How health care professionals are hoping to address gun violence
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Diverging Reports Breakdown
Violence prevention program works with trauma care to connect gunshot survivors to services
So far this year, HCMC has cared for 72 gunshot victims, including 12 children. “The trend in the past few weeks or month or two has been more concerning,” said Dr. Derek Lumbard. The solution is already in motion, with trauma care working together with violence prevention programs. They are reminding everyone to Be Smart: Remove the ammunition and locking both the firearm and ammunition. A sk about unsecured guns in other homes.
How health care professionals are hoping to address gun violence
How health care professionals are hoping to address gun violence
Recent gun violence has some in Minneapolis rallying for change, while doctors say they are seeing a troubling trend — one that is putting them ahead of schedule and threatening hopes for another year of decline in shootings.
So far this year, HCMC has cared for 72 gunshot victims, including 12 children.
“The trend in the past few weeks or month or two has been more concerning,” said Dr. Derek Lumbard, Hennepin Healthcare trauma surgeon. “In the past few weeks alone, there’s been an increase in number of firearm injuries coming through our hospital door.”
A rise in gun violence is putting doctors on edge after several years of decline.
Lumbard says the numbers they are seeing so far this year are putting us ahead of schedule, and if this trend continues, there will be no decline in shooting victims.
The solution is already in motion, with trauma care working together with violence prevention programs.
“We get a page from the hospital saying that somebody is coming to the hospital with a gunshot wound,” said Kentrl Galloway.
Galloway is the Director of Next Step Program, a hospital-based violence prevention program connecting survivors to services.
“Just making sure we give them a path of healing, a path of positivity on how to restart and rebuild their lives,” Galloway said.
Since 2016, the program has served over 900 participants.
They are reminding everyone to Be Smart:
S ecure your firearm by removing the ammunition and locking both the firearm and ammunition
ecure your firearm by removing the ammunition and locking both the firearm and ammunition M odel responsible behavior around guns.
odel responsible behavior around guns. A sk about unsecured guns in other homes.
sk about unsecured guns in other homes. R ecognize the role of guns in suicide.
ecognize the role of guns in suicide. Tell you peers to Be SMART.
Expert Considers Public Health Solutions to Gun Violence
A medical professor advocated for community-based solutions and policies to address gun violence as a public health crisis. Georgetown University’s health and the public interest program hosted Cassandra Crifasi as part of its weekly seminar series platforming public health leaders. Gun violence is the leading cause of death for individuals under 18 in the United States. Gun safety laws often face legal challenges based on the Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms.“I hope our students learned that the debate about guns and our nation should go beyond the politically charged debate,” Adam Myers, co-director of the HAPI program, wrote to The Hoya. “There are many ways to reduce rate of injury and death caused by gun violence, but public support for safer gun policies enjoys widespread support, but advocates must persuade the government to enact change,’’ he said in a letter to the Hoya on Feb. 26. ‘The places that are most gun friendly, that pride themselves on gun rights, are the places where we have the most burden of gun deaths in the U.S.’ ‘“Across every age bracket, Black Americans experience much higher rates of firearm homicide than white Americans,
Cassandra Crifasi, an associate professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University, highlighted the intersection of gun violence solutions and public health policy research during the event. Georgetown University’s health and the public interest program (HAPI), a master’s program that prepares students to help solve global health care problems, hosted Crifasi as part of its weekly seminar series platforming public health leaders.
Crifasi, the co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions (CGVS), which conducts non-partisan research to address gun violence as a public health emergency, said loose gun laws are responsible for high rates of gun deaths in both homicide and household accidents.
“It’s actually Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, Alabama — places where they have fairly lax firearm policies — where we’re seeing the highest rates,” Crifasi said during the event.
