Gun violence is a “public health crisis,” the U.S. surgeon general said Tuesday, releasing for the first time a comprehensive report making the issue a health priority and recommending a series of actions to combat the scourge.
“Today, for the first time in the history of this office, I am declaring a gun violence alert,” Vivek Murthy said, in a video accompanying the report.
He highlights in particular that since 2020, firearms have been the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the United States, ahead of road accidents.
Appointed by the president, this senior federal official is responsible for prevention on public health issues, even if his concrete powers are very limited.
Such a report must above all make it possible to take the subject out of the purely political domain, and place it on the level of public health, Vivek Murthy said on CNN. He argued that a report published by one of his predecessors on the harmful consequences of tobacco had made it possible to mobilize different actors and triggered a series of measures.
In 2022, there were 48,204 gun-related deaths in the country, which includes suicides.
Nearly one in five Americans has a family member who has died from firearms, including suicide. More than half of the population has experienced, directly or those close to them, an event involving the use of a weapon.
Gun violence also disproportionately affects black people, the report highlights.
“Moral crisis”
“The collective cost of gun violence on our nation’s mental health is immense,” Vivek Murthy wrote on Network X. “The trauma and grief that so many Americans experience from related injuries and deaths to firearms have already had serious consequences. »
“It is a public health crisis that can be prevented” but “our failure to confront it is a moral crisis”, he said, calling for action with “clarity, courage and urgency”.
Its recommendations include stricter gun storage, widespread background checks for buyers, gun confiscation for dangerous people like abusive spouses, and a ban on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.
In addition, the ministry issued regulations on Tuesday allowing arms dealers to check on the database of the federal police, the FBI, whether a weapon offered to them has been stolen.
Such measures, long supported by Democratic President Joe Biden, require political agreement in Congress for implementation at the federal level.
Tuesday marks the second anniversary of the promulgation of a law establishing new limitations on weapons, adopted thanks to the support of elected Democrats and Republicans alike, but significantly below what the Biden administration hoped for.
Since then “we have initiated proceedings against 525 accused under this law and blocked 800 purchases of firearms by young people who do not have the legal right to acquire them”, underlined the Minister of Justice, Merrick Garland, during the inauguration of a ballistic analysis center in Cleveland (north).
The influential gun lobby, the NRA, for its part, quickly denounced the report as “an extension of the Biden administration’s war against law-abiding gun owners.” “America has a crime problem caused by criminals,” added the organization’s executive director, Randy Kozuch.
Republicans are largely opposed to strengthening controls, in the name of the Second Amendment to the American Constitution, which protects the right to carry a firearm.
“To my Republican colleagues: come to the negotiating table and work with us to pass legislation that helps save lives,” responded influential Democratic Senator Dick Durbin on Tuesday.
The country has more individual weapons than inhabitants: one adult in three owns at least one weapon and nearly one adult in two lives in a home where there is a weapon.
