Surgeon General Say Guns are a Public Health Crisis

Today our nation's top doctor issued a stern warning on gun violence all across the US, declaring it a public health crisis for the first time ever. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy raising concerns that Americans are experiencing firearm related deaths at dramatically higher rates. And they're now the leading cause of death, think about this, the leading cause of death for children and teens in this country. Dr. Murthy providing several staggering statistics to make his case. Chief among them, the rate of gun violence in the US is anywhere from five to 121 times higher when compared to any other high-income country in the world. The Surgeon General says the impact of this violence is also causing untold damage to our mental health. (00:45) Joining me now to discuss, United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. Dr. Murthy, thank you so much for taking the time to talk about this today. I know a lot of people for a long time have been wanting this to happen. Your advisory outlines how the impact of gun violence goes beyond deaths and injury. It actually leads to cascading harm and collective trauma across societies, threatening the mental and physical health of everyone, but especially young people. What concerns you the most here?

Well, I'll tell you the reason I'm putting forward this advisory from our office on gun violence for the first time in our history is I want people to understand that this is a public health concern of great urgency and that the impact it's having on our country is far wider than I think most people may realize. The greatest price we're paying for gun violence are unquestionably the lives we lose, nearly 50,000 a year. But we've now reached a place where gun violence has become the leading cause of death among children and teens. That was not true a decade ago or two decades ago. It is true today. (01:48) And we're also seeing that for every one person we lose to gun violence, there are two who are injured. There are more who witness these incidents, family members who lose a loved one, communities that are traumatized by the violence in their neighborhoods, and millions of people, including our children, who read about and hear about these episodes of violence in the news and they worry. And that's why six in 10 adults in America are now saying that they're worried about losing a loved one to gun violence. It's why half of kids are saying that they're worried about a shooting taking place in their school. This is what I hear all across America when I meet with kids and with parents. And if we understand the full extent of this toll, if we understand that this is now a kids issue, then my hope is that we can respond with greater urgency and address this as the public health challenge that it is.

Yeah, a lot of the data you present focuses on how gun violence is increasingly impacting kids. Is that a recent phenomenon with school shootings? Why is that primarily the focus of a lot of the research you provide, but also, as you've just said, a lot of the concern for not only kids, but for their parents?

Yeah, well, certainly mass shootings have had an impact on the psyche of our country. Really, the fear of gun violence has really infiltrated the psyche of America, and when you look at kids in particular, the fact that half of them are worried about a shooting in their school just speaks to that. But it's important to realize that the vast majority of gun violence related deaths that take place are actually taking place in other settings. Usually in neighborhoods and in homes. There are people every day, including our children, who are engaged in playing sometimes with weapons at home that are left unlocked and loaded, and they end up injuring themselves and sometimes killing themselves or others accidentally. We also know that there are acts of violence that are taking place in neighborhoods as part of conflicts where a lethal weapon is available, and that can lead to homicide as well. (03:49) But it may also surprise people to know that around 56% of gun violence related deaths are suicides. And this is why when we look at the breadth of factors that are driving gun violence, you quickly realize that there's not one simple solution to it. There are multiple steps we have to take, and I lay out a series of strategies that we can take as a country to ultimately address this. And that's really important for people to know, there is a solution here. We do not have to consign ourselves to a future where gun violence is the day-to-day reality that we face, where we are worried about going to school or work or the grocery store or a concert. We can live in a safer way, and that's what I am hoping that we can approach with a new set of urgency because ultimately this is a kid's issue, and nothing is more important than the wellbeing of our children.

Sir, I want to talk about a statistic you just gave out. A lot of people don't know that that is such a big amount of the gun deaths in this country is suicide. Many people would not put their finger on that percentage. But that is also a statistic used by a lot of gun rights advocates who don't want anything to change in terms of gun legislation. You call for an evidence-based approach to public health change along with the civilian ban on assault rifles and high volume magazines. I'm wondering how realistic is it to think that you can affect positive change here given the decades of pushback from gun rights advocates, the political climate we have right now in this country and a right-leaning Supreme Court, which already favors the Second Amendment, as we just saw, overturning the ban on bump stocks? It would seem like you're climbing a pretty big hill here.

