The American Medical Association (AMA) announces to adopt a policy that will call gun violence in the USA a public health crisis, in wake of mass shooting in Orlando, Florida that took place on Sunday.
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In fact, The New York Times noted that five of the world’s 15 deadliest mass shootings in the past 50 years happened in the U.S. No other country is on that list more than once.
In an Annals of Internal Medicine article just last month, doctors from UC Davis School of Medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine and Rhode Island Hospital, The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University wrote that their peers “have unique opportunities to help prevent firearm violence” by counseling about guns as they do with other health matters. After President Barack Obama issued a statement calling for “the secretary of [HHS], through the director of the [CDC] and other scientific agencies within [HHS], [to] conduct or sponsor research into the causes of gun violence and the ways to prevent it”, the NIH developed a call for proposals. Democrats in both chambers have also introduced legislation that would reverse the ban.
Congress placed restrictions on CDC funding of gun research into the federal budget in 1996 at the urging of gun rights supporters who claimed the agency was biased toward gun control.
Almost 20 years later, the principal author of that language, Arkansas Republican Jay Dickey, conceded to the Huffington Post that he has “regrets” over the policy that came to be known as the Dickey Amendment.
“As the nation’s healers, we are shocked and saddened by the horrific, senseless murders in Orlando and a brazen, targeted attack on LGBTQ Americans”, said AMA president Dr. Steven Stack in a statement after the shooting.
And like all other public health problems, a comprehensive, research-based response is required. Conservatives in Congress responded by adding language to the appropriations bill that finances the CDC: “None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control”.
It has tracked 139 mass shootings across the country this year alone.
The AMA said in 2013 that “uncontrolled ownership and use of firearms, especially handguns, is a serious threat to the public’s health”.
Gun violence is a “public health crisis”, according to the American Medical Association.
“With approximately 30,000 men, women and children dying each year at the barrel of a gun in elementary schools, movie theaters, workplaces, houses of worship and on live television, the United States faces a public health crisis of gun violence”.
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The policy offers support for waiting periods to buy firearms and requiring background checks.
