Are guns a public health epidemic?

Most debates about gun control are lost before they begin. Gun advocates claim that any restriction or regulation of any type violates their individual rights under the Constitution. One Texas columnist, Ken Herman, compared banning guns to banning alcohol – we tried that in the Prohibition era and it didn’t work – people still got alcohol.

What’s wrong with this reasoning is that the entire logic is flawed. No one is clamoring for the prohibition of all guns. Leading gun control groups like the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence are not calling for a ban on guns, even military-assault weapons that are specifically designed for mass killing (that group is only asking “to limit the availability of military-style weapons and high-capacity magazines”).

If one wants to make a valid comparison between guns and alcohol, then start treating gun violence in at least the same way we do alcohol or tobacco: as a public health epidemic. The Journal of the American Medical Association recently came out with that recommendation, since about 32,000 Americans die every year from gun violence (three times as many deaths than are caused by drunk driving accidents).

National policies as well as grassroots programs have reduced alcohol and tobacco-related deaths over the years. For example, the number of drunk-driving deaths has been cut in half since 1980. Since Hollywood glamorizes the use of guns, why not de-glamorize their use in the mass media? It used to be considered sexy to smoke, but a sustained education program about the dangers of tobacco use reversed that attitude. We could also start taxing gun makers –most make a profit from combat weapons – and put the money back into public education programs about guns.

Why do we have airbags and seat belts in cars? Because studies of infant deaths and car accidents led to those safety regulations. Car manufacturers didn't voluntarily make those life-saving features -- they were forced to by government regulations.

Gun enthusiasts often compare guns to cars, saying more people die from car accidents than from guns (actually the number is almost the same now). A similar argument was used in the 1950s by car manufacturers, who said “Cars don’t kill people; people do.” As one of the Harvard researchers of that study (David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center) pointed out, it wasn’t until physicians and other public health advocates came together that the government adopted more stringent safety standards such as mandating seat belts and air bags. In order to drive a car, you have to pass a test before you can operate a vehicle, but in most states you don’t have to pass a test or take a gun safety class in order to use a gun. You have to register your vehicle every year to continue to use it, but you don’t have to register your gun in many states. And of course we have strong laws against drinking and driving, but no comparable laws concerning a far more dangerous product: guns.

The simple fact is that guns are one of the least-regulated products in the United States. For example, manufacturers of aspirin are required to have child-proof safety bottles, but manufacturers of guns don’t have to make child-proof guns, despite the fact that one child dies every three days from accidental firearm deaths in this country, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The federal government has more regulations on the construction of ladders than it does on gun safety (just Google the term “ladder safety and OSHA”). Why? Because guns are the only consumer product exempt from federal product safety regulations (and the National Rifle Association, which has successfully prevented funding for gun research, wants to keep it that way). Negligent gun companies are also the only businesses shielded from state civil justice laws, so corrupt gun sellers are not held accountable.

Yes, “messing with constitutional rights is a serious business,” but if one bothers to read the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision one will find that this constitutional right is not absolute and is subject to restriction. The Supreme Court ruled that the D.C. ban on all handguns was unconstitutional, but found that the right to keep and bear arms is subject to regulation and limits. Even the very conservative Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion that “the Second Amendment is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

The issue is not outlawing guns, but instituting reasonable regulations on what is inarguably a dangerous product. Common sense gun restrictions that the vast majority of Americans support, such as universal background checks, tougher safety standards for manufacturers (such as gun locks), and restricting their access to criminals, the mentally ill, domestic abusers and other dangerous people would not violate the right to own a gun under the Second Amendment, but would go far to help reduce the body count and save some of those 87 people who die every day from gun violence in the U.S.