“There’s this perception that if we could reduce violence in these particular urban areas of the country — that may be perceived as Democratic or sanctuary or whatever term you want — that we would magically eliminate the vast proportion of our firearm violence in this country, and that’s simply not the case,” Crifasi said. “The places that are most gun friendly, that pride themselves on gun rights, are the places where we have the most burden of gun deaths in the U.S.”
Gun violence is the leading cause of death for individuals under 18 in the United States, but gun safety laws often face legal challenges based on the Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms.
Crifasi said firearm violence, specifically in terms of homicide rates, is often dramatically higher in marginalized communities facing systemic disadvantage.
“Across every age bracket, Black Americans experience much higher rates of firearm homicide than white Americans, but particularly for our youngest people,” Crifasi said. “And thinking about some of the structural issues that we have and some of the policy choices we’ve made that tend to concentrate in both disadvantaged and disinvested minority communities, it can contribute to some of these high rates of violence.”
Crifasi added that measures including legally mandated background checks would help prevent firearm deaths and make it safer to carry guns in public.
“If someone, for example, wants to carry a concealed firearm in public, our research has found that when you have standards, and you have sufficient training and background check requirements, you actually see fewer harms than if you make it really easy for people to carry in public,” Crifasi said.
Jennifer Jantzen, the program coordinator for the HAPI program, said the seminars are important because they connect students to expert health care professionals like Crifasi.
“The series is a great way to see what types of groundbreaking health careers are out there and network with professionals,” Jantzen wrote to The Hoya. “I hope these sessions inspire students to make change in their own communities to improve health outcomes for everyone.”
Crifasi said CGVS focuses on local solutions by engaging directly with communities to avoid villainizing firearms or over relying on government intervention.
“We’ve developed a public health and safety partnership called the Violence Reduction Councils that brings data together with a variety of partners, including community members, to understand the data, see what’s happening in their community and co-create solutions,” Crifasi said. “We make recommendations on what can be done that are consistent with what the community wants to see happening, rather than relying solely on policing or other criminal justice interventions.”
Adam Myers, co-director of the HAPI program, said he was excited for students to engage with solutions to gun violence outside of the heavily politicized context of the Second Amendment.
“I hope our students learned that the debate about guns and gun violence in our nation should go beyond the politically charged debate around the Second Amendment,” Myers wrote to The Hoya. “There are many ways to reduce the rate of injury and death caused by gun violence.”
Crifasi said safer gun policies enjoy widespread public support, but advocates must persuade the government to enact change.
“We have pretty broad support,” Crifasi said. “Our challenge is activating people to do something with this knowledge and then getting our policymakers to do something that is evidence-based, to reduce gun violence — not just responding to what a gun lobby may be pushing as a solution.”
Pros, Cons, Debate, Arguments, Firearms, Laws, Safety, Gun Rights, & Death
Guns were omnipresent in the American Colonies, first for hunting and general self-protection. Several colonies mandated that heads of households own guns and that all able-bodied men enroll in the militia and carry personal firearms. The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was ratified on December 15, 1791. A 1792 federal law required that every man eligible for militia service own a gun and ammunition suitable for military service, report for frequent inspection of their guns, and register his gun ownership on public records. In October 1876, Dakota Territory passed a law stating that one could fire a gun without the mayor’s consent. A sign in Dodge City, Kansas, in 1879 read “The Carrying of Fire Arms in Kansas is Prohibited’’ The first broad gun control law was enacted by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2005. The Gun Control Act of 2005 gives broad and broad powers to the Department of Justice to regulate guns and ammunition. It was signed into law by President Bush and signed by Vice President Joe Biden.
