Gun violence must be treated as social disease, public health experts argue

Dr. Stephen W. Hargarten poses for a photo at Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Aug. 8, 2012 / AP

(AP) MILWAUKEE - Is a gun like a virus, a car, tobacco or alcohol? Yes say public health experts, who in the wake of recent mass shootings in the U.S. are calling for a fresh look at gun violence as a social disease.

What is needed, they say, is a public health approach to the problem, like the highway safety measures, product changes and driving laws that slashed deaths from car crashes decades ago, even as the number of vehicles on the road rose.

One example: Guardrails are now curved to the ground instead of having sharp metal ends that stick out and pose a hazard in a crash.

"People used to spear themselves and we blamed the drivers for that," said Dr. Garen Wintemute, an emergency medicine professor who directs the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis.

It wasn't enough back then to curb deaths just by trying to make people better drivers, and it isn't enough now to tackle gun violence by focusing solely on the people doing the shooting, he and other doctors say.

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They want a science-based, pragmatic approach based on the reality that we live in a society saturated with guns and need better ways of preventing harm from them.

The need for a new approach crystallized last Sunday for one of the nation's leading gun violence experts, Dr. Stephen Hargarten. He found himself treating victims of the Sikh temple shootings at the emergency department he heads in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Seven people were killed, including the gunman, and three were seriously injured.

It happened two weeks after the shooting that killed 12 people and injured 58 at a movie theater in Colorado, and two days before a man pleaded guilty to killing six people and wounding 13, including then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in Tucson, Arizona, last year.

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"What I'm struggling with is, is this the new social norm? This is what we're going to have to live with if we have more personal access to firearms," said Hargarten, emergency medicine chief at Froedtert Hospital and director of the Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin. "We have a public health issue to discuss. Do we wait for the next outbreak or is there something we can do to prevent it?"

About 260 million to 300 million firearms are owned by civilians in the United States; about one-third of American homes have one. Guns are used in two-thirds of homicides, according to the FBI. About 9 percent of all violent crimes involve a gun - roughly 338,000 cases each year.

Mass shootings don't seem to be on the rise, but not all police agencies report details like the number of victims per shooting and reporting lags by more than a year, so recent trends are not known.

"The greater toll is not from these clusters but from endemic violence, the stuff that occurs every day and doesn't make the headlines," said Wintemute, the California researcher.

More than 73,000 emergency room visits in 2010 were for firearm-related injuries, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.

At the same time, violent crime has been falling and the murder rate is less than half what it was two decades ago. And Gallup polls have shown support for stricter gun laws has been falling since 1990. Last year 55 percent of Americans said gun laws should remain the same or become more lenient.

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Dr. David Satcher tried to make gun violence a public health issue when he became CDC director in 1993. Four years later, laws that allow the carrying of concealed weapons drew attention when two women were shot at an Indianapolis restaurant after a patron's gun fell out of his pocket and accidentally fired. Ironically, the victims were health educators in town for an American Public Health Association convention.

That same year, Hargarten won a federal grant to establish the nation's first Firearm Injury Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

"Unlike almost all other consumer products, there is no national product safety oversight of firearms," he wrote in the Wisconsin Medical Journal.

That's just one aspect of a public health approach. Other elements:

-"Host" factors: What makes someone more likely to shoot, or someone more likely to be a victim. 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, Wintemute said.

-Product features: Which firearms are most dangerous and why. Manufacturers could be pressured to fix design defects that let guns go off accidentally, and to add technology that allows only the owner of the gun to fire it (many police officers and others are shot with their own weapons). Bans on assault weapons and multiple magazines that allow rapid and repeat firing are other possible steps.

-"Environmental" risk factors: What conditions allow or contribute to shootings. Gun shops must do background checks and refuse to sell firearms to people convicted of felonies or domestic violence misdemeanors, but those convicted of other violent misdemeanors can buy whatever they want. The rules also don't apply to private sales, which one study estimates as 40 percent of the market.

-Disease patterns, observing how a problem spreads. Gun ownership - a precursor to gun violence - can spread "much like an infectious disease circulates," said Daniel Webster, a health policy expert and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Baltimore.

"There's sort of a contagion phenomenon" after a shooting, where people feel they need to have a gun for protection or retaliation, he said.

