<div id="header_main_wrap">
<div id="header_main" style="margin-top:0">
</div>
</div>
<div class="container" style="width:640px">
<div id="content">
<div id="story">
<div style="margin-bottom:28px;overflow:hidden">
<a class="nolht" href="http://www.spokesman.com/"><img src="http://media.spokesman.com/img/bits/logo-sr.png" style="float: left; margin-right: 20px;"></a>
<h5 class="details" style="float:right">August 12, 2012</h5>
</div>
<h1>Experts consider factors surrounding gun violence</h1>
<div class="details nested grid-8"><span>
Marilynn Marchione<br>
Associated Press
</span></div>
<div class="tag-details details-top">
</div>
<div id="story-body">
<div class="grid-3 story-embed">
<img class="story_photo" src="http://media.spokesman.com/photos/2012/08/12/Guns_aw12_t210.jpg?74a72ef94756bccc16ea1c78066b52f96b62dbc7">
<p class="caption">Dr. Stephen Hargarten, seen in a trauma room
at Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin’s emergency department
in Milwaukee, helped many of the victims of the shooting at the Sikh
Temple of Wisconsin.</p>
</div>
<p>MILWAUKEE – Is a gun like a virus, a car, tobacco or alcohol? Yes,
say public health experts, who in the wake of recent mass shootings are
calling for a fresh look at gun violence as a social disease. </p>
<p>What we need, they say, is a public health approach to the problem,
like the highway safety measures, product changes and driving laws that
slashed deaths from car crashes decades ago, even as the number of
vehicles on the road rose. </p>
<p>One example: Guardrails are now curved to the ground instead of
having sharp metal ends that stick out and pose a hazard in a crash. </p>
<p>“People used to spear themselves and we blamed the drivers for
that,” said Dr. Garen Wintemute, an emergency medicine professor who
directs the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of
California, Davis. </p>
<p>It wasn’t enough back then to curb deaths just by trying to make
people better drivers, and it isn’t enough now to tackle gun violence by
focusing solely on the people doing the shooting, he and other
doctors say. </p>
<p>They want a science-based, pragmatic approach based on the reality
of a society saturated with guns that seeks better ways of preventing
harm from them. </p>
<p>The need for a new approach crystallized last Sunday for one of the
nation’s leading gun violence experts, Dr. Stephen Hargarten. He found
himself treating victims of the Sikh temple shootings at the emergency
department he heads in Milwaukee. Seven people were killed, including
the gunman, and three were seriously wounded. </p>
<p>It happened two weeks after a shooter killed 12 people and injured
58 at a movie theater in Colorado, and two days before a man pleaded
guilty to killing six people and wounding 13, including then-Rep.
Gabrielle Giffords, in Tucson, Ariz., last year. </p>
<p>“What I’m struggling with is, is this the new social norm? This is
what we’re going to have to live with if we have more personal access to
firearms,” said Hargarten, emergency medicine chief at Froedtert
Hospital and director of the Injury Research Center at the Medical
College of Wisconsin. “We have a public health issue to discuss. Do we
wait for the next outbreak, or is there something we can do to
prevent it?” </p>
<p>About 260 million to 300 million firearms are owned by civilians in
the United States; about one-third of American homes have one. Guns are
used in two-thirds of homicides, according to the FBI. About 9 percent
of all violent crimes involve a gun – roughly 338,000 cases each year. </p>
<p>Mass shootings don’t seem to be on the rise, but not all police
agencies report details like the number of victims per shooting, and
reporting lags by more than a year, so recent trends are not known. </p>
<p>“The greater toll is not from these clusters but from endemic
violence, the stuff that occurs every day and doesn’t make the
headlines,” said Wintemute, the California researcher. </p>
<p>More than 73,000 emergency room visits in 2010 were for
firearm-related injuries, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention estimates. </p>
<p>At the same time, violent crime has been falling, and the murder
rate is less than half what it was two decades ago. And Gallup polls
have shown support for stricter gun laws has been falling since 1990.
Last year 55 percent of Americans said gun laws should remain the same
or become more lenient. </p>
<p>Dr. David Satcher tried to make gun violence a public health issue when he became CDC director in 1993. </p>
<p>Hargarten later won a federal grant to establish the nation’s first Firearm Injury Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin. </p>
<p>“Unlike almost all other consumer products, there is no national
product safety oversight of firearms,” he wrote in the Wisconsin
Medical Journal. </p>
<p>That’s just one aspect of a public health approach. Other elements: </p>
<p> • <strong>Host factors: </strong>What makes someone more likely to
shoot, or someone more likely to be a victim. One recent study found
firearm owners were more likely than those with no firearms at home to
binge drink or to drink and drive, and other research has tied alcohol
and gun violence. That suggests that people with driving under the
influence convictions should be barred from buying guns, Wintemute said.
</p>
<p> • <strong>Product features: </strong>Which firearms are most
dangerous and why. Manufacturers could be pressured to fix design
defects that let guns go off accidentally, and to add technology that
allows only the owner of a gun to fire it. (Many police officers and
others are shot with their own weapons.) Bans on assault weapons and
multiple magazines that allow rapid and repeat firing are other
possible steps. </p>
<p> • <strong>Environmental risk factors: </strong>What conditions
allow or contribute to shootings. Gun shops must do background checks
and refuse to sell firearms to people convicted of felonies or domestic
violence misdemeanors, but those convicted of other violent misdemeanors
can buy whatever they want. The rules also don’t apply to private
sales, which one study estimates as 40 percent of the market. </p>
<p> • <strong>Disease patterns: </strong>Observing how a problem
spreads. Gun ownership – a precursor to gun violence – can spread “much
like an infectious disease circulates,” said Daniel Webster, a health
policy expert and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy
and Research in Baltimore. </p>
<p>“There’s sort of a contagion phenomenon” after a shooting, where
people feel they need to have a gun for protection or retaliation,
he said. </p>
<p>That’s already evident in the wake of the Colorado movie theater
shootings. Recently, reports popped up around the nation of people
bringing guns to “Batman” movies. Some of them said they did so
for protection. </p>
</div>
<p><em><br></em></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="clear">
<div id="footer">
<div class="container" style="text-align:center">
<h6 class="top">Get more news and information at <a href="http://www.spokesman.com/">Spokesman.com</a></h6>
</div>
</div>
</div><div style="display:block;background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(51,0,51);padding:7px 10px;color:rgb(255,255,255);border:2px solid rgb(255,255,255);text-decoration:none!important;text-align:left;font:13px Arial,Helvetica;border-radius:5px 5px 5px 5px;text-transform:none;width:auto;height:auto" id="ghostery-purple-bubble">
<span style="font-size:0px">Ghostery has found the following on this page:</span><span style="background-color:rgb(51,0,51);display:inline;color:rgb(119,119,119);text-decoration:line-through">ChartBeat</span><br style="display:block!important">
<span style="background-color:rgb(51,0,51);display:inline;color:rgb(119,119,119);text-decoration:line-through">Google Adsense</span><br style="display:block!important"><span style="background-color:rgb(51,0,51);display:inline;color:rgb(119,119,119);text-decoration:line-through">Google Analytics</span><br style="display:block!important">
</div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br><br><img src="http://users.moscow.com/waf/WP%20Fox%2001.jpg"><br><br>