Guns were omnipresent in the American Colonies, first for hunting and general self-protection and later as weapons in the American Revolutionary War. Several colonies mandated that heads of households (including women) own guns and that all able-bodied men enroll in the militia and carry personal firearms. A 1643 law in Connecticut and at least five other colonies required “at least one adult man in every house to carry a gun to church or other public meetings” in order to protect against attacks by Native Americans. A 1743 law inSouth Carolina required guns to safeguard against “insurrections and other wicked attempts of Negroes and other Slaves.” Other laws required immigrants to own guns in order to immigrate or own land. [105] Gun restrictions were just as common. They arose from a myriad of concerns tied to safety, crime, hunting, communal defense, and slavery. In fact, early American gun laws covered every imaginable type of regulation, from gun registration to outright gun bans. As Robert J. Spitzer of the State University of New York explained in an essay tellingly titled “Gun Laws Are as Old as Gun Ownership,” numerous groups were at one time or another banned from buying or possessing firearms, including: Native Americans, slaves, indentured servants, vagrants, non-Protestants, those who refused to swear an oath of loyalty to the government, felons, foreigners. . . . Early laws also regulated the manufacture, inspection, and sale of firearms, as well as gun storage and discharge restrictions. Others prohibited not only the firing of firearms in or near towns, but firing after dark, on Sundays, in public places, near roads and bridges or while under the influence of alcohol.[246][1][2] There were even regulations exempting members of certain professions (including doctors, teachers, clergy, and lawyers) from laws requiring gun ownership.[105] The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was ratified on December 15, 1791. The amendment promises that “a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The notes from the Constitutional Convention do not specifically mention an individual right to a gun for self-defense. Some historians suggest that the idea of an individual versus a collective right would not have occurred to the Founding Fathers because the two were intertwined and inseparable: there was an individual right to a gun in order to fulfill the collective right of serving in the militia. [105][106] A 1792 federal law required that every man eligible for militia service own a gun and ammunition suitable for military service, report for frequent inspection of their guns, and register his gun ownership on public records. Many Americans owned only hunting rifles or pistols instead of proper military guns, and though the fines were high for doing so (equivalent to thousands of dollars today), they were levied inconsistently and the public largely ignored the law. [101][105][106]
Slave Codes and the “Wild West” From the 1700s through the 1800s, slave codes and, after slavery was abolished in 1865, “Black codes” (and, still later, Jim Crow laws) prohibited Blacks from owning guns, and laws allowing the ownership of guns frequently specified “free white men.” For example, an 1833 Georgia law stated, “it shall not be lawful for any free person of color in this state, to own, use, or carry fire arms of any description whatever … that the free person of color, so detected in owning, using, or carrying fire arms, shall receive upon his bare back, thirty-nine lashes, and that the fire arm so found in the possession of said free person of color, shall be exposed for public sale.” [98][107] Contrary to images of the Wild West popularized in movies, cities on the frontier often required visitors to disarm and check their guns with the local sheriff or at a stable on the outskirts before entering the town. In October 1876, Deadwood, Dakota Territory passed a law stating that no one could fire a gun without the mayor’s consent. A sign in Dodge City, Kansas, in 1879 read, “The Carrying of Fire Arms Strictly Prohibited.” The first law passed in Dodge City was a gun control law that read “any person or persons found carrying concealed weapons in the city of Dodge or violating the laws of the State shall be dealt with according to law.” [108][109]
Federal and State Gun Laws: 2000-2019 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act and Child Safety Lock Act of 2005 was enacted on October 26 by President George W. Bush and gives broad civil liability immunity to firearms manufacturers so they cannot be sued by a gun death victim’s family. The Child Safety Lock Act requires that all handguns be sold with a “secure gun storage or safety device.” [114][118][119] The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) Improvement Amendments Act of 2007 was enacted as a condition of the Brady Act and provides incentives to states (including grants from the Attorney General) for them to provide information to NICS including information on people who are prohibited from purchasing firearms. The NICS was implemented on November 30, 1998, and later amended on January 8, 2008, in response to the