An Opinion in Gun Violence and its Impact on Health Care

Rami Batarseh

Department of Internal Medicine, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, USA

*Correspondence to: Dr. Rami Batarseh, Department of Internal Medicine, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, USA.

Copyright © 2018 Dr. Rami Batarseh. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Gun Violence is the 12^th leading cause of premature death in the US, tallying up to 38000 deaths and 75000 injured annually. The CDC was bereft of performing any research on gun safety since 1996 because the NRA lobbied Congress to pass the Dickey amendment which removed any funding. During the passage of Obama’s Affordable Care Act, Congress included a provision to restricting the ability of doctors to gather data on patients’ gun use, which has left public safety crippled. While we can track fatality analysis closely from accidents et al. we are unable to account with mathematical certainty how many households have guns.

Researchers from Harvard and Yale Universities recently conducted an analysis of 138,000 individuals who had been arrested in Chicago, Illinois between 2006 and 2014. and concluded on such violence to become epidemic. Only 1.6% of funds by congress in the last decade has been used for gun policies. This modicum of potential leaves a $2.8 billion per year hospital cost in our health care penumbra.

Predictors of Gun Violence

• Severe Mental Illness which can contribute to homicide or criminal misconduct.
• Youth with anti-social behavior during late adolescence phase with a history of violent behavior.
• Sex: Males have been identified as usual perpetrators.
• Culture: Masculinity and its associated social banality increase partner violence, sexual and indelibly gun violence.

In conclusion gun safety research hasn’t been so highly instrumental in the safety of our schools, our workplace, and our country. Presently, Congress must enable and fund the researcher to investigate gun violence as a public health issue to demystify the subject matter and wither away such high mortality rates by repealing the Dickey amendment

What is Next?

• Improved Mental Health Treatment Access which is woefully inane at this time: National priority
• At the Community level: Parenting to improved childhood emotional health and safety, and early intervention to children threatening violence.
• Storing firearms appropriately and locked must be the only socially acceptable form of owning gun.
• Firearm prohibition for high-risk groups - Domestic violence offenders, convicts, felons and mental illness groups. Moreover, oversight of retail gun sellers to reduce underground sales of weapons.