You're right that there's complexity to this issue, no question about that. And it's not simple to address gun violence in America. For years, this has been politicized and polarized as an issue. But here's what I have learned over the years of talking to people in communities across America. I've learned that people of all backgrounds, all political backgrounds, race and ethnicity backgrounds, people of different ages and different geographical locations in our country, they all share a common desire to reduce gun violence in our country. They want their kids to be able to go to school safely, just as I do. They want to be able to go to the grocery store and the mall without worrying about violence. They want to be able to take a walk in their neighborhood without worrying that that is going to put them at risk of being shot. And I worry that that broad agreement on the urgency of addressing this issue gets lost sometimes in how we cover this issue, but I see that each and every day. (06:30) And the other thing that gives me hope though is what we've seen recently, which has been some progress in starting to address gun violence. Five to six years ago, for the first time in decades, Congress put forward a modest sum of funding for gun violence research. Much more is needed, but that was an important start. The second thing is two years ago, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was passed by Congress, the first major piece of legislation in 30 years to address gun violence. I do believe that just as we did with tobacco and with car accident related deaths in this country, if we can understand these issues as public health issues, understand the fact that people across the spectrum want to address this, want to live more safely, then I do think that we can make progress, but it's going to take shifting how we talk about this, how we think about this issue and recognizing the expansive toll that it's taking on all of our lives.

It's interesting, at the beginning of the interview when you mentioned that gun violence doesn't just affect the victims, people who are actually shot and killed by guns, but the people around them, I'm clued into something, my daughter is becoming a teacher and she tells me a lot of the people who are becoming teachers, and we need so many more teachers in this country, are concerned about that now. That that was never a concern in the past, but they're concerned about school shootings. If this plea of yours, which I know so many people back, people have been saying for years this should be a public health crisis, if this plea falls on deaf ears, I'm wondering what's next? Because there was some conventional wisdom that said Congress was going to take some sort of action after Sandy Hook where 20 kids were gunned down, and really nothing happened after that. You seem hopeful that with baby steps Congress can do something. Are baby steps good enough?

Well, I think certainly we have to do a lot now, and baby steps aren't always enough when you look at the scale of the problem. What I've laid out are major strategies that we can consider and that we should strongly look at when it comes to addressing gun violence. I'd love to be able to tell you we just take one step that we can solve all of gun violence or that we had the luxury of taking an incremental step here waiting five or 10 years and seeing what happens. We don't have that luxury. Our kids' lives are at stake here. We have to look at the cost of inaction, and we just can't afford to continue to bear the cost of inaction, because it's not only being born in lives lost, but it is affecting how people think about living their lives, about the career choices they make, about basic decisions like going for a walk or going to school or going to work. (09:06) We all deserve to live in a community that's safe. We can't afford to just kick the can down the road when it comes to addressing this crisis. And I do believe as a country though, we can do hard things because we've done it in the past. In 1964, when Surgeon General Luther Terry issued the first Surgeon General's report on tobacco, a lot of people said, "There's no way you can get Americans to stop smoking." 42% of the country smoked at that time. There were ads everywhere. Doctors were smoking. It was part of the culture. But we didn't accept that as our reality. We said that we can do better, and through a series of community actions, education programs, youth initiative, advocacy movements and action from lawmakers, we were able to dramatically reduce tobacco use in this country, dropping cigarette smoking from 42% in 1964 to under 12% today. So we can do hard things. And when our kids' lives are at stake, we absolutely must.

Yeah, I mean, it's a serious approach to a serious problem. It's a multi-pronged approach, not one specific thing that will fix it. You're coming at it from a lot of angles and finally labeling it sort of what a lot of people in this country feel that it is. I mean, we're all scared that our kids are going to be hurt. No one wants that. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, thank you so much for taking the time, sir. We really do appreciate having you on.

Thanks so much. It was good to be with you.