April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech University shooting so that the Attorney General could more easily acquire information pertinent to background checks such as disqualifying mental conditions. [114][120] On January 5, 2016, President Barack Obama announced new executive actions on gun control. His measures took effect immediately and included: an update and expansion of background checks (closing the “gun show loophole” that allowed private sellers to sell guns without performing background checks on the buyers); the addition of 200 ATF agents; increased mental health care funding; $4 million and personnel to enhance the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network (used to link crimes in one jurisdiction to ballistics evidence in another); creating an Internet Investigations Center to track illegal online gun trafficking; a new Department of Health and Human Services rule saying that it is not a HIPAA violation to report mental health information to the background check system; a new requirement to report gun thefts; new research funding for gun safety technologies; and more funding to train law enforcement officers on preventing gun casualties in domestic violence cases. [142][143] In addition to federal gun laws, each state has its own set of gun laws ranging from California with the most restrictive gun laws in the country to Wyoming with the most lenient, according to Giffords Law Center “Annual Gun Law Scorecard.” In fact, 43 of 50 states have a “right to bear arms” clause in their state constitutions. [101][121][226] The most common state gun control laws include background checks, waiting periods, and registration requirements to purchase or sell guns. Most states prevent carrying guns, including people with a concealed carry permit, on K-12 school grounds, and many states prevent carrying on college campuses. Some states ban assault weapons. [121][122] Gun rights laws include concealed and open carry permits, as well as allowing gun carry in usually restricted areas (such as bars, K-12 schools, state parks, and parking areas). Many states have “shoot first” (also called “stand your ground”) laws, which allow people to use deadly force when they believe their lives to be in danger. Open carry of handguns is generally allowed in most states (though a permit may be required). [121][122]
Shocker: Bloomberg-Funded Gun Control Center Prescribes More Gun Control
A recent Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health report came out with several recommendations to reduce “gun violence.” The five-point plan promotes the idea that gun ownership would be better treated as a privilege and not as a right. Treating crime as a public health crisis that can be “cured” is, and will always be, ineffective, writes Salam Fatohi. Layering on new laws won’t make criminals stop committing crimes, he says. What does stop them is putting them behind bars, he writes. The report is the same ‘gun control in a lab coat’ approach that former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy took in the waning days of the Biden administration, Fatoh says. It’s the same sort of language that foisted disproven mask mandates and vaccinations to prevent COVID-19, which were later revealed to do nothing to stop the pandemic”s spread and the vaccine regimen didn’t actually vaccinate at all.
Shocker: Bloomberg-Funded Gun Control Center Prescribes More Gun Control
By Salam Fatohi
A recent Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health report came out with several recommendations to reduce “gun violence.” The five-point plan, constructed by the school’s “Consortium for Risk-Based Firearm Policy,” promotes the idea that gun ownership would be better treated as a privilege and not as a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution for all law-abiding citizens.
That consortium is part of Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, which views “gun violence” as a “public health emergency.” That’s the same sort of language that foisted disproven mask mandates and vaccinations to prevent COVID-19, which were later revealed to do nothing to stop the pandemic’s spread and the vaccine regimen didn’t actually vaccinate at all. NSSF has said it before. Criminal misuse of firearms isn’t a disease. It’s a crime issue. Treating crime as a public health crisis that can be “cured” is, and will always be, ineffective. Stopping crime means enforcing criminal laws against criminals that commit crimes.
This is the same “gun control in a lab coat” approach that former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy took in the waning days of the Biden administration, after he promised Congress he wouldn’t. Of course, the Johns Hopkins consortium report doesn’t recommend locking up criminals that break the law. It recommends new restrictive gun licensing laws that only create barriers to lawful firearm ownership by those who don’t break the law.
Call it Crime
It shouldn’t take a doctorate degree to understand that criminals, by the very definition, don’t follow the law. Layering on new laws won’t make criminals stop committing crimes. What does stop them is putting them behind bars.