That's already evident in the wake of the Colorado movie-theater shootings during a screening of the new Batman movie, "The Dark Knight Rises." Last week, reports popped up around the nation of people bringing guns to the "Batman" movie. Some of them said they did so for protection.

[Bandofotters]

What is the opinion of these health care experts regarding buckets of water and felt pens. I've never heard of anything more absurd than to treat an object like you would a virus. A transubstantiation stretch if there ever was one! Maybe Ann Colter was right. Liberalism is a mental disorder. Two can play this game!

[snixchance]

As far as I'm concerned, ALL Assault rifles should be banned in the United States. It is called the National Rifle Association - so, therefore, rifles you can own. It is very difficult to hide a rifle in your pocket. All other guns should also be banned as well. There are too many innocent people being killed and injured by lunatics carry guns and assault rifles!

Jennifer J. Doering
[e-mail]

[MikefromRoswell]

Jennifer, for your general fund of knowledge: It is already illegal to own an Assault Rifle in the United States, and has been illegal since 1934, 10 years before the Assault Rifle was invented. You see Jennifer the media is lying to you in an effort to scare you into supporting to their leftist agenda of civil disarmament. Those firearms they call "Assault Rifles" are just like every other rifle sold in the US in that they only go "bang" once when you pull the trigger, in what is referred to as Semi-automatic fire. REAL Assault Rifles go "bang" more than once and will fire continuously while the trigger is held in what is called full-automatic fire. The National Firearms Act prohibited the general public from possessing fully automatic weapons in 1934. 2.5 Million american use a firearm (most commonly a handgun) to defend their lives each year, often without firing a single shot, how many of those innocent people would you leave defenseless? When Australia, South Africa, and the UK enacted their gun bans, as you propose, violent crime skyrocketed as criminals no longer feared that their chosen victims would have the means to protect themselves. Don't buy the lies from the Brady center and their Media allies, they seek to strip you of your basic human right to self-defense, by removing your access to the tools thereof.

[Rattlerjake]

These liberal media morons and social scientists claim everything is a disease. If this were a disease then why isn't the whole neighborhood or apartment complex going out and shooting fifty people? It's nothing more than alarmism and liberals using specific incidents to push their liberal propaganda and agenda. It's time to get rid or insanity pleas and make the laws for punishment of crimes fit the crimes. Murderers, rapists, and pedophiles need to be executed, and done within a year of their conviction, not after 15 to 20 years. Doctors and attorneys who know information about individuals that are likely or "going" to commit these crimes should be bond by law to notify law enforcement.

[honestabe8]

Wow, how many times can you say "liberal" in a post?

[MaxyRaddy]

An obvious propoganda piece. The headline would be more accurate if it reflected that Violence is root of the problem. Guns, knives, screwdrivers or cuticle files have very little to do with the problem.

[rayinmn]

Nothing new here. Simply another story about the creative ways some social scientists try to get the public to pay for their research projects.

[jim476-2009]

So you so called public health expert. So you want to try a new approach to regulate my constitutional rights.Well!, i'm here to say that i'm going to regulate your rights to free speech.You will only listen to a government regulated radio station that the government wants you to hear.You will eat, sleep, go places that the government tells you to do.What is this called you may say? Communism, socialism.

[1stlttightwad]

Yup, if ya can't get around the constitution one way, try another..Let's call it a disease and have the health czars make a ruling...Chit.
The last thing Obama wants is a bunch of armed citizens to get in the way of his national security force..You remember, the national security force to be recruited by him that is to be as well trained and as well prepared as the armed forces. Gee, I thought we had one already, it called the National Guard..Trouble is the National Guard takes an oath to uphold the Constitution and not an allegiance to Obama..Sound familiar to the bIack uniformed guys in Deutchland during WW2?

[Rick03466]

Again CBS gives Voice to this nonsense. Instead of this Pseudo Science. Guns are a Disease? Yeah and spoons make you fat. CBS why don't you simply acknowledge that you are are VERY PREJUDICE against the Second Amendment, instead of dragging up this drivel!

[1stlttightwad]

Oh, No-o-o they can't do that..The folks that own guns would nail their a## to the cross and boycott every single advertiser..They may be prejudice and super biased..but they ain't stupid. Just like Obama they gotta keep it "under the radar" On another note, looks like CBS is following ABC's lead in doctoring and editing out key elements of interviews, official 911 calls that don't support their bias.