more
than a year, so we don’t really have the true picture. This follows suit to the National Rifle Assn. (NRA) efforts that have prevented
any reliable research on gun violence for years. Even the automobile industry was solidly
behind the research that brought down car deaths. In comparison, the gun lobby fights gun
violence research with millions of dollars.
Here’s another shocker on how the gun lobby has prevented firearms
violence research:
One source reports, “The Consumer Product Safety Commission regulates over 15,000
products in all, but federal law prohibits them from controlling the safety of
firearms. In fact, there is next to no regulation of firearm manufacture,
and only the gun manufacturers themselves can issue recalls. What's more,
gun makers, dealers and trade groups are immune from negligence and product
liability lawsuits.”
In this public health approach, “One recent study found
firearm owners were more likely than those with no firearms at home to binge
drink or to drink and drive, and other research has tied alcohol and gun
violence. That suggests that people with driving under the influence
convictions should be barred from buying a gun,” said Dr. Garen Wintemute, an emergency medicine
professor who directs the Violence Prevention Research Program at the
University of California, Davis. This
group once again quoted the study that says 40% of guns are purchased without a
background check.
Daniel Webster, a health policy expert and co-director of
the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Baltimore says "There's
sort of a contagion phenomenon" following a shooting. I liken this to when the gun bubbas come out
of the woodwork screaming 2nd Amendment rights and rushing out to
buy several more guns for a household that already closely resembles a military
arsenal. It is all so ludicrous that one
might wonder about the mentality level of a group of fanatics who have to repeatedly
re-live the Revolutionary War to justify their worship of guns.
Dr. Mark Rosenberg, president and CEO of the Task Force for Global Health, an Atlanta-based
nonprofit public health organization along with Jay W. Dickey Jr., a former
Arkansas congressman, says, “The same evidence-based approach that is saving
millions of lives from motor-vehicle crashes, as well as from smoking, cancer
and HIV/AIDS, can help reduce the toll of deaths and injuries from gun
violence.” Dickey was once the
point-person in Congress for the NRA.
Rosenberg at the time was director of the CDC’s National Center for
Injury Prevention and Control, which had conducted firearms research.