Nevertheless, the “smart” people at Johns Hopkins came up with their five-point plan for gun licensing they claim would bring down the rates of “gun violence.” That plan recommends that in order for law-abiding citizens to purchase guns, states adopt proof of firearm safety training, fingerprint every prospective gun purchaser, conduct in-person interviews to obtain a permit-to-purchase a firearm, endure a “comprehensive” background check and be subject to waiting periods before taking possession of a firearm even after having passed a “comprehensive” background check.
These recommendations are fraught with problems. First among them are questions of whether these would intrude on rights protected by the Second Amendment. The “smart” people at Johns Hopkins pitch their permit-to-purchase idea as “ensuring that only eligible and responsible people can legally purchase firearms.”
That begs the question, though, that if the problem isn’t with law-abiding gun owners, how would this prevent prohibited individuals from obtaining firearms? Those are individuals who have been convicted of a felony, been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility or aren’t of legal age.
The consortium’s report admits that those who are ineligible or would illegally straw purchase a firearm for someone who can’t buy one on their own, wouldn’t be deterred. However, they fail to mention that criminals convicted of their crimes involving firearms admitted that they obtained their gun illegally. A Bureau of Justice Statistics survey showed that in 2016, 90 percent of criminals convicted of a crime involving a firearm admitted to obtaining it illegally. Most of them got the gun they used in a crime through the black market. The FBI warns that firearm theft is a growing concern as a source of criminally-obtained firearms.
Rejected Policy
Another of the consortium’s recommendations is a gun control policy masquerading as a “public health emergency.” The policy they want states to adopt is “universal background checks,” which necessitates a national firearm registry to work. That idea was rejected by Congress because it would put every law-abiding American on a government watch list, simply for exercising their rights to keep and bear arms.
Recent history has shown that states are irresponsible with gun owners’ private information. It’s been conveniently “leaked” by states perennially pushing more gun control. The private data of over 190,000 Californians with concealed carry permits was “leaked” and downloaded about 2,734 times. The names and addresses of handgun permit holders in two New York counties were published on an interactive map, jeopardizing their safety and creating a criminals’ Christmas list of where they know they could try to steal guns.
The consortium says none of this should be of legal concern. Their report notes that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down New York’s “may issue” concealed carry licensing law over the proper cause requirement. However, they argue that lower courts are grappling with whether those same standards should apply to state permits-to-purchase, even going as far as saying those permit restrictions, which would include an in-person interview to justify a purchase, would be constitutional under the Second Amendment.
They cited Illinois’s Firearm Owner Identification (FOID) card. That state law required an individual to obtain a state permission slip to buy a gun or ammunition. The report fails to mention that the requirement was just ruled unconstitutional for an individual possessing a firearm in their own home. When it comes to the consortium’s recommendation for a mandatory waiting period for lawful firearm purchases, a federal court in Maine just enjoined the state’s 72-hour waiting period law violates Second Amendment rights.
Same Players, Old Ideas
These aren’t novel ideas. They’ve been rinsed and repeated by gun control groups, policy think tanks and medical professionals for decades in the hopes of instituting gun control under the guise of a “public health emergency.” It’s easy to trace the agenda when someone traces the money. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Gun Violence Solutions is funded by none other than antigun billionaire Michael Bloomberg. He’s the same gun control fat cat that bankrolls Everytown for Gun Safety and March for Our Lives gun control groups, as well as The Trace. He drops tens of millions into Congressional and presidential races to advance his gun control vision. He even flirted with his own presidential run before flaming out after admitting guns were fine for him but not every other law-abiding American.
The consortium’s report was also funded by The Joyce Foundation, which regularly partners with universities to propel their gun control agenda. The Joyce Foundation “financed scholarships for law schools to promote a legal theory that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual’s right to bear arms, claiming the amendment guaranteed a state government’s right to arm an organized militia,” according to InfluenceWatch.org. When the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the individual right to keep and bear arms under Heller, The Joyce Foundation switched tactics, labeling gun control as a “public health” issue.
The Joyce Foundation also gave “tens of millions of dollars to fund more than 100 antigun grants to researchers at Harvard University, the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, International Association of Chiefs of Police, Freedom States Alliance, Iowans for the Prevention of Gun Violence, the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence, and Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort. In past years, the organization has devoted 10 percent of its outlays to gun control grants,” according to InfluenceWatch.org.
The board of directors and day-to-day leadership include gun control advocates, and even former President Barack Obama was on the board from 1994-2002.
These smart people at universities should know by now that their attempts to wrap a political agenda in a white lab coat isn’t the prescription that will work. The American public deserves better than gun control disguised as a cure.
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UB, MSU tackle gun violence prevention in medical field
Medical professionals, students and researchers from around the nation are gathering in Buffalo. The reason behind the remembrance event is personal for the two schools putting it on. Organizers hope to open eyes and minds to think outside the box and tackle what they call a public health emergency. It’s the third year of event where professionals from across the nation gather to discuss what they can do to prevent gun violence. It stems from the two mass shooting events, organizers note that only about 1% of shootings in the U.S. are mass shootings. The Saturday event, from 2-8 p.m., is free and will be held at the University at Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Michigan State University’‘s College of Human Medicine.” It is a devastating public healthEmergency’ – Dr. Allison Brashear, MD.
This partnership between the University at Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine happened under the saddest of circumstances. Two communities were shattered by gun violence. Jacobs School of Medicine is just 1.5 miles away from where the racist mass shooting at a Buffalo Tops took place. MSU lost three students when a gunman opened fire in two buildings on campus.
What You Need To Know The partnership between University at Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine addresses gun violence prevention in the medical field
It’s the third year of event where professionals from across the nation gather to discuss what they can do
Saturday from 2-8 p.m., the community is invited to attend and be part of the discussion
“We see this on a daily, daily basis, sadly, and we want to begin to explore those things about gun violence being a public health issue,” said Dr. Allison Brashear, MD, dean of the Jacobs School of Medicine.
Brashear says it’s time to have the tough conversations and get people thinking beyond the emergency room.
“Thinking about what we can do as health care professionals who interact with patients and how can we support each other,” Brashear said.
Brashear says the trauma goes beyond the victim, that medical professionals need to get involved. Keeping their communities healthy involves more than just a wellness check, but education, she believes.
“Gun storage is a big issue, particularly for pediatricians,” Brashear said. “That one simple question is ‘do you have a gun at home and is it locked?’ Can save lives.”
Then there’s guns and mental health. What resources are lacking? How can the stigma continuously be broken?
Anna Fretz and Mikaela Hastings, part of the planning team, are both third-year medical students at UB’s Jacobs School of Medicine.
“Gun violence is not just this abstract issue,” Fretz said.” It is a devastating public health emergency.”
The pair bring a unique perspective to the conversation. They’re learning and thinking of how to make the health system about more than vitals.
“One of my goals is to help train medical students, to learn about how the gun violence epidemic, interacts with their particular specialty interests and to teach medical students how to talk to their patients about gun violence and about firearm safety,” Fretz said.
Hastings says guns are the leading cause of death among children.
“I think that that’s really scary, especially because we really talk about, helmets and your seat belts and everything,” Hastings said.
They and Brashear hope to open eyes and minds to think outside the box and tackle what they call a public health emergency.
“We want to energize people about going back to their organizations, their schools, their community and say, what can we do,” Brashear asked.
While this conference stems from the two mass shooting events, organizers note that only about 1% of shootings in the U.S. are mass shootings. Domestic violence, accidental shootings, suicides and improper storage of firearms outnumber those mass casualty events.
The Saturday event, from 2-8 p.m., is free. Among the listed speakers is Zeneta Everhart. Her son, Zaire, was one of three people shot at the Tops grocery store who survived. She’s been a fierce advocate for public safety and was even at the White House helping the Biden administration with its gun violence prevention efforts.